[4] It is also found in religious art, often standing for a specific deity.
A bījamantra can be regarded to be a mystic sound made of the first few characters of a given deity's name, the chanting of which is regarded to allow an adherent to achieve a state of spiritual sanctity.
[6] The Romanian scholar Mircea Eliade stated that an adherent who chants the semantically meaningless bījamantra "appropriates its ontological essence, concretely and directly assimilates with the god".
[7] A few of the major bījamantras in Hinduism include: Esoteric Buddhism contains numerous seed syllables with varying meanings.
Depending on the tantra or on the tradition, they may represent different concepts, deities or forces.