Ram

Ram is the seed syllable (bija mantra) of manipura, the navel chakra, in the chakra system of tantric and hatha yoga. Within this scheme each centre carries an element, a lotus of a given number of petals, and a seed sound for meditation; manipura, the city of jewels, is assigned to the element fire and to a ten-petalled lotus, and Ram is the sound by which the meditator focuses upon and is held to kindle it. Like the other seed syllables it is valued as pure sound rather than as a word with a lexical meaning, the sonic form of the centre and of the fiery energy the tradition associates with it, and it is used in the inward practice of ascending the subtle body. The correspondence of Ram to the fire of the navel belongs to the medieval tantric system carried into the later hatha-yoga texts and is consistent across the versions of the scheme in wide use.

Ram is identified in the same tantric physiological scheme set out in the Shatchakra Nirupana and transmitted to English-language readers through Sir John Woodroffe's The Serpent Power (1919) as the bija, or seed syllable, of the Manipura chakra, the navel or solar-plexus centre, traditionally visualised as a ten-petalled lotus and associated with the fire element and with personal will, confidence and digestive vitality. As with the seed syllables of the other centres in this scheme, Ram's recitation is understood within kundalini and tantric meditation practice as a technique for directing attention to a specific centre of subtle physiology rather than as a mantra addressed to a named deity in the manner of the personal invocations recorded elsewhere on this site.

Ram is assigned to manipura, the navel center ruled by fire, in the same sixteenth century compilation behind the other chakra seed syllables in this atlas, Purnananda Yati's 1577 Shat chakra nirupana, and its ten petalled lotus and fire association are Purnananda's systematization of a subtle body idea attested more loosely in earlier Tantric sources rather than a scheme handed down unchanged from the Vedic period.

One detail is worth flagging for a mantra whose Roman transliteration is ram, ordinary and unremarkable in Sanskrit, the letter combination reads in English as the common personal name Rama, an entirely different word referring to the avatar of Vishnu and the hero of the Ramayana. The two are unrelated: the bija ram carries a short vowel and is a seed syllable with no independent lexical meaning of its own, while Rama the deity's name carries a long final vowel in correct transliteration, a distinction easily lost once diacritical marks are dropped, as they routinely are in devotional printing and in nearly all casual romanization. Confusing the two has real consequences in how the mantra is taught: some popular sources gloss ram devotionally as connected to Rama, treating the seed syllable as if it secretly named the god, which is not how Tantric bija theory works and which the Sanskrit commentarial tradition on the Shat chakra nirupana does not support, since the six chakra seeds are explained there as elemental sounds correlated to cosmic principles, not as abbreviations of deity names.