Page 87 Home | Index | Previous | Next

Word involves speech. It means Pada, in Sanskrit. Every object in the world is called in Sanskrit, a "Pada-artha", "word-meaning". The hill is the heap of earth indicated by the word "hill". Similarly, the word Brahmin and Sudra inform us that there were persons answering to those words. The questions "Who is a Brahmin? Who is not a Brahmin?" are irrelevant now. What is being made known is only the conception of 'word' and 'meaning'. The entire Cosmos is subsumed under "word" and "meaning"; it is sheer Name and Form (the Name being the Word, and the Form, the Meaning).

The Sruthis (Vedas) declare so. "Vaachaarambhanam Vikaaro Naamadheyam". "Name and Form are one single indivisible unit" just as Siva and Parvathi; Active and Inert, Object and Image, the Moon and Moonlight. Yet, for dealing with the world, the Word is all-important. The word arises from thought; thought is shaped by experience; experience depends on desire and desire springs from Ignorance, Ajnana, Maya, Avidya or Prakriti, which too is fundamentally based on the Divine.

Since it is based on the Divine Lord who is the Splendour of Wisdom, the repository of Innate Glory, the darkness of Maya, Ignorance, Avidya or Prakriti should not overpower us. Where light is present, darkness has no place. The Lord declared, "I shall become Many" and that Will resulted in the Cosmos and is directing It for ever. Therefore, Name and Form are the results of that Will, and not of any human will. It will be an absurd claim if man pretends that He originated them. The All-powerful Lord alone has willed so. That is the reason why He is designated as the Supreme. To the question, "Does God exist?" the existence of the word God is the indisputable proof.

The world consists of multifarious objects and each has a name. No one has discovered how or why these names got attached to these objects. Nor is it possible to explain the how and why. Even if an attempt is made, the result can be only guess and not the truth. So it is best to conclude that it is divinely descended. Words used between birth and death, or current before birth or after death, words indicating the mother and the children, or words like Righteousness (Dharma), Unrighteousness (Adharma), Heaven (Swarga) and Hell (Naraka) are certainly not human artifices but divine dispensations. The Vedas are the authority for this declaration.

Next