Why um and not aum

[Guest guest]

One of the decrees of our Acharyas based on shastraic edicts is that

women must not vocalise the pranava. Instead they should say um. The

elucidation of the pranava which runs into days of discouses begins

with splitting it into a,u, and m. A stands for Vishnu m for the

individual soul, jeevathma and the middle u for acharyan and/or

Lakshmi. When women say um they are deprived of the benefits of

enunciating the very essential a in the pranava. Why this inequity?

As far as individual souls are concerned the sex doesn't matter. The

jeevatma is sexless. It is the prarabdha that determines what type of

body the soul is going to inhabit, but by itself it is neither male

nor female. That being so why cant the soul in the female shell say

the pranava? In one interpretattion all souls are females and

Purushottama is the only male, in which case all of us should be

saying um.

Once Nanjeeyar asked Bhattar whether Lakshmi had done the correct

thing by ascending on to Narayana's chest admist all the males at the

end of the episode of churning of the ocean of milk. As the First

Lady (nareenam utthama vadhuh) so to say, she did not feel shy to get

attached to Narayana so publicly. To this Bhattar replied in his

classic style. Why should she be ashamed when she was going to the

only male present. A lady may feel shy when in company of males but

when the whole gathering is female she need not feel ashamed. A

surprised Nanjeeyar asked what about the 33 crores of devas and the

far more numerous asuras. Bhattar's unforgettable reply was that as

far as Narayana is concerned He is the only male and all jivatmas are

female whether they be the denizens of heavens, earth or the nether

worlds.

I humbly request some enlightened soul to explain this conundrum.

Dr.S.Sundar Rajan, Trichy