What is Beauty

In the last issue I had written about the multi-significance of the root-sounds in Sanskrit by giving the example of the word sandeha meaning doubt. This time let me explain you another word to explain about the conscious creation of Sanskrit word. In example is sushamaa. In Sanskrit sushamaa usually means beauty or splendour. This is not the only word for beauty in Sanskrit. There are words like saundarya, caarutaa, shobhaa, kaanti, shree, laavanya etc. expressing the sense of beauty. But sushamaa is perhaps the only word which really defines what true beauty is. Sushamaa, in fact, is the feminine form of the word sushama which is constituted of two components: su and sama. The first component su is a prefix in Sanskrit and is attached to a word in the sense of good, excellent, right, virtuous, beautiful, easy, well, rightly, superbly, perfectly, much, greatly, easily, willingly and quickly. The second component sama means even, smooth, flat, plain, same, equal, similar, like, equivalent, identical or homogeneous with, constant, unchanged, fair, having the right measure, regular, normal, right, straight etc. The verbal phrase samam karoti means ‘puts in right order’. So, su and sama together means that which is perfectly or superbly equal and harmonious. Grammatically the element u at the end of su transforms sa into sh, so we get the word sushama and in feminine it is sushamaa. Beauty and harmony always go hand in hand. Where there is no harmony there is no beauty. In a true sense sushamaa means the exquisite beauty referring to a perfect harmony, measure, symmetry, order, equality and rhythm.

The word in contrast to sushama is vishama (vi-sama) expressing the following senses: uneven, rugged, rough, unequal, irregular, dissimilar, different, inconstant, hard to traverse, difficult, inconvenient, painful, dangerous, adverse, disagreeable, terrible, bad, wicked etc.