Nada-Nāda

When I first started learning Spanish, the word that I was astonished by the most was Nada. One would wonder how a word that means nothing literally became subject of such interest. It certainly would if you’re a natural pattern seeker and grew up in a country that’s home to the ancient language Sanskrit which happens to house another word that sounds almost similar, but means the opposite. What’s interesting is not the coincidence, but the fact that even though the words are opposite, they ultimately point towards the same concept differing only in the way that two distinct cultures approached it.  

I’m not saying that Nada has some Sanskrit roots linguistically. On the contrary, it actually comes from the Latin phrase ‘Res Nata,’ meaning ‘no thing born.’  It is the complete absence of being. It is the word that names what remains when everything is removed.

Its Sanskrit counterpart Nāda, however means something that weaves the fundamental fabric of reality. Nāda Brahma, is a concept that sits somewhere close to the modern day concept of string theory in physics and proposes that the universe is a sound.

The word Nāda in Sanskrit is the primordial sound or vibration from which the universe and multiple manifestations within it emerge. It proposes existence begins with vibration, that sound comes before form and Nāda comes before everything. 

It’s interesting that the same acoustic event produces two words with opposite meaning, depending on which language is listening to it. Homophones demonstrate where meaning actually lives. It lives not in sound, but in the mind that is receiving it. 

What’s interesting is that if you were to read that sentence again, but take the acoustic event to be not the pronunciation of the word nada, but Nāda itself, the primordial vibration from which the universe emerged, the sentence would still hold true! ‘The same acoustic event produced two words with opposite meanings, depending on which language was listening to it.’

In this particular context, both traditions probably faced the deepest possible question that we all deal with even today. What precedes existence and what remains when existence is removed. The more interesting layer worth exploring would be that in most Indian Philosophical traditions, you would find nothingness is described not as a dead, empty void, but a limitless state of potentiality called Śūnyatā. They imply that Nāda emerged from a state of silence, from nothingness.

The Nāsadīya Sūkta of the Rig Veda presses deeper still. It doesn’t describe what preceded Nāda. It questions whether the distinction between something and nothing had yet arrived at all.

नासदासीन्नो सदासीत्तदानीं
नासीद्रजो नो व्योमा परो यत् ।
किमावरीवः कुह कस्य शर्मन्
अम्भः किमासीद्गहनं गभीरम् ॥
(Rig Veda 10.129.1)

Transliteration:

nāsad āsīn no sad āsīt tadānīṃ
nāsīd rajo no vyomā paro yat
kim āvarīvaḥ kuha kasya śarman
ambhaḥ kim āsīd gahanaṃ gabhīram

A widely accepted translation:

Then there was neither non-existence nor existence.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
What stirred? Where? In whose protection?
Was there water, bottomless deep?

Translation by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda: An Anthology, Penguin Classics, 1981.

It explores if there even was the concept of darkness versus light, of matter versus energy, of nothingness vs being. 

The words in that sense are almost neighbours, Nada is nothingness- a void. Nāda is the first vibration emerging from that void. They aren’t really competing explanations for the same question. One names the silence and the other name is the first disturbance of that silence.

The philosophical perfection of two similar sounding words that are not etymologically linked and are a pure phonological accident is an absolute wonder. One reflects the universe as infinite resonance and the other sees an existential zero before it. A Sanskrit Speaker saying it invokes origin while a Spanish speaker would invoke absence from the same word. 

Linguists have long explored the relation between language and meaning. Bhartṛhari’s magnum opus, Vākyapadīya explores theory of Sphoṭa that points that meaning is not in the sound, but in the flash of comprehension, the sound produces. Meaning according to him, erupts whole, indivisible, not built phoneme by phoneme. He explores the word as a unit of total apprehension, not assembled from sounds. The sound carries nothing, but the language carries everything. The same sound here, that on the surface has opposite meanings and no shared origin somehow ends up orbiting the same question about the unknown origin of the universe.

Sphoṭa argues that meaning requires a particular mind to receive it. The observation in this essay makes that claim literal: without someone standing at the intersection of both languages, this homophone produces nothing. Two sounds, heard separately, are simply sounds. The question only emerged because a specific kind of listening was present. The words did not find each other. A mind did.

This essay sits at the intersection of Language & Meaning, Philosophy, Curiosity and Resonance.