Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

His Life and Attempts to Write about It
The Terminology of His Writings

Brahma — Brahman — Brahmin [1]

Please favour me with the correct transliteration of the words ब्रह्म [brahma] and ब्रह्मण [brahmaṇa] in the English language. In the Essays on the Gita, they are spelt alike, viz. Brahman. What is the necessity of an “n” when transliterating ब्रह्म

In English, Brahma = the Creator, one of the Trinity.

Brahman is the Eternal and Infinite. In English very often the stem is taken as the form of the name in transliterating and not the nominative form e.g. Pururavas, not Pururavā. So Vivekananda writes “Sannyasin bold” instead of Sannyasi.

1 February 1933