Origin of Syllable-Mantra

Hello. I've been using NSR for almost a year, and I've had great success with it. I never got around to using my emails - I guess that it just went smoothly enough that I didn't know what to ask at the time. After gaining some experience a little feedback on a few topics would be great.

In "The Yoga Tradition" by Georg Feurstein, I read that 6 out of 7 of the chakras (spelled cakra in this text) have associations with specific mantras. They were:

Mantra/Common Name/Location
1. root support/perineum
2. own base/genitals
3. jewel city/navel
4. unstuck or heart/heart
5. pure or purity/throat
6. command/third eye midway between eyes
7. (none)/thousand-petaled/crown of the head

Were these among the mantras experimented with to find the NSR mantra?

Among those very knowledgeable in meditation, is this a common knowledge list, or are they less common associations with the chakras?

Chicken or the Egg... If the NSR syllable is a common association with the "root" chakra, are there any speculations about how it became


To me, it seems appropriate that the NSR mantra coincides with the "root chakra", and I can't help some "Chicken or the Egg" style contemplation about it - The part of my that loves symbol and metaphor just enjoys how appropriate it seems, while the more analytical part of me imagines meditators of the past experimenting and finding what mantra/syllable/resonance suited different aspects of their philosophy.

Bill Jones