The Tantric Secret Seed Syllables of the Seven Hundred Verses to Durga

Knowledge of the phenomenal world is dependent on name. Name depends on speech. This 'speech' is the Supreme Goddess herself. All meaning that is indicated by speech is Shiva himself. These two are the mutually intertwined Ardhanarishwara the half-man, half-woman form of Shiva form—

For the realization of the meaning of words and speech,
I bow to the parents of the world, Parvati and Parameshwara.¹⁶

Speech and meaning, Shiva and Shakti, are different only in terms of language; they are not different in reality. They are different in speaking, hearing, and seeing like water and its waves, but they are fundamentally non-different—

Speech and meaning, like water and waves, are said to be different, yet they are not.
I bow to the feet of Sita and Rama, to whom the distressed are most dear.¹⁷

The two external divisions of the "speech-body" vak-vapush body of speech of the mutually intertwined Shiva and Shakti are vowels and consonants. All sixteen vowels are in the form of Shakti, and all thirty-five consonants are in the form of Shiva. It is from their mutual synthesis that the entire manifestation of the world of names and forms occurs. Among them, the vowels (Shakti-form) are independent, and the consonants (Shiva-form) are dependent on power or dependent on vowels, and therefore subordinate.¹⁸

The sixteen power-form vowels are as follows:

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16. Raghuvamsha - 1/1 Kalidasa.

17. Ramcharitmanas (Balkand).

18. "The letters from 'ka' to 'ksha' are the form of Shiva. They are the thirty-six elements in combined or separate forms. The sixteen vowels from 'a' to 'visarga' are the sixteen Shaktis. They are eternal and sixteen-fold, joined to each other. The letters are the embodiments of Shiva and Shakti, and the expounders of word and meaning. Shiva is dependent on the vowels; he is not independent at any time. The vowels are independent, but Shiva is not." (Quoted from Matrika-dushan, Gopalasundari.)