Siddham Tattoo
by Al
Some more possibilities for tattoo designs…I'm looking at Tantric Buddhist
influences at the moment with a focus on scripts and mantras.
This is Siddham script used in Japanese tantric Buddhism (Mikkyo) for the
display of Sanskrit characters in mantras, mandalas, inscriptions and the like.
The ones below are, in descending order, the letters used for Air, Wind,
Fire, Water, and Earth. "Air" in this instance, unless I'm confused, is "Space"
or "Void" in other Asian schemes.
KYA-KA-RA-BA-A
or perhaps, with the elemental colors:
Comments
What you have on your page is the Japanese pronunciation the Sanskrit mantra (backwards) of Mahāvairocana. Kūkai associates each of the five letters with one of the five material elements in his Sokushin jōbutsu gi – Mahāvairocana himself stands for consciousness, the sixth element in Buddhist thought. The syllables as they occur in the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra are
a vi ra hūṃ kha. They represent in esoteric Buddhist associations earth, water, fire, wind, and space.
The Buddhist scheme doesn’t have air as an element. Wind represents movement, just as earth represent solidity. So yes “space” in your scheme is the space which objects take up, sometimes used as a metaphor for śunyata or emptiness.
I’ve just noticed that this is a very old post, but I suppose it doesn’t matter if it still pops up on Google.