Mantra originally comes from Sanskrit and means “thought”. It was first used in English by Henry Colebrook, a famous British expert on the Orient and one of the founders of the Royal Asiatic Society. In a contribution to Asiatick Researches entitled On the duties of a faithful Hindu widow he mentions the mantra several times. It appears that the main duty of a Hindu woman who has lost her husband is to commit suicide on the pyre of her departed spouse. The person conducting the funeral utters mantras each of which describe the duty of jumping into the flames. Incidentally, it was only in 1987 that the Indian government passed a law outlawing this practise and went onto provide prison sentences for the woman who burned herself; if the woman did not survive, then the relatives could be prosecuted. After a list of reasons to perform this duty, an opt-out or “alternative” for the widow was given, although they were not particularly pleasant either – only one meal a day, never sleeping on a bed and, of course, chastity.
The next person to use the word mantra also described what had to be done at the death of a Hindu family member. William Ward, a missionary to India, wrote a long work on the Hindus. It included an account that the son of the deceased father should place two balls of boiled rice with a mantra at the pyre. This was the original version of 1811. It was obviously misunderstood since, in the next version, mantra was replaced with incantation!
The idea of a mantra as something separate from the Hindu religion took more than 150 years to develop. Now a mantra also refers to something like a slogan or a catch phase which is repeated so many times that the idea is instilled in people’s minds as a generally accepted ideal or philosophy. Former Chief Evangelist at Apple, Guy Kawasaki, recommends to businesses that they have a mantra of two or three words for employers and customers that is “short, sweet, and swallowable”; something which motivates and fires the imagination. What would your mantra be?
