Dear Valerie,
I don’t have anything to say at the moment about the yantra, but I expect the son either meant to write tat tvam asi ’you are that' but wrote instead tat tvam āsa ‘you were that’, or he deliberately wrote tat tvam āsa. In this familiar saying tat tvam asi (Chāndogya Upaniṣat 6.8.7), tat means sat or brahman.
Elliot M. Stern
552 South 48th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19143-2029
267-240-8418
Dear indology list
Could you please advise Dr Jackie Hirst about the tattoo design shown in the attached picture?
She says: ‘It is a sketch, now in the possession of a father, that was found in the effects of his son, a young man who died tragically recently, and the family are keen to know what it means. He was interested in the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā amongst other things and frequently sketched lotuses. Would anyone be able to shed more light on this as a particular (basic indication of a) yantra and/or on the particular (mainly nāgarī) characters which do not seem to make sense as a word/words - could they be (an attempt to indicate) specific individual seed mantras? or? If anyone has any further ideas, and how to convey them sensitively to the family, please reply to the list and/or to Jackie direct (jacqueline.hirst@manchester.ac.uk - Honorary Research Fellow South Asian Studies). With many thanks.'
Below is a Dropbox link to the design in question. It’s shared with the permission of the family.
_______________________________________________
INDOLOGY mailing list
INDOLOGY@list.indology.infohttps://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
