Ya, Vam, Ram, Lam and the Bija of the Elements

Several of the semivowels appear in the Tantric traditions as bija, the seed syllables formed by adding a nasal to a single consonant, and in the widely circulated scheme that associates the lower chakras with the five gross elements the seeds built on ya, ra, la and va are assigned to air, fire, earth and water respectively, with a seed built on ha assigned to space. That scheme is genuinely attested and is described in the scholarly literature on Tantric practice, Andre Padoux's study among it.

Two things need saying about it plainly. The first is that the correspondence belongs to particular traditions and to particular texts within them, and other Tantric arrangements assign the letters differently; this atlas records it as one tradition's scheme rather than as a fact about the letters. The second is that this material belongs to living initiatory practice. Describing what a tradition holds is proper to a reference work; setting out how to use a seed syllable is not, and this atlas does not do it. What is recorded here is that the letter is used as the base of a seed syllable in these traditions, that the association exists, and where the scholarship on it can be found. The letter itself is the palatal semivowel, twenty-sixth in the varnamala, corresponding to the vowel i.