The Panchakshara: Where Everything Begins
Na-ma-shi-va-ya. Five syllables, and the oldest continuous chant in the Shaiva tradition. The Panchakshara mantra appears in the eighth anuvaka of the Sri Rudram, itself part of the Krishna Yajurveda, and its five syllables are mapped in classical commentary onto the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. This is not ornament. The mapping is the theology, Shiva as the substratum of everything that exists, including the body repeating his name.
