16/02/2021
Om or Aum (About this soundlisten (help·info), IAST: Oṃ, ॐ , ओ३म्) is a sacred sound and a spiritual symbol in Indian religions. It signifies the essence of the ultimate reality, consciousness or Atman.[1][2][3] More broadly, it is a syllable that is chanted either independently or before a spiritual recitation in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.[4][5] The meaning and connotations of Om vary between the diverse schools within and across the various traditions. It is also part of the iconography found in ancient and medieval era manuscripts, temples, monasteries and spiritual retreats in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.[6][7]
The Om symbol in the Devanagari script.
This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.
In Hinduism, Om is one of the most important spiritual symbols.[8][9] It refers to Atman (soul, self within) and Brahman (ultimate reality, entirety of the universe, truth, divine, supreme spirit, cosmic principles, knowledge).[10][11][12] The syllable is often found at the beginning and the end of chapters in the Vedas, the Upanishads, and other Hindu texts.[12] It is a sacred spiritual incantation made before and during the recitation of spiritual texts, during puja and private prayers, in ceremonies of rites of passage (sanskara) such as weddings, and sometimes during meditative and spiritual activities such as Yoga.[13][14]
The syllable Om is also referred to as onkara (ओङ्कार, oṅkāra), omkara (ओंकार, oṃkāra) and pranav/pranava (प्रणव, praṇava).[15][16]
Origin and meaning Edit
The syllable Om (Devanagari: ॐ, Kannada: ಓಂ, Tamil: ௐ, Malayalam: ഓം, Telugu: ఓం, Bengali: ওঁ, Odia: ଓଁ or ଓଁ, Tibetan: ༀ) is referred to as praṇava.[17][18] Other used terms are akṣara (literally, letter of the alphabet, imperishable, immutable) or ekākṣara (one letter of the alphabet) and omkāra (meaning literally "Om syllable", and connoting: a beginning and female divine energy).[19][20][21][22]Udgitha, a word found in Sama Veda and bhasya (commentaries) based on it, is also used as a name of the syllable.[23] As o is the guṇa vowel grade of u, the word om can be considered to consist of three phonemes: "a-u-m",[24][25][26][27] though it is often described as trisyllabic despite this being either archaic or the result of translation, three phonemes correspond to trimurti also.
The syllable Om is first mentioned in the Upanishads, the mystical texts associated with the Vedanta philosophy. It has variously been associated with concepts of "cosmic sound" or "mystical syllable" or "affirmation to something divine", or as symbolism for abstract spiritual concepts in the Upanishads.[12] In the Aranyaka and the Brahmana layers of Vedic texts, the syllable is so widespread and linked to knowledge, that it stands for the "whole of Veda".[12] The etymological foundations of Om are repeatedly discussed in the oldest layers of the Vedantic texts (the early Upanishads).[28][29] The Aitareya Brahmana of Rig Veda, in section 5.32, for example suggests that the three phonetic components of Oṃ (a + u + ṃ) correspond to the three stages of cosmic creation, and when it is read or said, it celebrates the creative powers of the universe.[12][30] The Brahmana layer of Vedic texts equate Om with Bhur-bhuvah-Svah, the latter symbolizing "the whole Veda". They offer various shades of meaning to Om, such as it being "the universe beyond the sun", or that which is "mysterious and inexhaustible", or "the infinite language, the infinite knowledge", or "essence of breath, life, everything that exists", or that "with which one is liberated".[12] The Sama Veda, the poetical Veda, orthographically maps Om to the audible, the musical truths in its numerous variations (Oum, Aum, Ovā Ovā Ovā Um, etc.) and then attempts to extract musical meters from it.[12]
The syllable Om evolves to mean many abstract ideas in the earliest Upanishads. Max Müller and other scholars state that these philosophical texts recommend Om as a "tool for meditation", explain various meanings that the syllable may be in the mind of one meditating, ranging from "artificial and senseless" to "highest concepts such as the cause of the Universe, essence of life, Brahman, Atman, and Self-knowledge".[31][32]
Written representation Edit
South Asia Edit
Phonologically, the syllable ओम् represents /aum/, which is regularly monophthongised to [õː] in Sanskrit phonology. When occurring within spoken Sanskrit, the syllable is subject to the normal rules of sandhi in Sanskrit grammar, however with the additional peculiarity that after preceding a or ā, the au of aum does not form vriddhi (au) but guna (o) per Pāṇini 6.1.95 (i.e. 'om').
It is sometimes also written ओ३म् (ō̄m [oːːm]), notably by Arya Samaj, where ३ (i.e., the digit "3") is pluta ("three times as long"), indicating a length of three morae (that is, the time it takes to say three syllables) — an overlong nasalised close-mid back rounded vowel.
The Om symbol is a ligature in Devanagari, combining ओ (au) and chandrabindu (ँ, ṃ). In Unicode, the symbol is encoded at U+0950 ॐ DEVANAGARI OM and at U+1F549 🕉 OM SYMBOL ("generic symbol independent of Devanagari font").
The Om or Aum symbol is found on ancient coins, in regional scripts. In Sri Lanka, Anuradhapura era coins (dated from the 1st to 4th centuries) are embossed with Aum along with other symbols.[33]Nagari or Devanagari representations are found epigraphically on medieval sculpture, such as the dancing Shiva (ca. 10th to 12th century); Joseph Campbell (1949) even argued that the dance posture itself can be taken to represent Om as a symbol of the entirety of "consciousness, universe" and "the message that God is within a person and without".[34]
East and Southeast Asia Edit
The Om symbol, with epigraphical variations, is also found in many Southeast Asian countries.
In Cambodia, the symbol is known as Om, Aom, or Unalaom. In Khmer literature, the symbol is called Komutr (Khmer: គោមូត្រ). The Khmer adopted the symbol since the 1st century during the Kingdom of Funan as seen on artifacts from Angkor Borei, once the capital of Funan. The symbol is seen on numerous Khmer statues from Chenla to Khmer Empire periods and still in used until the present day. This Khmer version of Om symbol is popularly used in Khmer sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant and Khmer Buddhist texts and literatures.[35][36]The Cambodian official seal has similarly incorporated the Aum symbol.[37]
It is also called Unalom or Aum in Thailand and has been a part of various flags and official emblems such as in the Thong Chom Klao of King Rama IV (r. 1851–1868).[38]
In traditional Chinese characters, it is written as 唵 (pinyin – ǎn), and as 嗡 (pinyin – wēng) in simplified Chinese characters.[citation needed]
There have been proposals that the Om syllable may already have had written representations in Brahmi script, dating to before the Common Era. A proposal by Deb (1848) held that the sw****ka is "a monogrammatic representation of the syllable Om, wherein two Brahmi /o/ characters (U+11011 𑀑 BRAHMI LETTER O) were superposed crosswise and the 'm' was represented by dot".[39] A commentary in Nature considers this theory questionable and unproven.[40] Roy (2011) proposed that Om was represented using the Brahmi symbols for "A", "U" and "M" (𑀅𑀉𑀫), and that this may have influenced the unusual epigraphical features of the symbol ॐ for Om.[41][42]
