Om (or Aum; ; , ISO 15919: ) is a polysemous symbol representing a sacred sound, seed syllable, mantra, and invocation in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism. Its written form is the most important symbol in Hinduism. It is the essence of the supreme Absolute, consciousness,James Lochtefeld (2002), "Om", The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 2: N-Z, Rosen Publishing. , page 482"Om". Merriam-Webster (2013), Pronounced: \ˈōm\ Ātman, Brahman, or the cosmic world.David Leeming (2005), The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, Oxford University Press, , page 54Hajime Nakamura, A History of Early Vedānta Philosophy, Part 2, Motilal Banarsidass, , page 318Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus (2011), Sound and Communication: An Aesthetic Cultural History of Sanskrit Hinduism, De Gruyter, , pages 435–456 In Indian religions, Om serves as a sonic representation of the divine, a standard of Vedic authority and a central aspect of soteriological doctrines and practices. It is the basic tool for meditation in the yogic path to liberation. The syllable is often found at the beginning and the end of chapters in the Vedas, the Upanishads, and other Hindu texts. It is described as the goal of all the Vedas.
Om emerged in the Vedic corpus and is considered an encapsulated form of Samavedic chants or songs. 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 (samskara) such as weddings, and during meditative and spiritual activities such as Pranava yoga.David White (2011), Yoga in Practice, Princeton University Press, , pp. 104–111Alexander Studholme (2012), The Origins of Om Manipadme Hum: A Study of the Karandavyuha Sutra, State University of New York Press, , pages 1–4 It is part of the iconography found in ancient and medieval era manuscripts, temples, monasteries, and spiritual retreats in Indian religions.T. A. Gopinatha Rao (1993), Elements of Hindu Iconography, Volume 2, Motilal Banarsidass, , p. 248Sehdev Kumar (2001), A Thousand Petalled Lotus: Jain Temples of Rajasthan, , p. 5 As a syllable, it is often chanted either independently or before a spiritual recitation and during meditation in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.Jan Gonda (1963), The Indian Mantra, Oriens, Vol. 16, pp. 244–297Julius Lipner (2010), Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, Routledge, , pp. 66–67
The syllable Om is also referred to as Onkara (Omkara) and Pranava among many other names."OM". Sanskrit English Dictionary, University of Köln, Germany
Common names and synonyms The syllable Om is referred to by many names, including: (); literally, "fore-sound", referring to Om as the primeval sound.James Lochtefeld (2002), Pranava, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 2: N-Z, Rosen Publishing. , page 522Paul Deussen, Sixty Upanishads of the Veda, Volume 1, Motilal Banarsidass, , pages 74-75, 347, 364, 667 () or (); literally, "Om-maker", denoting the first source of the sound Om and connoting the act of creation.Diana Eck (2013), India: A Sacred Geography, Random House, , page 245R Mehta (2007), The Call of the Upanishads, Motilal Barnarsidass, , page 67Omkara, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, University of Koeln, GermanyCK Chapple, W Sargeant (2009), The Bhagavad Gita, Twenty-fifth–Anniversary Edition, State University of New York Press, , page 435 (); literally, "one Om-maker", and an epithet of God in Sikhism. (see below). (); meaning "song, chant", a word found in Samaveda and bhasya (commentaries) based on it. It is also used as a name of the syllable Om in Chandogya Upanishad.Max Muller, Chandogya Upanishad, The Upanishads, Part I, Oxford University Press, page 12 with footnote 1 (); literally, "imperishable, immutable", and also "letter of the alphabet" or "syllable". ; literally, "one letter of the alphabet", referring to its representation as a single ligature. (see below)
Origin and spiritual significance The etymological origins of ōm (aum) have long been discussed and disputed, with even the Upanishads having proposed multiple Sanskrit etymologies for aum, including: from "ām" (; "yes"), from "ávam" (; "that, thus, yes"), and from the Sanskrit roots "āv-" (; "to urge") or "āp-" (; "to attain"). In 1889, Maurice Bloomfield proposed an origin from a Proto-Indo-European introductory particle "*au" with a function similar to the Sanskrit particle "atha" (). However, contemporary Indologist Asko Parpola proposes a borrowing from Dravidian "*ām" meaning "'it is so', 'let it be so', 'yes'", a contraction of "*ākum", cognate with modern Tamil "ām" () meaning "yes". In the Jaffna Tamil dialect spoken in Sri Lanka, aum is the word for yes.
Om emerged in the Vedic corpus and is considered an encapsulated form of Samavedic chants or songs. The Samaveda, 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. The Aitareya Brahmana of Rig Veda, in section 5.32, suggests that the three phonetic components of Om (a + u + m) correspond to the three stages of cosmic creation, and when it is read or said, it celebrates the creative powers of the universe.Aitareya Brahmana 5.32, Rig Veda, pages 139-140 (Sanskrit); for English translation: See However, regardless of its original meaning, the syllable Om evolves to mean many abstract ideas even in the earliest Upanishads. Max Müller and other scholars state that these philosophical texts recommend Om as a basic tool for meditation and explain the various meanings that the syllable may hold in the mind of one meditating, ranging from "artificial and senseless" to the "highest concepts such as the cause of the Universe, essence of life, Brahman, Atman, and Self-knowledge".Max Muller, Chandogya Upanishad, Oxford University Press, pages 1-21Paul Deussen, Sixty Upanishads of the Veda, Volume 1, Motilal Banarsidass, , pages 67-85, 227, 284, 308, 318, 361-366, 468, 600-601, 667, 772
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". The Brahmana layer of Vedic texts equates Om with bhur-bhuvah-svah, which symbolizes "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". The symbolic foundations of Om are repeatedly discussed in the oldest layers of the early Upanishads.Paul Deussen, Sixty Upanishads of the Veda, Volume 1, Motilal Banarsidass, , page 207John Grimes (1995), Ganapati: The Song of Self, State University of New York Press, , pages 78-80 and 201 footnote 34 In the Upanishads, it has been associated with various concepts, such as "cosmic sound", "mystical syllable", "affirmation to something divine", or as symbolism for abstract spiritual concepts. However, in the eight anuvaka of the Taittiriya Upanishad, which consensus research indicates was formulated around the same time or preceding Aitareya Brahmana, the sound Aum is attributed to reflecting the inner part of the word Brahman. Put another way, it is the Brahman, in the form of a word.
Pronunciation When occurring within spoken Classical Sanskrit, the syllable is subject to the normal rules of sandhi in Sanskrit grammar, with the additional peculiarity that the initial o of "Om" is the guṇa vowel grade of u, not the vṛddhi grade, and is therefore pronounced as a monophthong with a long vowel (), i.e. ōm not aum. Furthermore, the final m is often assimilated into the preceding vowel as nasalisation (). As a result, Om is regularly pronounced in the context of Sanskrit.
However, this o reflects the older Vedic Sanskrit diphthong au, which at that stage in the language's history had not yet monophthongised to o. This being so, the syllable Om is often archaically considered as consisting of three phonemes: "a-u-m".Mehta, Kiran K. (2008). Milk, Honey and Grapes, p. 14. Puja Publications, Atlanta. .Misra, Nityanand (2018). The Om Mala, unpaginated. Bloomsbury Publishing. .Vālmīki; trans. Mitra, Vihārilāla (1891). The Yoga-vásishtha-mahárámáyana of Válmiki, Volume 1, p. 61. Bonnerjee and Company. . Accordingly, some denominations maintain the archaic diphthong au viewing it to be more authentic and closer to the language of the Vedas.
In the context of the Vedas, particularly the Vedic Brahmanas, the vowel is often pluta ("three times as long"), indicating a length of three morae (), that is, the time it takes to say three light syllables. Additionally, a diphthong becomes with the prolongation of its first vowel. When e and o undergo they typically revert to the original diphthongs with the initial a prolonged, realised as an overlong open back unrounded vowel (ā̄um or a3um ). This extended duration is emphasised by denominations who regard it as more authentically Vedic, such as Arya Samaj.
However, Om is also attested in the Upanishads without pluta, and many languages related to or influenced by Classical Sanskrit, such as Hindustani, share its pronunciation of Om ( or ).
Written representations
Indian Subcontinent
Nagari or Devanagari representations are found epigraphically on sculpture dating from Medieval India and on ancient coins in regional scripts throughout South Asia. Om is represented in Devanagari as , composed of four elements: the vowel letter (), the vowel diacritic (), the consonant letter (), and the virama stroke which indicates the absence of an implied final vowel. Historically, the combination represented a diphthong, often transcribed as , but it now represents a long vowel, . (See above.) The syllable is sometimes written , where (i.e., the digit "3") explicitly indicates pluta ('three times as long') which is otherwise only implied. For this same reason Om may also be written in languages such as Hindi, with the () being used to indicate prolonging the vowel sound. (However, this differs from the usage of the in Sanskrit, where it would instead indicate the prodelision of the initial vowel.) Om may also be written , with an reflecting the pronunciation of in languages such as Sanskrit and Hindi. In languages such as Urdu and Sindhi Om may be written in Arabic script, although speakers of these languages may also use Devanagari representations.
The commonly seen representation of the syllable Om, , is a cursive ligature in Devanagari, combining () with () and the chandrabindu (ँ,). In Unicode, the symbol is encoded at and at as a "generic symbol independent of Devanagari font".https://unicodeplus.com/U+095 0 Unicode Character "ॐ" (U+0950)
In some South Asian writing systems, the Om symbol has been simplified further. In Bengali and Assamese Om is written simply as without an additional curl. In languages such as Bengali differences in pronunciation compared to Sanskrit have made the addition of a curl for redundant. Although the spelling is simpler, the pronunciation remains . Similarly, in Odia Om is written as ''' without an additional diacritic.
In Tamil, Om is written as , a ligature of (ō) and (m), while in Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam, Om is written simply as the letter for ō followed by (, , and , respectively).