The Four Great Sayings
Four short sentences, one from each Veda, that a whole tradition came to treat as the Veda’s final word — and that other traditions, reading the very same words, understood quite differently.
On Atman & Brahman you met the four mahāvākyas in a short list, and saw how three schools read one of them, tat tvam asi. This page goes further: where each saying actually sits in its Upanishad, how the group of four came to be, how Advaita uses them in teaching and initiation, the careful method by which it reads them — and how Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita read every one of them in turn.
Four sayings in their places
Each saying is a single line inside a longer passage, and the passage shapes its sense. Tap through the four:
“Brahman is consciousness” — Ṛgveda
The Aitareya Upaniṣad asks, “Who is this self that we worship?” It lists every faculty — seeing, hearing, thinking, desiring, will — and calls them all names of prajñāna, consciousness. Then it widens the circle to the gods, the elements and every living thing, and concludes:
Notice that this saying is about Brahman’s nature, not directly about “me.”
“I am Brahman” — Yajurveda
In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka’s account of creation, Brahman alone existed in the beginning:
The passage goes on: whoever among gods, seers or humans awoke to this became that whole — like the seer Vāmadeva, who sang “I was Manu, I was the sun.” And, it adds wryly, the gods do not like people to know this — for a person who knows it is no longer like a cow kept by the gods, serving them with offerings.
“That you are” — Sāmaveda
Uddālaka’s teaching to his son Śvetaketu, given after each of nine lessons — honey, rivers, a tree, a seed, salt and more:
The full verse, and three of the lessons, are on Atman & Brahman. Of the four, this is the only one spoken by a teacher to a student: an instruction, not a declaration.
“This Self is Brahman” — Atharvaveda
The Māṇḍūkya’s second verse, immediately after “Om is all this”:
It leads straight into the four states of waking, dream, deep sleep and the fourth, described on The Principal Upanishads. The same words, ayam ātmā brahma, also appear in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka (2.5.19 and 4.4.5).
How four became “the four”
None of the Upanishads calls these sentences “great sayings,” and none groups them. The grouping is a later Advaita convention: one identity statement chosen from each Veda, so that the whole of Śruti seems to speak with one voice. Advaita convention Shankara himself comments on each saying in its place, and builds his teaching especially on tat tvam asi, but the set of four as a fixed list belongs to later Advaita works. Vidyāraṇya’s Pañcadaśī (14th century) gives them a chapter of their own, the “Discernment of the Great Sayings,” explaining each one in turn.
The word mahāvākya itself is older and more technical. To the interpreters of ritual, it meant a “great sentence” made up of smaller ones, read together as a single statement. Advaita borrowed it and gave it a new sense: a mahāvākya states the identity of Self and Brahman, while an avāntara-vākya, a “subsidiary sentence” such as “Brahman is truth, knowledge, infinity,” describes Brahman so that the great saying can be understood.
Later Advaita teachers often give each saying a role in the student’s journey Later Advaita pedagogy:
- Prajñānaṃ brahma — definitionWhat Brahman is: consciousness itself.
- Tat tvam asi — instructionThe teacher tells the student: you are that.
- Ayam ātmā brahma — contemplationThe student reflects: this very Self is Brahman.
- Ahaṃ brahmāsmi — realisationThe student knows, in the first person: I am Brahman.
Sayings for renunciants
In Advaita, the mahāvākyas are not only texts to be studied. They are given. At initiation into saṃnyāsa, after the new monk has renounced his household and ritual life, his guru imparts a great saying as the teaching he is to contemplate for the rest of his life.
Tradition links each saying with one of the four monasteries (maṭhas) that Shankara is said to have founded at the four corners of India, through texts called the Maṭhāmnāya, attributed to him but of uncertain date: Maṭha tradition
- Śṛṅgerī (south) — Yajurveda — ahaṃ brahmāsmi
- Dvārakā (west) — Sāmaveda — tat tvam asi
- Govardhana, Purī (east) — Ṛgveda — prajñānaṃ brahma
- Jyotirmaṭh (north) — Atharvaveda — ayam ātmā brahma
Historians are cautious about how much of this goes back to Shankara himself, and the Kāñcī maṭha in Tamil Nadu claims a place of its own. It is also worth saying plainly that this initiation was classically open only to men, and in its strictest orders only to Brahmin men. Shankara himself held that Śūdras could not study the Veda. Modern orders, and some women’s orders, have widened the door.
Advaita’s method: secondary meaning
Read literally, tat tvam asi seems absurd to an Advaitin as much as to anyone. “That” is Brahman — all-knowing, all-powerful, the cause of the world. “You” are a limited person who forgets where you left your keys. How can they be identical? Advaita answers with a tool from Indian theories of language, lakṣaṇā: secondary or implied meaning, used when the literal sense cannot work. Advaita view Later Advaita manuals such as Sadānanda’s Vedāntasāra describe three kinds:
गङ्गाDropping the whole meaningjahal-lakṣaṇā
“The village is on the Ganges” cannot mean the village floats on the water. We drop the literal meaning entirely and understand “on the bank.” Advaita says this will not do for tat tvam asi: dropping both words entirely would leave nothing to be identical.
शोणKeeping the whole meaningajahal-lakṣaṇā
“The red one is running” keeps “red” and adds what it implies: a red horse. This will not do either, since keeping all of both meanings keeps the contradiction between all-knowing and limited.
सोऽयम्Dropping part, keeping partbhāga-tyāga-lakṣaṇā
“This is that Devadatta.” You met a man years ago in another city; now you see him here. “That” means the man-then-and-there; “this” means the man-now-and-here. Drop the conflicting parts — then and now, there and here — and keep the person common to both. In the same way, drop omniscience from “that” and limitation from “you”: what remains in both is pure consciousness. That remainder is the identity the saying points to.
For Advaita, hearing a great saying from a qualified teacher is not one piece of information among others. It is meant to produce, in a prepared mind, direct knowledge that ends ignorance. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka’s instruction that the Self is “to be heard, reflected on and meditated upon” (2.4.5) becomes the three stages of study: śravaṇa, manana, nididhyāsana. Advaita teachers themselves debated whether the saying alone gives liberating knowledge, or whether long meditation must ripen it.
Read it three ways
Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita accept every one of these sentences as Śruti. They simply refuse the Advaita reading, and they object to its method: secondary meaning, they say, is a last resort, and should not be used when the words make good sense as they stand. Choose a school and see how it reads all four:
What do the four great sayings say?
Each school of Vedānta wrote commentaries on these very passages. Pick one to see its reading.
Strict identity
Prajñānaṃ brahma: consciousness is not a quality Brahman has; it is what Brahman is. Tat tvam asi and ayam ātmā brahma: once the limiting features are set aside, the Self in you and Brahman are one consciousness. Ahaṃ brahmāsmi: the knowledge that ends ignorance, in the first person. All four teach one thing, and statements of difference elsewhere describe the world as it appears before that knowledge dawns.
The challenge it faces
If the Self was always Brahman, who was ever ignorant, and how? Critics pressed this question for centuries.
One Lord, embodied in all
Ramanuja’s key is sāmānādhikaraṇya, “co-reference”: two words with different meanings can name one thing, as “the blue lotus” names one flower. Because souls are the body of the Lord, words that name the soul finally name the Lord who indwells it — as “Devadatta” names the person, not just his body. Tat tvam asi: “that” is Brahman as cause of the world, “you” is the same Brahman having you as his body; the one Lord is meant, and your distinct self is affirmed, not erased. Ayam ātmā brahma: the inner Self of this self is Brahman, the inner ruler. Ahaṃ brahmāsmi: “I” ultimately refers to the Lord who is my Self. Prajñānaṃ brahma: Brahman is consciousness by nature — and also a knower, possessing knowledge as a quality.
The challenge it faces
If everything is the Lord’s body, is the Lord touched by its suffering and imperfection? Ramanuja says no, as a soul is not touched by the body’s changes — a reply his critics found hard to accept.
Dependence, not identity
Tat tvam asi: the line can be read sa ātmā ’tat tvam asi, “that is the Self; you are not that,” or as “you are his.” Uddālaka’s examples, too, can be read as lessons in difference — the bird tied by a string flies about but always returns to its post; rivers enter the ocean yet the ocean is not the rivers. Ahaṃ brahmāsmi: Dvaita reads it in ways that preserve the difference — the soul speaking of its likeness to, and total dependence on, Brahman, who for Madhva is Vishnu — never as a claim of identity. Ayam ātmā brahma: ātman here is the Supreme Self that pervades all. Prajñānaṃ brahma: straightforwardly true — the Lord is full of knowledge.
The challenge it faces
Critics say these readings strain the grammar. Dvaita replies that only they keep the Upanishads consistent with passages that clearly speak of two, such as the two birds on one tree.
- Advaita treats the four sayings as the heart of Śruti, and statements of difference as provisional.
- Viśiṣṭādvaita holds that no Śruti statement is provisional, and reads identity and difference together through the body–soul relation.
- Dvaita holds that difference — between God, souls and matter — is real and eternal, and reads identity statements as dependence or similarity.
- Shaiva Siddhanta speaks of the liberated soul as “not two” (advaita) with Shiva in the sense of inseparable union, like the vowel a pervading every letter — while never becoming Shiva.
Other great sayings
The four are not the only sentences the tradition holds up as summing everything up. Advaita itself honours others, such as sarvaṃ khalv idaṃ brahma, “all this is indeed Brahman” (Chāndogya 3.14.1), and ekam evādvitīyam, “one only, without a second” (Chāndogya 6.2.1). Other traditions have their own:
- Śrīvaiṣṇavas centre their teaching on the “three secrets” (rahasya-traya): the eight-syllable mantra oṃ namo nārāyaṇāya, the two-line dvaya mantra of surrender, and Krishna’s “final verse” in the Gītā, “abandoning all dharmas, take refuge in me alone” (18.66). Ramanuja’s favourite Upanishadic line is the inner-ruler passage of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, in which the Self is the one “whose body is the self.”
- Gauḍīya Vaishnavas summarise the soul’s nature in Bengali: jīvera svarūpa haya kṛṣṇera nitya-dāsa — “the soul’s true nature is to be Krishna’s eternal servant” (Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā 20.108).
- Shaivas hold the five-syllable namaḥ śivāya to be the essence of the Veda — it stands at the centre of the Śrī Rudram (see The Four Vedas).
And in Tamil, Tirumūlar’s Tirumantiram gives a great saying of its own, loved across Malaysia’s Tamil Shaiva communities: “Love is Shiva.”
அன்பே சிவமாவ தாரும் அறிகிலார்
அன்பே சிவமாவ தாரும் அறிந்தபின்
அன்பே சிவமாய் அமர்ந்திருந் தாரே aṉpu civam iraṇṭeṉpar aṟivilār
aṉpē civamāvatu ārum aṟikilār
aṉpē civamāvatu ārum aṟintapiṉ
aṉpē civamāy amarntirun tārē The ignorant say love and Shiva are two. No one knows that love itself is Shiva. Once they know that love itself is Shiva, they rest as love — as Shiva. Tirumūlar, Tirumantiram 270
Check your knowledge:
“Prajñānaṃ brahma” comes from which Upanishad?
The Aitareya Upaniṣad (3.3), of the Ṛgveda.
Who first grouped the four sayings as “the four mahāvākyas”?
The grouping is a later Advaita convention; the Upanishads never list them together.
In “this is that Devadatta,” what is kept?
Bhāga-tyāga-lakṣaṇā drops the conflicting parts and keeps what is common.
Which school divides the words as sa ātmā ’tat tvam asi — “you are not that”?
Madhva’s Dvaita — reading the saying as a lesson in the soul’s difference from, and dependence on, the Lord.
Questions people often ask
Should I chant the mahāvākyas as mantras?
In Advaita they are traditionally received from a teacher and contemplated, not recited for a result. Many people find them powerful to reflect on; whether to use them as a formal practice is best decided with a teacher of your own tradition.
Isn’t “I am Brahman” a kind of arrogance?
Advaita teachers say the opposite: the “I” that is Brahman is not the personality, which has to be set aside first. The devotional schools reply that the safer and truer attitude is “I am his.” Both agree that the ego claiming divinity has misunderstood.
Why one saying per Veda?
To show that all four Vedas, rightly read, teach the same truth. It is an elegant arrangement — and an argument, made by one school.
॥ Pause and reflect
- “This is that Devadatta.” What in you has stayed the same since childhood, through every change?
- Of the three readings — identity, embodiment, dependence — which speaks to your own experience of the divine?
- Tirumūlar says love is Shiva. If you took that literally, what would change in how you pray?
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Key terms on this page
Sources & further reading
- Patrick Olivelle, The Early Upaniṣads: Annotated Text and Translation (Oxford University Press, 1998) — Aitareya 3, Bṛhadāraṇyaka 1.4, Chāndogya 6, Māṇḍūkya.
- Vidyāraṇya, Pañcadaśī, chapter 5 (“Mahāvākya-viveka”), trans. Swami Swahananda (Ramakrishna Math).
- Sadānanda, Vedāntasāra, trans. Swami Nikhilananda (Advaita Ashrama) — on the three kinds of lakṣaṇā.
- John B. Carman, The Theology of Rāmānuja (Yale University Press, 1974); Rāmānuja, Vedārthasaṅgraha, trans. S. S. Raghavachar.
- B. N. K. Sharma, Philosophy of Śrī Madhvācārya (1962; Motilal Banarsidass, 1986).
- Deepak Sarma, An Introduction to Mādhva Vedānta (Ashgate, 2003).
- Tirumūlar, Tirumantiram, trans. B. Natarajan (Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, 1991).