OṂ, a contraction of the sounds /a/, /u/, and /m/, is considered in the Hindu tradition to be the most sacred of Sanskrit syllables. In a religious setting that reveres the intrinsic power of sound as a direct manifestation of the divine, a setting in which the hierarchy of scripture is headed by the śruti ("heard") texts and in which oral tradition has preserved the religious language unchanged over millennia, oṃ is the articulated syllable par excellence, the eternally creative divine word. Indeed, the Sanskrit word denoting "syllable" (akṣara, literally "the imperishable") commonly serves as an epithet for oṃ. Its other epithets include ekakṣara ("the one syllable" but also "the sole imperishable thing") and pranava (from praṇu, "to utter a droning"); the latter term refers to the practice of initiating any sacred recitation with a nasalized syllable. The syllable oṃ itself...