"Akshara - Word - Language" - Its nature, science and few basics

Disclaimer:
It is an articulation of what i have understood and sharing it as a blog. Any
suggestions / comments welcome.




Everything in this world vibrates. Whatever vibrates produces a sound.
Every vibration has sound, meaning, form, colour and light. While all of us may
agree on the sound being part of vibration some of us would not agree that it
always has a meaning, colour and light. 




Sounds are of 2 types:




1. That which is part of an human language. Here word is constructed from
letters and each word has its meaning and the language being compiled using the
grammar.




2. Sounds that are not part of human language and hence does not make sense
to us. Hence we may perceive that it does not have any meaning. Here too there
are sounds which have meaning like Beeja Aksharas or animal sounds which
certainly has meaning. But lets ignore the second type in this blog and focus
on the first.




In the first type the aggregation of vibration as sound can be represented
with a Akshara (Alphabet / letter) which also has a meaning. If you need more
details you can refer to this site which http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/en/learning-sanskrit-first-steps-1-1/406 offers
more details on Sanskrit alphabets.




So, this alphabet is called Akshara - which is formed by the
merging of sound, meaning, form, color and light. This is the origin
or Moolam in Tamil. This akshara cannot be broken down further which means
sound and its attribute (meaning), light and its attributes (form, color) all
coexist and cannot exist independently. In tamil and Sanskrit this
combination of light and sound is called Bindu and Nadham.




Let’s look at the attributes of light which is the form of the letter.
There are 4 fundamental shapes that gives rise to form. Dot, Line,
Curve (Cresent) and circle also known as Bindu, kodu, pirai,
vattam in Tamil. All forms in this universe are based on the
combination of the above 4 fundamental shapes. 




Everything starts with bindu (dot), at a very small
time-distance dimension everything is a straight line (Kodu), at a medium
spacio-temporal dimension everything is a pirai or curve / cresent, because
everything is rotating. At a very large time-distance dimensio everything is a
circle in 2 dimension and a helical spiral leading to a sphere in 3D.
Alternatively what can be said is a bindu (dot) over Spacio temporal journey
becomes a line, cresent, a circle / sphere and ends as a dot. "What
starts with a bindu ends in a bindu after this journey".




Now, lets look at the fundamentally attributes of
an akshara. Each letter apart from having meaning, sound, light, form, color as
5 attributes has further attributes as:




1. State of its existence:  As either matter, energy (life-
vowels), Consonants - Energy+Matter, a living word. Only when they combine
a letter itself is formed. Body + life is a living organism and hence an
Akshara. 

2. Gender: Each Akshara can also be classified as a male, or
female or neuter gender. These articles below can explain this paragraph
better.

http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.in/2012/01/time-space-series-part-2-sound-merges.html

http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.in/2012/01/time-space-series-part-3-vaak-artha.html

http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.in/2012/01/time-space-series-part-5-energy-matter.html




So an akshara has the following 7 attributes -
sound, meaning, form, color, light, gender, state of existence. When Aksharas combine with each other and
with time a word is produced. Each Akshara has a small time duration called
Matra. When Aksharas combine then so many matras get added and a word is
formed.




Or alternatively time (Kaalam) creates word from a
combination of aksharas. When the combination of sound, light, meaning, form
and color is aligned with the vibration then it is called as word. When
everything is aligned in the above fashion the word has a natural rhythm. This
is called Seelam in Tamil.




Combination of words form a language. A language so
created from the moolam (primordial vibration) by the kaalam (time) with seelam
(natural rhythm aligned with primordial vibration) that retains a natural
meaning for that vibration is a classical language. This means 7 attributes of each alphabet is
aligned well that the word's attributes are in line with the sum of the
attributes of the letter. The quick measure for this are:




1. Can you break a word to its roots, ie.
individual letters?

2. Does each letter carry a meaning?

3. More importantly when these letters are combined
is the individual meanings of the letter retained in the word?

4. Does each letter sound uniquely?

5. Does that letter retain that sound in a word?
Alternatively when you add the sounds of the letter can you pronounce the word?




These words also take a gender in a classical
language. So a word has 2 more attributes than the alphabet. They are time
(kaalam) and ability to combine / fusion (sandhi) as per the grammar. Here
grammar is an expression of seelam (natural rhythm).




When you speak in classical languages like Sanskrit
and Tamil, there is no difference between how the word is pronounced and how
the letters in that combination is pronounced. There are no silent words and
the pronunciation will not change with different words.




For Ex. In Psychology (P) is silent. This can be
written as Sykhology, cykhology and everything can be right.




So an Akshara has 7 attributes as mentioned above
and words have 2 more attributes and these attributes fundamentally define a
language. I am stopping this article now and based on queries raised for this
blog, i shall write the next article on this topic.




Happy reading!