mandala
मण्डल maṇḍalaA 'circle': a sacred diagram used as a map of the cosmos and a focus for ritual and meditation, especially in Tantra. The same word also names a book or division of the Rigveda, which has ten such mandalas (books 2 to 7 are the oldest layer).
Where this term appears
- What are the Vedas? Scriptures
It is a collection of suktas , hymns of praise, gathered into ten books called mandalas , "circles".
- Anatomy of a Hindu Temple: Gopuram to Garbhagriha Temples
The plan is a diagram, a mandala, the same kind of geometric instrument a meditator might draw to concentrate the mind on the centre.
- Devas and Asuras Deities
Horace Hayman Wilson, whose translation of the fifth mandala appeared in 1857 and who was working through Sayana rather than around him, rendered it "adore the powerful divinity with prostrations." That is not …
- Eighty-five titles and no text: the Saura tantras and how a tradition disappears Lineages
…or Vishnu, the ash-wearing twice-born for Śiva, brahmins who know the mandala sequence for the Mothers, brahmins generally for Brahma, the Shakyas for the Buddha, the naked ones for the Jinas, and for Savitr th…
- Hindu cosmology: the fourteen worlds and the ages of the universe Essentials
A third, modern reading takes the continents and oceans as a deliberate mandala, a diagram of states rather than a chart of land.
- Nagara, Dravida and Vesara: The Styles of the Hindu Temple Temples
If the symbolic logic of the ground plan interests you, the companion piece on the Vastu-Purusha-Mandala explains the diagram beneath the stone.
- The caste system: what Hinduism says Essentials
And the hymn is late; Mandala 10 is among the youngest layers of the Rigveda, so even within the oldest scripture the fourfold scheme arrives near the end, not at the beginning.
- The Gayatri Mantra Worship
What the verse says It is Rigveda 3.62.10, in the third mandala , the Vishvamitra book.