"Mantra" means a sacred utterance, numinous sound, or a syllable, word, phonemes, or group of words believed by some to have psychological and spiritual power. Mantra may or may not be syntactic or have literal meaning; the spiritual value of mantra comes when it is audible, visible, or present in thought.

1. What is Mantra ?.
"Mantra" means a sacred utterance, numinous sound, or a syllable, word, phonemes, or group of
words believed by some to have psychological and spiritual power. Mantra may or may not be
syntactic or have literal meaning; the spiritual value of mantra comes when it is audible, visible, or
present in thought.
Earliest mantras were composed in Vedic times by Hindus in India, and those are at least 3000
years old. Mantras are now found in various schools
of Hinduism,Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Similar hymns, chants, compositions and concepts are
found in Zoroastrianism.
Mantras are structured formulae of thoughts, claims Silburn. Farquhar concludes that mantras are a
religious thought, prayer, sacred utterance, but also believed to be a spell or weapon of supernatural
power. Zimmer defines mantra as a verbal instrument to produce something in one’s mind. Bharati
defines mantra, in the context of tantric school of Hinduism, to be a combination of mixed genuine
and quasi morphemes arranged in conventional patterns, based on codified esoteric traditions,
passed on from a guru to a disciple through prescribed initiation.
Jan Gonda, a widely cited scholar on Indian mantras, defines mantra as general name for the
verses, formulas or sequence of words in prose which contain praise, are believed to have religious,
magical or spiritual efficiency, which are meditated upon, recited, muttered or sung in a ritual, and
which are collected in the methodically arranged ancient texts of Hinduism. There is no universally
applicable uniform definition of mantra because mantras are used in different religions, and within
each religion in different schools of philosophy. In some schools of Hinduism for example, suggests
Gonda, mantra is sakti to the devotee in the form of formulated and expressed thought. Staal
clarifies that mantras are not rituals, they are what is recited or chanted during a ritual.
There has been a long, scholarly disagreement on the meaning of mantras and whether they are
really instruments of mind as implied by the etymological origin of the word mantra. One school
suggests mantras are mostly meaningless sound constructs, the other school suggests mantras are
mostly meaningful linguistic instruments of mind.Both schools agree that mantras have melody, a
well designed mathematical precision in their construction, and their influence on the reciter and
listener is similar to one observed on people around the world listening to their beloved music that is
devoid of words.
Staal presents a non-linguistic view of mantras. He suggests that verse mantras are metered and
harmonized to mathematical precision which resonate, but a lot of them are hodge podge
meaningless constructs that is found in folk music around the world. Staal cautions that there are
many mantras that can be translated and do have spiritual meaning and philosophical themes
central to Hinduism, but that does not mean all mantras have literal meaning. He further notes that
even when mantras do not have literal meaning, they do set a tone and ambience in the ritual they

2. are recited, and thus have a straightforward and uncontroversial ritual meaning.mantras are neither
unique to Hinduism, nor to other Indian religions such as Buddhism; similar creative constructs
developed in Asian and Western traditions as well.
Keywords :- mantra, Hinduism,hindu mantras.