ஓமென்னும் ஓரெழுத்தே எவைக்கும் மூலம்
ஓமுக்குள் மூவெழுத்தாம் ஊமையொன்றாம்
ஆமென்னும் அகரமடா பரமாஹத்தை
அகண்டபரி பூரணமாம் ஆட்சியாகும்
ஊமென்னு முகரமடா உருவமாகும்
உயிர்ப்பாகி எட்டிரண்டா யோடும் சாடும்
மாமென்னும் மகரத்தின் மெய்தான்நீண்ட
மாயாத மாயையென வளருங் கண்டாய்
Omennum ōrezhuthē evaikkum mūlam
Omukkuḷ mūvezhuthām ūmaiyoṉṟām
Āmennum akaramadā paramāhattai
Akaṇḍapari pūraṇamām āṭciyākum
Ūmennu mukaramadā uruvamākum
Uyirppāki eṭṭiraṇḍā yōḍum sāḍum
Māmennum makarattiṉ meytānnīṇḍa
Māyāta māyaiyeṉa vaḷaruṅ kaṇḍāy.
The single letter called “Om” is the root of all.
Within Om there are three letters, and one “mute” (silent) one.
The “A” called akaram is the Supreme Self;
it is the rule/sovereignty that is undivided and perfectly complete.
The “U” called ukaram becomes form;
becoming the life-breath, it runs and strikes as “eight and two”.
The “M”—the consonantal core of makaram—prolongs itself;
see how a “māyā that does not perish / a māyā that is not māyā” grows.
“Om” is declared the primal seed of everything. Yet within it, A–U–M are present, along with a fourth factor that is “mute”—the silent remainder beyond sound.
A (akāra) is identified with the Paramātman: indivisible, all-filling completeness, the very principle of sovereignty (the real ‘reign’).
U (ukāra) is said to become “form” by turning into breath-force; that breath moves through the body’s functional currents—cryptically marked as “eight and two”—and it can ‘run’ and also ‘strike/pierce’ (i.e., act powerfully).
M (makāra), when extended as the lingering nasal resonance, points toward subtler interiorization; but the verse simultaneously warns/notes that an enduring paradoxical “māyā” can proliferate there as well—illusion that seems not to end, or a ‘māyā’ that claims to be beyond māyā.
This verse reads like a Siddhar-style mapping of the pranava (Om) onto metaphysics and yogic physiology.
1) Om as the root: The text affirms pranava as the archetypal seed (bīja) from which names, forms, and experience arise. This is a common Siddha and Vedāntic move: sound as the subtle ground of manifestation.
2) “Three letters and one mute”: A–U–M are the audible mātrās (measures). The “mute one” (ūmai) suggests what remains when articulation ceases: silence, the fourth (turīya), the amātrā (measureless), or the interior nāda beyond phoneme. Siddhar diction often calls this remainder “speechless” not because it is absent, but because it cannot be grasped by ordinary speech.
3) A as Paramātman and अखण्ड–பரிபூரணம் (undivided completeness): “A” is aligned with the supreme Self and described as whole, unbroken plenitude. “Āṭci” (rule/sovereignty) implies that true mastery is not political power but ontological: the Self as the ground that ‘reigns’ without division.
4) U as form and as prāṇa: “U” becomes rūpa (form) by functioning as breath-life. In Siddhar yoga, prāṇa is the bridge between subtle sound (nāda) and gross embodiment; breath is where metaphysical principle becomes physiological operation.
5) “Eight and two” moving and striking: The phrase “ettu irandu” (eight and two) is deliberately compact. It may point to a yogic set of ten (8+2=10): ten vāyus (vital airs), ten nāḍi-functions, ten senses (indriyas), or ten bodily “gates”/openings (daśa-dvāra) through which prāṇa moves. “Running and striking” suggests both circulation and penetration—breath as motion, and breath as a force that can pierce knots/blocks when disciplined (as in prāṇāyāma, kuṇḍalinī processes).
6) M prolonged and the paradox of māyā: Makāra is the closing, inward-turning resonance; its prolongation naturally leads toward absorption and cessation of gross articulation. Yet the verse refuses an easy conclusion: even there, “māyā” can ‘grow’—either because subtle experiences can themselves become new attachments, or because the practitioner mistakes refined states (nāda, inner sound, trance, siddhi-phenomena) for final realization. The striking phrase “māyāda māyai” can also be read as a riddle: an illusion that does not vanish, or a ‘māyā’ that is ‘not māyā’—hinting that what appears as māyā may be the play of the One, depending on realization.
Overall, the verse compresses a whole soteriology: pranava → (A) nondual completeness → (U) breath-form dynamics → (M) inward resonance → (silence) the unspeakable—while cautioning that even subtlety can become a theatre of māyā unless discernment matures.