On the Meaning and Function of Ādeśá in the Early Upaniṣads

Many modern scholars working on the early Upaniṣads translate ādeśa as substitute, substitution, or the method or rule of substitution. The choice of this translation, which often affects the larger analysis of the text, started only in 1960s, with the late Paul Thieme who understood ‘substitute/substitution’ as the meaning of ādeśa in the Pāṇinian tradition and introduced that meaning to Upaniṣadic analysis. After carefully analysing all relevant passages in their contexts—not just the individual sentences in which the term occurs, this paper rejects Thieme’s idea. It shows that the term never violates its etymological meaning of indication, and argues that ādeśa by itself does not mean substitute or replacement even in the Pāṇinian tradition. This paper further shows that ādeśa, usually used in the plural, was once the formal term referring to the class/genre of Vedic teachings now known as Upaniṣads. As it analyses different passages from the early Upaniṣads, this paper touches on the origin and composition of some of the Upaniṣads, for example arguing that the original Upaniṣadic teaching of the archaic Brāhmaṇa of the Vājasaneyas begins eleven sections before the formal beginning of the Bṛhad Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad.


Introduction
The Sanskrit noun ādeśá is derived from the root diś with the preverb 'ā' and suffix 'a.' The root diś means 'to indicate/to point out' and the prefix 'ā' adds to this meaning a sense of direction, 'near/towards/at.' The suffix 'a' makes it a noun. This noun can convey any of the senses of agent, object, or action, but if the accent is placed on the suffix, the possibility of an action noun is excluded. We know from its two occurrences in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (hereafter Ś B), one in the Tenth book (X.4.5.1) and the other in the part forming the Bṛhad Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad (II.3.11), that ādeśá is so accented. Thus we are left with two possibilities: ādeśá in the early Upaniṡadic usage is either an agent or an object of indication, that which indicates or that which is indicated.
Ś aṅkara, the earliest among traditional commentators, has interpreted this term differently in different places, but all of his interpretations suggest that he understood it in the sense of some kind of instruction or teaching. For example, in one instance he has taken it to be the Vedic injunction (vidhi) in general (cf. Bhāṣya on TU I.11.4), in another the Brāhmaṅa texts (cf. Bhāṣya on TU II.3.1), and in yet another certain instructions from the Upaniṡads (cf. Bhāṣya on ChU III.5.1). In BĀ U II.3.11, he has taken it in its literal sense of indication and interpreted it as the indicated teaching.
Among Indologists, Max Müller (Müller1879, pp. 40, 92) translated this term as 'doctrine' and 'instruction.' Böhtlingk rendered it as 'Ausspruch' (dictum) (1889a: translation part, p. 27) in his German translation of the BĀ U published together with an edition of the Mādhyandina recension of the text, and Oldenberg (1896, p. 461) translated it as 'Anweisung' (instruction). Deussen (1921) has, like Oldenberg, rendered the term as 'Anweisung' and also 'Unterweisung,' or otherwise, more literally as 'Bezeichnung' (designation/ indication), but he has often supplied additional explanations borrowed from Śaṅkara, each time distinguishing the meaning slightly differently. 1 Likewise, Geldner translated it thrice (1928, pp. 110, 136, 137) as 'Veranschaulichung' (demonstration) and once (1928, p. 149) as 'Verdeutlichung' (illustration), both of which stand very close to the literal meaning, 'indication.' In 1968, Paul Thieme criticized all available interpretations of ādeśá, particularly the one offered by Geldner. Referring to Pāṅini's use of ādeśa in the technical sense of a 'substitute' or 'substitution' in his grammar, he proposed to take the term in that very sense of 'substitution' or 'replacement' (Ersetzung), even in the Ś B and early Upaniṡads.
Thieme concluded his article on ādeśa in a rather mystical manner, citing and narrating Patañjali's words expressed in a different context: "kiṃ punar atrārthasatattvam? devā etaj jñātum arhanti (Patañjali, Mahābhāṣya, I S.492, Z.22 f.): «Was aber ist hier die tatsächliche Wahrheit?-Götter [nur] brauchen (oder: 'dürfen beanspruchen') das zu wissen!»" This probably means that Thieme himself was not much satisfied with his treatment of the topic. Nevertheless, he had begun to translate the term in this way already before the publication of this paper (cf. e.g. Thieme 1966, p. 44).
At this point I must mention another publication on the same topic by Yasuke Ikari, in Japanese, published in 1969. As he has mentioned at the end of his article, Ikari was working on the topic independently and came to know about Thieme's article only at about the time his own article was ready. Interestingly, his conclusion is not different from Thieme's, and the ground for that conclusion, too, is the same: the meaning of ādeśa known to the traditional Sanskrit grammarians.
As Kahrs (1998, p. 181) said, however, "there is no textual evidence which warrants the conclusion that ādeśa means 'substitute' or 'substitution' rather than 'specification; teaching; instruction' or 'Anweisung; Vorschrift' in the Brāhmaṅas and oldest Upaniṡads. Indeed, some of the examples adduced by Thieme seem rather to speak against his own case." Kahrs (ibid.) presents the case of neti neti and argues that "Thieme's conclusion is wrong." As Kahrs has further pointed out (ibid.), Wezler (1972, p. 7), too, doubts the conclusion of Thieme and Ikari, because, if ādeśa were already used in the sense of 'substitute, substitution' in the Brāhmaṅas and early Upaniṡads, one would expect the same in the Kalpasūtras, but the term is found there in fact only in the sense of a) 'indication, specification' (Anzeige, Angabe) and b) 'instruction, prescription' (Anweisung, Vorschrift).' As Kahrs rightly observes (1998, p. 182), " [t]he surprising fact that we do not meet with this meaning in the Kalpasūtras once again warrants the conclusion that Thieme was wrong or at least that he was reading too much into his textual evidence." Paying no attention to all this criticism, more recent scholars 2 dealing with the early Upaniṡads have closely followed Thieme, making little or no modification to his original idea, and this trend continues into the present. 3 Some go with substitution, others with replacement or identification, and some even draw philosophical and theoretical implications from these translations. 4 I argue here that this has led the analysis of ādeśá and other associated concepts in the early Upaniṡads in a wrong direction. Thieme placed too much weight on the Sanskrit grammarians of the Pāṅinian tradition and thought that the abstracted technical value assigned to the term in that tradition should be valid even in the ŚB and early Upaniṡads.
I assert that, in Pāṅini's Aṣṭādhyāyī itself, ādeśa does not mean anything more than indication or assignment of a new element. The notion of replacement or substitution comes into being only after P. I.1.49, ṣaṣṭhī sthāneyogā, supplies the word sthāne ('in place') after the word ending in the genitive case in every ādeśasūtra. Thus, 'X+Genitive sthāne Y+Nominative ādeśaḥ' means 'assignment of Y in place of X,' which can be simplified as 'substitution of X by Y.' If substitution were the meaning of ādeśa, Pāṅini, who is famed for his brevity, would not have wasted six heavy syllables to write P. I.1.49. In any case, Thieme's influence has decidely affected scholarly interpretation of Upaniṡadic philosophy. Therefore, in this paper, consistent with the work of Kahrs and others who are reconsidering the meaning of ādeśa. I shall critically read all those passages of the early Upaniṡads where ādeśa occurs so that I can convincingly explain the meaning and function of ādeśa in these texts. This paper, however, is not limited to the task of refuting one rendering of the term ādeśa and proposing another. I will elucidate as I proceed a number of important and interesting issues associated with the status and function of ādeśa that have gone unnoticed.

Ādeśa as a Method
In an earlier publication (Acharya 2013), I analysed the Gārgya-Ajātaśatru dialogue from the Bṛhad Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad (hereafter BĀ U) critically and showed that the enigmatic expression, néti néti, which is marked as an ādeśá, abbreviates Ajātaśatru's negative responses in a way and indicates what method he has applied for the comprehensive understanding of the truth. There, one by one, Ajātaśatru first denies all individual specifications proposed by Gārgya for the highest principle. Once that process is complete, he talks about the manifold appearance of reality and finally imparts the ādeśá of néti néti, the essential point or method applied throughout his dialogue. This is the method of consecutive critical negation needed to understand the complete truth of the Reality of reality. Thus, with the ādeśa of néti néti Ajātaśatru teaches Gārgya the fact that as long as one is not awakened to the totality of truth one should say 'no' to all approximated specifications or identifications as he did. Thus the ādeśá of néti néti has nothing to do with substitution, replacement, or even identification; it is the core teaching indicated repeatedly throughout that discourse. At the same time, it is a method for indicating the Reality of reality, namely, the highest principle of puruṣa. Therefore, we do not need to diverge from the original meaning of the root and preverb involved. One should not look for a technical or a conventional meaning of a word unless its etymological meaning is impossible. It was this new understanding of ādeśá in the Gārgya-Ajātaśatru dialogue that led me to suspect and scrutinize the interpretation of ādeśá in all early Upaniṡadic passages.

Ādeśa as a Teaching, Long or Short
In a recent article (Acharya 2015) on the first discourse of Ā ruṅi and Śvetaketu in Chāndogya Upaniṣad (hereafter ChU) 6.1, I found among other things that in this discourse, too, as in the discourse of Gārgya and Ajātaśatru, ādeśa has to do with indication. In this discourse ādeśa takes the form of a cosmogonic teaching that indicates the three primaeval entities of heat, water, and food as the reality behind all and everything in the world. According to this teaching, all end products here, including human persons, are made of nothing but these three primaeval entities. This teaching thus indicates the truth/reality behind everything, and so is viewed as an ādeśa, an indicatory knowledge. The reader may consult my papers for further details beyond the above summary of the points relevant to this paper.
In this paper I shall deal with the meaning and function of ādeśa in the rest of the occurrences of the term in later Vedic literature, which are altogether ten: one in a very short passage of the Ś B, five in more in the ChU, two in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad (hereafter TU), and two in the later part of the Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa (hereafter JUB), one of which falls in the portion better known as the Kena Upaniṣad (hereafter KeU). I shall read the relevant discourses in full in order to demonstrate the coherence of my analysis and its fidelity to the context.
In his article on ādeśa, Thieme tried to apply his proposed meaning of the term to many of the Upaniṡadic occurrences, but he did not mention two occurrences of the term in the TU, and one more in the JUB. 5 I begin with these two TU occurrences. My opinion is that they hold the key to the understanding of the Upaniṡadic meaning of the term, because they refer to ādeśa in general, not to any one ādeśa specifically. Once the meaning is established in these passages, I will re-examine the other passages where Thieme's interpretation has been till now imposed. "This is the teaching indicated (ādeśa). This is the teaching communicated (upadeśa). This is the teaching underlying the Veda (vedopaniṣad). This is the instruction (anuśāsana). In this way it should be revered. In this way, again, it should be revered." 5 Unlike Thieme, Ikari (1969, p. 685) mentions at least one of these passages and acknowledges that the idea of 'substitution/substitute' does not work there on in ChU III.5.3, which Thieme did discuss. He does not analyze these passages but simply states that he doubts the meaning he is proposing fits these contexts. Slaje presents his analysis of all the Upaniṡadic passages that Thieme had analyzed to substantiate his case (2010, pp. 23-28), classifying Upaniṡadic ādeśás "into word-, sentence-, and method-replacements." He mentions (2010, pp. 24, fn. 88) the two occurrences of the term in the TU and says that they "are not expressive enough to serve as evidence." Thus without mentioning Thieme he justifies the latter's omission of these two occurrences. None of the three authors, however, pays attention to the second occurrence of the term in the JUB. 6 This term appears again in the same sense in one more Vedic text, the Kauśikasūtra (46.1-3), where the term definitely means a person falsely accused whose accusations a priest is supposed to wipe off with a short ritual act. The same combination of abhyākhyā is found in other verbal and nominal forms in Pali and Mahāyāna Buddhist texts in the same sense (cf. Edgerton 1953, p. 61, s.v. abhyākhyāna, abhācikṣati).
On the Meaning and Function of Ādeśá in the Early Upaniṡads 543 Here the teacher's final instruction to the pupil before he goes home to begin a householder's life is claimed to be ādeśa, upadeśa, upaniṣad, and anuśāsana, all at once. The context clearly suggests that the teacher wants his pupil who is returning home to take this last set of instructions as the essential core of the whole education, and putting all his weight on it, names it with different terms which reflect various levels or aspects of teaching. 7 Therefore here ādeśa cannot be anything but some kind of 'teaching. ' We have known from the context of néti néti that an ādeśa is not a direct teaching stated verbally but a deeper and profound message underlying the ordinary direct teachings or texts. This fits well here because we have upadeśa to represent the latter. 8 I have translated ādeśa in this passage as the indicated teaching by combining both denoted and connoted meanings of the term.
Ādeśa as a Genre of Vedic Teaching I now present the other passage from the TU which hints at the significance of ādeśa and its formal status in the Vedic corpus. The second chapter of the TU teaches that the human person has five layers to his living body, one inside the other, all appearing like a human person but made of food, vital functions, mind, cognition, and bliss. The passage below describes the body of mind: For the sake of clarity, I present here a drawing that illustrates the body of mind, i.e., the body of knowledge, imagined in the passage above. In this drawing, we can observe that Ādeśa serves the main body, the torso, while the four Vedas constitute the head, the two sides or wings, and the tail or the stand attached to the torso. This implies that Ādeśa here is the thing in the centre that connects all Vedic speech formulations and is associated with all of them. Ādeśa here is something independent, essential and central; it cannot be a substitute for anything (Illustration 1).

Ādeśas in the Divine Beehive
The status of ādeśa is confirmed in ChU III.1-5, where the text follows the same scheme of fivefold division to depict the sun as the honey of the gods suspended from heaven, while the beams of light in the intermediate region between heaven and earth are seen as bee's larvae in the hive. Here, ādeśa is placed at the top centre, and the four speech forms from the four Vedas are placed on four sides. This time, as with other Vedic speech forms, ādeśa is used in the plural, and it is additionally described as secret. Let us read and translate this interesting passage: III.1.1 asau vā ādityo devamadhu tasya dyaur eva tiraścīnavaṃśaḥ antarikṣam apūpaḥ marīcayaḥ putrāḥ That very sun up there is the honey 10 of the gods. 11 Heaven itself is the horizontal bar on which it hangs; the intermediate region is the honeycomb (apūpa); [and] the lightbeams are the larvae.
Illustration 1 The body of mind 10 The same epithet, 'the honey of the gods,' though not in a compound, is attributed to the Vāmadevya Sāman in the JB (I.144) and to the clarified butter twice in the KS (26.3 and 26.8) and once in the MS (III.9.3). 11 I do not doubt that here the honey of the gods is the topic, the subject (see also my analysis on the next page), but following the original order of nouns I have placed the sun first. The sun comes first not just because it is a predicate providing new and exciting information but also because the sun is in front of the eyes of the interlocutors. The speaker points at the sun and says that 'that there is the honey of the gods I am talking about.' Also in the rest of the description, I place the predicate first because that provides the new information and needs to be highlighted.  [and] it is the waters of immortality [collected from that flower and transported to the hive]. 12 Precisely these very Ṙ c verses incubated the Ṙ gveda. When it was incubated, the essence was generated in the form of lustre, brilliance, power, vigour, and food. That flowed out and spread around the sun; and exactly that is this here that forms the red appearance of the sun.
Before I proceed further, it is necessary to reflect on the context and logic of this comparison between the sun and honey in a beehive. We are told that honey is indeed the ultimate of all juicy drinks (JB I.224, III.364: anto vai rasānāṃ madhu), and already in the Ṙ gveda, mádhu is used as an epithet or epithetic name of Soma and other drinks of the gods offered to them here on earth by the sacrificer, or amṛta that is the drink of immortality existing in heaven. It is noteworthy that our text, too, switches from madhu to amṛta in the concluding portion of the description of the honey of the gods (cf. ChU III.5). Here amṛta, described as madhu is the food of the gods of all classes, not the primordial cosmic water as Kuiper had thought (see fn. 12 for details). As we are told later in the text (cf. ChU III.6-III.11), the gods do not eat or drink the drink of immortality, the honey of the sun, but are sated by seeing it.
In my opinion, the narrator of our text wants to describe how this drink of immortality, the honey of the gods, is constantly produced in the sun just as normal honey is produced in a beehive. This is his main agenda, and the honey of the gods is his topic. In order to understand his description properly, however, we first need to pay attention to what preceeds and follows it.
What immediately preceeds the description of the sun as the honey of the gods (ChU III.1-III.5) is an Upaniṡadic ritual of singing a Sāman and offering an oblation just before each of the three pressings of Soma (ChU II.24). As this section says, the first and second pressings are for the Vasus and Rudras respectively, while the third is for the Ā dityas together with the All-gods, the Viśvedevas. In this Upaniṡadic ritual the sacrificer with his song requests all three group of gods in turn to open the doors for him to their respective worlds, because after living his full life here he will be going to their worlds. He also says that he wants to see them for the sake of his sovereignty. Here the text says that the Vasus and other gods provide the sacrificer who has performed this extra ritual with the pressing offered to them; what is implied, obviously, is that they do so when he goes to their worlds.
After the description of the sun as the honey in heaven, there follows an account (ChU III.6-III.11) describing how the Vasus, Rudras, Ā dityas, Maruts and Sādhyas enjoy the sun's honey from five different sides. 13 The text also says that one who knows of the immortal drink of the Vasus, and so on, will become one among them in their respective world for impossibly long times, enjoy the same drink, and be the master of himself. All this is the wish the sacrificer makes at the time of performance of the Upaniṡadic ritual. Now he enters the worlds of the group of gods he venerated; he becomes his own master; and has access to the drink of immortality. From the ritualistic point of view, the honey in heaven is the transformed essence of the juice the sacrificed pressed and offered to the Vasus, Rudras, Ā dityas, and others. Thus, it is clear that we cannot explain the honey of the gods without paying attention to what preceds and follows these units. Now coming to the analogical equations, the sun's rays are the honey veins, and stuck to these veins are the lightbeams imagined as the larvae. The Ṙ gveda and other Vedic texts are viewed as flowers and the nectar they contain belongs to them as a component of them. The flowers are extraordinary and so is their nectar. However, the Veda-flowers are here on earth; they enclose the bees of the Ṙ c and of the other Vedic mantras or spells. As soon as these mantras are uttered in rituals, 14 mantra-bees are activated. They incubate in the Veda-flowers and rise from them carrying their essence which flows out in the form of lustre and other virtues as the result of incubation. As they reach the sun, the essence they have carried is transformed and added to the eternal supply of the drink of immortality there.
III.2.1-3 atha ye 'sya dakṣiṇā raśmayas tā evāsya dakṣiṇā madhunāḍyaḥ yajūṃṣy eva madhukṛtaḥ yajurveda eva puṣpam tā amṛtā āpaḥ tāni vā etāni yajūṃṣy etam yajurvedam abhyatapan tasyābhitaptasya yaśas teja indriyaṃ vīryam annādyaṃ raso 'jāyata tad vyakṣarat tad ādityam abhito 'śrayat tad vā etad yad etad ādityasya śuklaṃ rūpam 13 Clearly the original triadic scheme has been modified to a pentadic model. Earlier in II.24 the Viśvedevas were grouped together with the Ā dityas, making three sets of gods and three offerings. In this part, however, the Viśvedevas disappear and the Maruts and Sādhyas appear as the fourth and fifth groups of the gods. The first three remain the same: the Vasus, Rudras, and Ā dityas. 14 Interpreting tāḥ amṛṭā āpaḥ Ś aṅkara (cf. Bhāṣya on ChU III.1.2-3) writes that the drinks such as Soma, ghee, and milk offered in the fire during the ritual are transformed by the sacred fire and become the drink of immortality. Practically he is not wrong, because as these Vedic mantras are uttered, such offerings are made. This description of a beehive does not fit the beehive of the common European-African honeybees now spread everywhere. First of all, the Upaniṣad is describing an open-space exposed nest, hanging by an horizontal bar or a branch of a tree. What best fits this description is the nest of Apis Florea, the dwarf honeybee of Asia 17 (see a good example of the round nest of this species of bees from Thailand on the next page; source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_florea). In order to construct the divine honey in the heavenly beehive, the above passage has used the same components used to construct the subtle body of mind in the TU passage read immediately before this one. The only difference in these two passages is that in the TU four Vedic speech formulations were fitted as the head, two sides, and the hinder part, and the Ā deśas, the fifth type of Vedic formulation, served as the central body, i.e., the torso, in order to make a body complete with limbs, whereas here they are arranged as four sides and the top to construct the heavenly beehive equated to the sun (Illustration 2).
Based on this information, we must take the secret ādeśas of ChU III.5.3 as a fifth entity, something independent, essential and central in itself. If we follow the 16 This characterisation of ādeśa as something secret reminds us of its Upaniṡadic nature, the fact that an ādeśa indicates something very close but underlying the apparent. 17 As Akratanakul (1990, Chapter 1A) describes, "[t]he distribution area of A. florea is generally confined to warm climates. In the west, the species is present in the warmer parts of Oman, Iran and Pakistan, through the Indian sub-continent and Sri Lanka. It is found as far-east as Indonesia, but its primary distribution centre is southeast Asia. Rarely found at altitudes above 1500 m, the bee is absent north of the Himalayas. It is frequently found in tropical forests, in woods and even in farming areas." metaphorical scheme of this passage which views the Vedic speech forms as bees and the Vedic texts as flowers, we can further say that, like the Ṙ c verses and other Vedic speech forms, the Ā deśas are specific formulations of Vedic speech and brahman is the text corpus where they are located just as the Ṙ g verses are located in the Ṙ gveda. 18 Since the Vedas are said to be the essences and the ādeśas are said in turn to be their essence, the latter cannot be located in one particular Veda but Illustration 2 Fivefold division of the divine beehive, the top and four quarters, according to ChU III.1-5 18 Olivelle (1996, p. 214) has analysed this whole episode, tabulated all entites on five sides of the divine beehive, and has placed ādeśa as well as brahman in the fifth column. Since the other four flowers are the four Vedas, he rightly observes that, "[t]he fifth flower, that is brahman, therefore, must also fall within the category of "Veda." " Further, in a footnote (ibid. 214, fn 43), he writes that "[i]f we are to carry the metaphor of the vedic formulae and vedic texts over to ādeśa and brahman, then ādeśa would be individual statements of formulations, while brahman would be a collection in which those ādeśas are contained." Beyond this point, he does not continue with this possibility, and soon even ignores that brahman should here be a corpus of vedic formulations, and begins citing and analyzing passages where brahman means "a particular formulation." must be in all of the Vedas. Brahman here should be the entire Vedic corpus, all the Vedas together, the entirety of Vedic knowledge.
Moreover, in the following sections of the same discourse (III.6-III.10), we are told that four classes of gods consume the honey flowing out on four sides of the divine beehive: Vasus, Rudras, Ā dityas, and Maruts, and the honey on the top of the hive is consumed by the Sādhyas. We are also told that in the case of the Sādhyas both the "mouth" and drink are brahman. I think that the choice of the Sādhyas to match with Ā deśas and brahman is telling. The Sādhyas are the ancient gods beyond division and classification 19 and brahman is analogous to them.
Putting all this information together with that we know from the two TU passages read earlier, we can now say that ādeśa should be the indicated teaching, the essence of all Vedic teachings. In fact, in all three passages that we have read thus far, we are in a position to interpret ādeśa in two ways, as 'the indicated teaching,' and also as 'the teaching indicating' a higher reality, a deeper truth. We can further say that this teaching is not simply the verbal teaching, the words of the Vedas, but the profound message between and beyond these lines, the core they all are pointing at. This core, this indicated teaching is verbalised by the Upaniṡads which, it is claimed, are the essence of the Vedas. It is possible that, at a very early phase, there existed a fixed or unfixed body of sūtra-like ādeśa statements indicating an otherwise inexplicable reality, and that these statements served as a foundation for early Upaniṡadic discourses. Since the earliest Upaniṡads, the BĀ U and ChU, and also the JUB, now and then identify an individual statement as an ādeśa or upaniṣad and explain that statement, 20 it is possible that these texts are commenting on a body of archaic statements meant for a deeper contemplation for the sake of a deeper understanding of the truth. 21 The ŚB Compendium of Ādeśás: The Predecessor of the BĀU At this point, I would like to go to the earliest occurrence of the term ādeśá in the Tenth book of the Ś B, where the two terms ādeśa and upaniṣad are closely tied together. The passage is very short, and reads: This phrase is actually a heading, appearing in the beginning of the last section of the Fourth chapter of the Tenth book. It is a heading not just for this small section but also for all sections, altogether eleven, in the Fifth and Sixth chapters, up to the end of the Tenth book. We should introduce here the information we have obtained from the TU and ChU passages read earlier, that ādeśás are Vedic speech formulations of a specific kind, a significant component of the Vedic corpus, and in some cases the totality of the Vedic corpus. 22 In my opinion, Ś B X.4.5 begins the philosophical portion of the original/archaic Brāhmaṅa text of the Vājasaneyas, which continues to the end of that Brāhmaṅa at the end of what is now the Tenth book of the extended Ś B. 23 If we wish to understand the meaning of ādeśa and upaniṣad in Ś B X.4.5.1, we must consider which elements are included in this original Upaniṡad of the Vājasaneyas, the bulk of which is not included in the BĀ U. The text first lists four different opinions on the identity of Agni, the god of the sacred fire in the form of the piled-up altar: The Ś ākāyanin-s venerated him as the Wind. Another unnamed group proclaimed that he is Ā ditya. Ś raumatya and Hāliṅgava (together counted as one group) insisted that he was the Wind. The Ś āṫyāyanin-s held that he is the year. Beyond these four, Celaka, a young member of the Ś āṅḋilya family, equated the three bottom layers of the fire-altar with the three worlds, the fourth with the sacrificer himself, and the fifth with all the objects of his desire. We can see that these different opinions indicate the reality underlying the ritual of the great fire altar. So ends the Fourth chapter.
There are further indications of the hidden truth in the Fifth chapter. In the first section, the underlying reality of the fire is declared to be the threefold Vedic speech. In the second, the solar disc with its various components is identified with three entities in the divine, sacrificial, and bodily realms: first with different entities of the Vedic speech, then with the gold plate that has a carving of a human figure on its surface and is buried under the altar together with a lotus leaf, and finally with the human eye and the puruṣa claimed to be there. Next comes the identification of the fire with puruṣa; the body is then seen as the food and puruṣa as 'the eater.' The Third section begins with a commentary on some stanzas from the Ṙ gvedic Nāsadīyasūkta and indulges in cosmogonic speculations. In the Fourth the 22 Apparently this function of ādeśá in a later period was completely taken over by the term upaniṣád. 23 As scholars have known for a long time, the Original Brāhmaṅa of the Vājasaneyas was composed in the North-Western regions of the Indian subcontinent and contained only the 6-10th books of the Ś B: books 6-9 as the main body of the text and book 10 as a kind of supplement. In this original Brāhmaṅa of the Vājasaneyas, Ś āṅḋilya is cited as the authority, therefore scholars refer to these books as Ś āṅḋilya Books. This archaic text was later combined with another text compiled by a new generation of Vājasaneyas settled in the Gangetic plains. The main body of this new text was placed before the older text as books 1-5 of the Ś B; and the other half, a set of supplementary and even extra texts, was placed after the older text as books 11-14. In all these new books Yājñavalkya is cited as the authority and they are identified as Yājñavalkya Books. For a detailed discussion, see Gonda (1975, pp. 352-354). anonymous narrator comes back to the issue of the identity of the fire, and shows how different opinions, not just those mentioned before but others not yet mentioned, can be reconciled. As he says, the sacrificial fire on the altar is this world, it is also the wind, the space, the sun, stars, metres, the year, the body, all beings, all gods, and still more. The Fifth section indicates why the fire-altar should be built with the fire facing upward.
In the First section of the Sixth chapter, King Aśvapati speaks of the reality of the Vaiśvānara fire. In the second, the internal realities of arka, uktha, and Agni as 'the eater' with reference to both macro-and microcosmic realms are explained. The third section teaches one to venerate brahman as truth, and also to venerate the cosmic Self. The fourth and fifth sections of this chapter are incorporated in the very beginning of the BĀ U as units I.1.1 and I.1.2, while the rest of the Upaniṡad comes from the 14th, the last among the Yājñavalkya Books of the Ś B.
I do not want to digress here into a lengthy discussion on the compositional structure of the BĀ U. That deserves a separate treatment. But I cannot avoid at least saying that whoever edited and canonised the BĀ U known to us dropped a large portion of the older Upaniṡad better known as ādeś upaniṣádām, because it mostly concerned the mystical philosophical interpretation of the sacrificial fire, and kept only a small part of it in the 'Bṙhad' (enlarged) version of their Upaniṡad. 24 To recap this section, the term ādeśá in its earliest occurrence, in the Ś B, means simply indicatory teaching and stands as a title for a good and significant portion of the Ś B consisting of a specific kind of Vedic teachings. The original Upaniṡad of the Old Brāhmaṅa of the Vājasaneyas began with this heading: athādeś upaniṣádām. The text units from this heading to the commencement of the extant BĀ U more than qualify to be part of an Upaniṡad in terms of theme. This confirms the suggestion made at the end of the previous section, viz., that the body of Upaniṡadic teaching in the earliest stage of its development came in the form of ādeśas and their elaborations.

Individual Ādeśas
Here follows a treatment of all the early Upaniṡadic passages in which individual ādeśa statements occur. The length of the passages to be considered here varies; I discuss only that much of the text that is required to be clear about the content of a specific ādeśa in its context. As reported at the beginning of this paper, I have dealt with two ādeśa statements from the BĀ U and ChU in two separate papers. Here I deal with the rest, which come from either the ChU or the JUB.

'Brahman is Mind,' 'Brahman is Space'
Two ādeśa statements, explicitly designated as such, 25 feature side by side in ChU III.18. The whole of the eighteenth section is an elaboration of these two statements. In this passage, too, the scheme of fivefold division is followed, and the ādeśa is centrally located: Thus in the following way brahman has four legs 26 : one leg is speech, another leg is the vital breath, yet another leg is the faculty of sight, [and] yet another leg is the faculty of hearing. This is with regard to the bodily realm. Now with regard to the divine realm: one leg is the fire, another leg is the wind, yet another leg is the sun, and yet another leg is the quarters. This passage makes two major statements, 'brahman is mind' (mano brahma) and 'brahman is space' (ākāśo brahma). With these statements, as the text says, brahman is indicated in the bodily and divine realms respectively by means of mind and space. The two statements about brahman are its indications. For each, mind and space, are a representation/ manifestation of brahman in the respective realm and indicate the existence and glory of all-pervasive brahman.
The purport of this passage cannot be mutual substitution or even identification of the two realms. In the Upaniṡadic wisdom, the ultimate principle of brahman cannot be directly taught; anywhere, in any realm, it can only be indicated. Thus, the realities of the two realms are not equated here, neither mutually to each other nor to brahman individually.
As the text proceeds to elaborate on this, it states that in the bodily realm, when mind is put in the centre and seen as brahman, speech, the vital breath, and the visual and auditory faculties are connected to this centre, just as four legs are connected to the main body of an animal. Likewise, when space is placed in the centre and viewed as brahman, the fire, wind, sun, and quarters are connected to this centre. All this is an elaboration 27 of the two ādeśa statements. Here on the next page is a graphic depiction of the present scheme (Illustration 3).
A simple point we should not miss in the description above is that the four legs are connected to the main body at the centre as the fifth entity. In other words, this description does not follow a scheme of fourfold division but fivefold one. Without mind the four -speech, vital force, sight, and hearing -cannot make the set complete. The set of five appears repeatedly in the early Upaniṡads (e.g., ChU II.7.1-2, II.11.1, IV.3.3, V.1.7-15). Both descriptions above place the ādeśas indicating brahman in the centre. This goes well with the imagination of ChU III.1-5 we read earlier, which places the secret ādeśas in the central upward compartment of the divine beehive and depicts them as incubating brahman. 27 This kind of elaboration we can possibly identify as upavyākhyāna after the use of the term in the next passage. The one who knows this and venerates the sun as brahman, has this reward at hand that nice sounds of cheering will reach and delight him, delight him.
In this passage, too, the ādeśa statement is indicating the highest principle of brahman by means of the sun. This myth of the creation of the sun brings the Upaniṡadic principle of brahman to the centre and makes the sun, the actual object of veneration, a manifestation of that principle and thus a means to approach it.
From the perspective of textual analysis, we can identify a special feature in this passage, that it formally attaches an elaboration (upavyākhyāna) to the sūtra-like ādeśa. This elaboration tells us that the sun is the first entity born from the cosmic egg, implying that this is the reason for declaring the sun to be brahman.

Two Correlated Indications of I-Awareness and the Self
I turn now to the last passage from the ChU where ādeśa appears twice, side by side, in two similar compounds. This passage occurs in the concluding portion of a discourse between Nārada and Sanatkumāra (VII.1-VII.26). As the discourse opens, Nārada asks Sanatkumāra to teach him. Sanatkumāra asks him to tell him first what he already knows so that he can then teach him what lies beyond that. Nārada lists all the texts starting from the Ṙ gveda, and says that he knows mantras but not the self. He has heard, he reports, that a knower of the self goes across the realm of agony, and finding himself burning in agony he wants to know the self from Sanatkumāra. Sanatkumāra begins with 'name' and says that all mantras are nothing but names. He advises Nārada to meditate on this phenomenon of 'name' as brahman and tells him what one can expect to achieve through this. But Nārada is curious to know if there is something further, and Sanatkumāra speaks of 'speech.' Nārada continues his quest for some thing further and Santkumāra goes higher and higher, proposing newer entities, more pervasive and On the Meaning and Function of Ādeśá in the Early Upaniṡads 557 more fundamental. 28 He offers the mind, imagination, thought, and so on. Towards the end of this process, Sanatkumāra moves from 'happiness' to 'plenitude' in the following way (ChU VII.23-24): VII.23 yo vai bhūmā tat sukham nālpe sukham asti bhūmaiva sukham bhūmā tv eva vijijñāsitavya iti bhūmānaṃ bhagavo vijijñāsa iti VII.24.1 yatra nānyat paśyati nānyac chṛṇoti nānyad vijānāti sa bhūmā atha yatrānyat paśyaty anyac chṛṇoty anyad vijānāti tad alpam yo vai bhūmā tad amṛtam atha yad alpaṃ tan martyam sa bhagavaḥ kasmin pratiṣṭhita iti sve mahimni yadi vā na mahimnīti VII.24.2 goaśvam iha mahimety ācakṣate hastihiraṇyaṃ dāsabhāryaṃ kṣetrāṇy āyatanānīti nāham evaṃ bravīmi bravīmīti hovāca anyo hy anyasmin pratiṣṭhita iti 'What in fact is plenitude, that is happiness. There is no happiness in finitude. Plenitude itself is happiness. So, one should seek to know plenitude itself.' 'Plenitude itself, sir, I seek to know.' 28 At the end of this discourse (ChU VII.26), Sanatkumāra summarizes his teaching by mentioning each of the entities he presented before stating each time that the specified entity stems from the self. In this summary we have two additional entities that were not mentioned in the course of Sanatkumāra's presentation of the entities in a hierarchical scheme. Furthermore, eight entities towards the top of the hierarchy that were given in the presentation are missing in this list. I understand this discrepancy as evidence for a revision of the original text. I assume that VII.26 constituted the list of entities in an older version of the text. For the sake of clarity I list below the entities mentioned in VII.26 and those found in the presentation from VII.1-VII.25 in two parallel columns: If we assume that the list at the end of the text is older, that would mean that in one or many attempts, satya, vijñāna, mati, śraddhā, niṣṭhā, kṛti, sukha, bhūman, svamahiman were added just below ātman, the final entity, whereas the first entity of the old list, karman, and one more from the middle of the list, āvirbhāvatirobha, were dropped.
Although this is not the proper place to examine critically the present list of hierarchical entities and the question of their originality, I record this discrepancy here because of its importance for the critical analysis of the early Upaniṡads.
'Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, and knows nothing -that is plenitude. But where one sees something else, hears something, and knows something else-that is scarcity. What is in fact defined as plenitude, that is the immortal; and what is [defined as] scarcity, that is the mortal.' 'On what is that based, sir?' 'On one's own grandeur; or rather, not on grandeur.' 'Here [in this world] people regard cows and horses, elephants and precious metals, slaves and wives, fields, and houses as grandeur. I do not say so.' 'I say,' he said, 'one is [here] definitely based on the other.' Here, Sanatkumāra first tells Nārada that the plenitude he meant is the state where there is nothing else to experience. From this negative statement, Nārada cannot grasp the supremacy and all-pervasiveness of the proposed entity. He still wants to know on what plenitude is based. This makes Sanatkumāra put the same fact in the affirmative, with the idea that this will be probably more comprehensible to Nārada. He says that it is based 'in one's own grandeur,' 29 but he immediately remembers that Nārada is not sufficiently enlightened to understand the real meaning of one's own grandeur. Therefore, as an afterthought he adds, 'or rather, not in grandeur.' Sanatkumāra expresses the reason for his afterthought in the last sentence of the section above, and his description of plenitude in the affirmative appears only in the next section: VII.25.1a sa evādhastāt sa upariṣṭāt sa paścāt sa purastāt sa dakṣiṇataḥ sa uttarataḥ sa evedaṃ sarvam iti "That alone is below, that above, that westward, that eastward, that southward, [and] that northward; that very [plenitude] is this all.
This understanding of plenitude in its true sense, as Sanatkumāra relates, leads one initially to the indication of I-awareness and finally to the indication of the self. Here is the text and translation of the rest of this section: VII.25.1b athāto 'haṃkārādeśa eva aham evādhastād aham upariṣṭād ahaṃ paścād ahaṃ purastād ahaṃ dakṣiṇato 'ham uttarato 'ham evedaṃ sarvam iti VII.25.2 athāta ātmādeśa eva ātmaivādhastād ātmopariṣṭād ātmā paścād ātmā purastād ātmā dakṣiṇata ātmottarata ātmaivedaṃ sarvam iti 3 sa vā eṣa evaṃ paśyann evaṃ manvāna evaṃ vijānann ātmaratir ātmakrīḍa ātmamithuna ātmānandaḥ sa svarāḍ bhavati tasya sarveṣu lokeṣu kāmacāro bhavati 29 The same expression of svo mahimā is attested in the Ś B in two different contexts (I.4.2.17 and II.2.4.4-6) but both times we are told that it is speech that is the svo mahimā of the deity in question, Agni and Prajāpati respectively. It appears to me that our Upaniṡadic passage wishes to move beyond not only the mundane notion of the grandeur of wealth but also the ritualist's understanding of grandeur as the majesty of the deity being venerated.  -awareness] is precisely the indication of the self: 'the self itself is below, the self is above, the self is westward, the self is eastward, the self is southward, [and] the self is northward, the self itself is this all.' "Only the man who sees this way, thinks this way, and perceives this way, who finds comfort in the self, who is amused with the self, who is paired with the self, and who finds bliss in the self, becomes sovereign master of his own. In all the worlds he will go as he pleases. "Now those who understand it otherwise than this will have others to rule over them and have perishable worlds; they will not go as they please through these worlds." The discourse of Sanatkumāra begins by telling Nārada that one entity is superior to another, and thus prepares a hierarchy of these entities; it does not ask for one entity to be replaced with another. At the top of the hierarchy where one is seeing, hearing, and perceiving nothing other than the self, the continuous climb ends. At this point an attentive seeker of truth finds the indication of I-awareness and therewith the indication of the self. Beyond plenitude comes the indication of one's own self. At this point one becomes aware of the presence of 'I' everywhere and in everything. This awareness, when contemplated further and refined, leads to, or rather itself results in, the indication of the self, that is, I would say the I-awareness impersonalized. Thus here indication does not involve a verbal or other activity but a realization. Thus, after leading Nārada through the steps of hierarchy in the mundane world, Sanatkumāra tells him that at the end of this journey are the two indications of I-awareness and of the self. In this way he answers how to know the self, the question Nārada had asked in the beginning of the discourse.

Lightning and Consciousness are Indications of Brahman
Next to be considered are two occurrences, in the later part of the Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa (JUB) which comprises the Kenopaniṣad (KeU) and a few more sections beyond it.
The first is found in the Kenopaniṣad proper (KeU III and IV = JUB IV.20-21). Here a story is told before the ādeśa is imparted. I shall not read the whole story but summarize it: Brahman won victory for the gods. Over the victory of brahman the gods exulted. They thought that the victory was theirs. Being aware of this behavoiur of the gods, brahman appeared before them but they could not recognize it. They saw it as a sudden apparition (yakṣa), and wondered what it could be. They first asked Agni to recognize it. As Agni ran towards it, he was asked who he was and what power he had. Agni introduced himself and confidently said that he could burn up almost everything on earth. But as the apparition put down a blade of grass and asked him to burn that, he could not do so even with all his strength. He returned from that very point and acknowledged that he was unable to know what the apparition was. Then the gods sent Vāyu, but he too proved useless. Finally, begged by the gods, Indra ran towards the apparition but it disappeared. However, at the exact spot of that apparition, he came across a beautiful woman, Umā, a lady belonging to the Himalaya. He asked her about that sudden apparition. That was brahman, she replied, and added that you gods are exulting at the victory of brahman. Only from her did Indra thus know that it was brahman. At the end of the story, the Upaniṡad tells us that Agni, Vāyu, and Indra came into close contact with brahman and therefore superseded other gods; particularly Indra, because he was the first to know brahman (cf. KeU III.1-IV.3). The following passage introduces the ādeśa: 30 Some scholars (e.g. Olivelle 1998, p. 371;Hume 1921, p. 339;Deussen 1921, p. 208) have interpreted the two expressions of 'ā3' as two cries of the viewer between seeing a flash of lightning and blinking his/ her eyes. Following such an interpretation, one has to say that the viewer cries twice with almost no interval, once as lightning flashes and again as it makes him blink. This interpretation is illogical: nobody waits to blink on seeing a flash of lightning, nor does one cry for the second time before blinking, having once already cried upon seeing the flash. Immediately after the flashing of lightning, one simultaneously cries and blinks, unless (s)he is awestruck and his/her eyes remain open. I should also say that, although crying and blinking are simultaneous, they do not make a correlated pair.
On the other hand, scholars like Thieme (1968, p. 721) and Geldner (1928, p. 149) appear to take 'Ah!' for the sound of lightning. With this interpretation, too, there is the same logical absurdity of repetition of the sound. It seems that later Thieme (1972, p. 72) sensed some problem there and interpreted the first 'Ah!' as the viewer's cry and left the second unspecified. Similarly, Slaje (2010, p. 26) has interpreted the first 'Ah!' as the sound of lightning and left the second unexplained.
I am, however, in favour of taking both expressions of 'Ah!' as an ideophone rather than an imitation of a cry or the flashing sound. This ideophone suggests the manner of the apparition's appearance and disappearance: all of sudden, astonishingly, arrestingly, and inexplicably. Alternatively, we can say that 'Ah!' describes the feeling of surprise and astonishment of Indra as a viewer of this phenomenon, taking it again not as a cry but as an ideophone suggestive of Indra's sensation. On the appearance of the apparition against the phenomenon of lightning, Indra was no sooner surprised than it disappeared surprising him again. 31 Here two itis, one quoting 'ā3' and another signaling the end of ādeśa statement with reference to the macrocosmic realm, have been abbreviated into one following the rule of Vedic prose; cf. Hock (1982, p. 59). It is interesting to note that this passage is using iti to quote the ideophone 'ā3,' but not to quote the ādeśa statements. Now with reference to the bodily realm: [it is] that entity to which the mind seems to go and which the faculty of imagination 32 constantly recollects by the help of that [mind].
Since this passage is very elliptical, some other slightly different interpretations are possible. 33 I prefer the one above, which happens to be closer to Ś aṅkara's interpretation. According to this interpretation, the indication of brahman in the macrocosmic realm is that entity which the gods saw as a quickly vanishing apparition. In the microcosmic realm, it is the entity that the mind supposedly reaches and, with the help of the mind, the faculty of imagination recollects.
In this passage, as in ChU III.18 read above (in the first half of Section II), ādeśa is presented on both microcosmic and macrocosmic levels. Needless to say, the two statements must be related to the story in the preceding part of the text and tell the same truth reflected on two levels. In the story, out of the lightning brahman appears, seen as an apparition, and then disappears in an inexplicable manner. Agni, Vāyu, and Indra acknowledge that they are unable to know it. Indra recollects this phenomenon and also understands its truth only with the help of lovely Umā, who has taken the place of the apparition.
At this point let me remind the reader that the doctrinal part in the first half of the KeU (Sections I-II) focuses on the unknowability and inaccessibility of brahman. We are told there that mind cannot reach brahman, nor other faculties either (cf. I.3: na vāg gacchati no manaḥ). We are also told that one cannot grasp it by mind (cf. I.6: yan manasā na manute), it is grasped by the one who acknowledges that he does not know it well. It is reportedly the entity that grasps mind, expresses speech, and so on (cf. I.5-9). It is grasped when it is known through one's awakening (cf. II.2-4), and we are told, "he does not know who thinks he has grasped it" (cf. II.3).
From this story it emerges that brahman appears as an entity inspiring awe and respect (yakṣa). It moves astonishingly fast, evades cognition, and even the gods do not understand it properly. In the bodily realm we have mind and the faculty of imagination, and the object of cognition towards which they are oriented. The true object of cognition that is brahman evades our cognition, but with the help of mind 32 For saṃkalpa as a faculty, see ChU VII.4.1-3, where it is placed higher than manas, and also and ChU VIII.2.1-10, where saṃkalpa is glorified as the source of worldly relations and belongings. However, in BĀ U I.5.9 it is identified with manas. 33 For example, it is possible to take etad as an adverb. In that case, the factor indicating brahman will be the manner of appearance and disappearance of lightning in the first realm, and in the second, the manner the mind seems to travel and the faculty of imagination spin its fancies. I do not prefer this interpretation, because it does not fit tightly with the doctrinal teaching of the KeU. Nevertheless, here is a new translation of the passage along this line: The Returning back to the main agenda of this paper, let me conclude with the note that in this passage, too, the literal meaning of the term ādeśa, 'indication,' is appropriate. The suddenly irradiated flash of light that comes out of lightning and that to which mind and imagination are supposedly oriented are indications of brahman in the macro-and microcosmic realms respectively. Here the term ādeśa is understood as indication in its agentive sense: that which indicates brahman.

Puruṣa in the Eye is Indication of Brahman Within the Human Being
In another passage in the same text, two sections after the passage just read, ādeśa appears again. The opening portion of the discourse may be summarized as follows: As 'He' has entered the human being and resided there, all major divinities bring tribute to him through various channels of the sense faculties. There he has mounted the brahman-throne. He is thus brahman, and is encompassed with glory and excellence. Who knows him thus is encompassed with glory and excellence (cf. JUB IV.24.1-11). The text then presents the ādeśa of this short discourse in the following way: JUB IV.24.12-13: tasyaiṣa ādeśo yo 'yaṃ dakṣiṇe 'kṣann antaḥ tasya yac chuklaṃ tad ṛcāṃ rūpaṃ yat kṛṣṇaṃ tat sāmnāṃ yad eva tāmram iva babhrur iva tad yajuṣām ya evāyaṃ cakṣuṣi puruṣa eṣa indra eṣa prajāpatis samaḥ pṛthivyā sama ākāśena samo divā samas sarveṇa bhūtena eṣa paro divo dīpyate eṣa evedaṃ sarvam ity upāsitavyam The puruṣa in the right eye is an indication of brahman within the human being. In all other cases, ādeśa is a verbal entity, in one way or the other; it is a genre, a form of speech, a method implied or narrated, or a particular concept or statement. But in both of its occurrences in the JUB, ādeśa refers to an actual physical entity, apparent or real. In this passage it is the human figure seen in the right eye which indicates brahman residing within the human being. In the previous passage, too, it is a physical entity: on the outside it is an apparition seen like lightning, and on the On the Meaning and Function of Ādeśá in the Early Upaniṡads 563 inside it is the inner awareness to be approached by the mind and recollected by the faculty of imagination.

Conclusion
In the early Upaniṡads ādeśá can mean an essential message or a core teaching indicated by one particular discourse (BĀ U II.1&II.3), or even an entire corpus of Vedic texts (TU II.3.3, ChU III.5). It can also be a subtle underlying idea indicated by another less subtle idea (ChU VII.24 and VII.25). It can also mean something that points to the underlying reality deep in existence or in the text (BĀ U II.1&II.3).
Such an indication comes mostly in the form of an apt statement (e.g., ChU III.18 and III.19) but rarely also in the form of a relatively elaborate account (ChU VI.1-VI.7). In the case of an apt formulaic statement, there follows an elaboration. The term ādeśa is used even to refer to an actual entity, apparent or real, that indicates the reality lying deep in the cosmos or in one's own being (JUB IV [=KeU IV].4-5 and IV.24). Thus, we know that the connotative range of ādeśa covers 'teaching,' 'method,' 'idea,' or 'object.' We might identify a teaching, method, or idea indicated by an ādeśa, and identify its content, or even a logical notion behind it, as the extended connotation of the term. However, this much is clear from the analysis of all Upaniṡadic passages in this paper: there is no one connoted meaning that could cover all cases of ādeśa. As for denoted meanings, the term never violates its etymological sense of indication: it denotes either an entity being indicated or one that indicates. Therefore, it is best to translate this term literally. Strictly speaking, even in Pāṅini's grammar ādeśa primarily refers to 'indication, assignment' of a new element in place of the original element, or to the new element assigned that way.
The function of most of the individual ādeśas is to indicate brahman or the ultimate reality through a particular entity. In these cases, people can have an impression that ādeśa means 'identification' or 'replacement,' but this interpretation cannot fit all occurences of the term. The second passage from the JUB (IV.24.12-13) declares the puruṣa in the right eye to be an ādeśa of the brahman that has entered the human being. Here, indication fits well as the meaning of ādeśa not replacement or identification. The same is true with the neti neti ādeśa from the BĀ U.
Although in almost all cases a statement labeled as ādeśá can be identified as a teaching, in one third of all the cases, four out of twelve: in ChU VII.24 and VII.25, and in both passages from the JUB, the term refers to some actual phenomena indicating another. For example, in ChU VII.24, the feeling that 'I' itself is all and everywhere resulting after the realization of the true sense of plenitude is declared as ahaṃkārādeśa, the indication of I-awareness. For this reason I consider all these meanings, 'teaching or instruction,' as extended connotations of the term, which are in fact indicated objects, and indication alone as the primary denoted meaning of the term.
In its earliest occurrence, in the tenth book of the Ś B (X.4.5.1), the term, in the plural, refers to a compendium of Vedic teachings presenting and discussing the principles underlying ritual entities, and obviously to a portion of the text containing them. In two passages from the ChU (III.5) and TU (II.3.3)-in the plural and the singular respectively-ādeśa stands for a class of Vedic teachings and is placed parallel to the Ṙ c, Sāman, Yajuṡ, and Atharva teachings. In these two passages Ā deśa is enthroned in the centre whereas Ṙ c and others are placed in the periphery. In the ChU passage it is described as the essence of all essences. These three passages tell us that ādeśa was once the formal name of the type of Vedic teachings now classified as Upaniṡad, and also of its corpus, in whatever form and size it had.
The Upaniṡadic ādeśa is the fifth type of sacred Vedic utterance beyond the four sacred utterences of the ritual world: Ṛc verses, Yajuṣ formulas, Sāman songs, and atharvāṅgirasa spells. This fifth utterance is not only sacred but secret, too, only known to those who approach a learned teacher reverently. Its application is not for the sake of rituals but for the knowledge of the self. Generally, the purpose of such an ādeśa is to indicate the ultimate omnipresent reality through a particular entity central to a particular system in a particular realm so that a man enlightened in the Upaniṡadic way realises or even experiences the true reality beyond name and form, and stops worrying for his wellbeing here and hereafter. Moreover, the ultimate reality-in whatever way it is named, as sat, brahman, puruṣa, ātman-can only be indicated; it cannot be directly shown. For example, the statement that 'brahman is the sun' aptly indicates the all-pervasive brahman in the macrocosmic realm, but it is not a description or definition of brahman. Being a representation/manifestation of brahman, the sun indicates the existence and glory of brahman. Therefore, the ādeśa is purposeful: one meditating on the significance, inevitability, and centrality of the sun in the world will eventually, or suddenly at one point, realize brahman.