This talk explores one of the world’s most pervasive yet largely unnoticed linguistic and hermeneutic traditions, the South Asian Tradition of Etymology. Spanning millennia and innervating a great variety of forms of discourse in languages such as Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Tibetan, and English, the South Asian Tradition of Etymology underlies key episodes in the intellectual and religious history of South Asian and South Asia-influenced cultures. This talk investigates selected incarnations of this tradition across time, space, and languages. We will discover how this tradition afforded truth-seekers, a motley crowd of characters sharing the belief that secret linguistic levels can be tapped into etymologically, the tools to pursue their vastly different agendas. We will encounter ancient Indian philosophers, fifth-century Sri Lankan Buddhists, Tang-dynasty Chinese lexicographers and translators, as well as nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries Orientalists, neo-Hindus, and mystics. In addition to outlining its historical contours, we will consider whether the Indian Tradition of Etymology can teach us something valuable today.