🙏Mantra

About Hindu Mantras

A mantra is a formula whose efficacy the Hindu tradition locates in its sound as much as in its sense, and the category covers three quite different kinds of thing. Vedic mantras are verses lifted from the samhitas — the Gayatri and the Mahamrityunjaya among them — each carrying a named seer, a metre and a deity, and each recited with a pitch accent that later Sanskrit does not use. Beej or seed mantras are single syllables such as hrim, shrim and klim, which have no dictionary meaning whatsoever and are not intended to be understood. Nama mantras are the most transparent: a divine name in the dative with a salutation attached, as in om namah shivaya. Only the first kind is meant to be parsed as a sentence. Around all three sits japa — counted repetition, usually 108 on a mala, in one of three modes from audible to entirely mental. This page sets out what each kind is, why the tradition is so exercised about pronunciation, and how to think about the question of whether you need a teacher.