Samskritam means perfectly crafted. A study of its grammer - vyaakaraNam - fully illustrates this point. In addition, the numerous works on various subjects brings home this point time and again. Samskritam consists of fifty-one letters. Each letter is called an akShara denoting something fundamental and significant. akShara also means that the sound of the letter does not ever get destroyed, thus signifying the eternal quality of the sound of the letters. The sound of a word is essentially the sounds of each of the akSharas in the word. akShara maalaa refers to the complete set of Samskrita letters. varNa maalaa is another name for akShara maala.

There are two aspects of non destruction in the above explanation. The first one refers to the phonetic characteristics of the language, i.e., in any word, the akSharas retain their sound. The second aspect of non destruction, amazingly, is that the akSharas retain their individual meanings as well! To give an example, the word guru, consisting of the aSsharas gu and ru, stands for a teacher - one who dispels darkness (ignorance) of the the mind (person). gu means 'darkness' and ru means 'to dispel'.