shabda

shabda, in Indian philosophy, verbal testimony as a means of obtaining knowledge. In the philosophical systems (darshans), shabda is equated with the authority of the Vedas (the most-ancient sacred scriptures) as the only infallible testimony, since the Vedas are deemed to be eternal, authorless, and absolutely infalliable. Shabda is of particular importance to the exegetic Mimamsa school. Mimamsa defines the authoritativeness as applying bindingly only to scriptural statements that exhort to purposive action and whose efficacy would not be known by any other means of knowledge. The Vedanta school extends this authoritativeness to suprasensual objects—e.g., to brahman, the ultimate reality. The school of logic, Nyaya, accepts verbal testimony, both human and divine, as a valid means of knowledge but notes that only the divine knowledge of the Vedas is infallible.

The systems of Buddhism and Jainism, though they reject the authoritativeness of the Vedas, rely in fact on the shabda of their own scriptures.