Jayarava ("Song, cry or shout of victory"), a member of the Western Buddhist Order, has discovered an interesting peculiarity of ancient Vedic and Buddhist texts (see for further details his blog).
My comment.
You rightly point out that "The early Upanishads contain several little treatises on the associations of syllables with esoteric meaning - Chandogya 1.3.6 for instance". Yes, indeed, "Shabara has taken this to it's logical conclusion and given significance to all of the syllables". But not only Shabara. Panini and Pingala showed and explained the character of the meaning of Vedic syllables. ALGEBRA!!! PROGRAMMING!!! ASTRONOMY!!!! This Vedic or Vedangic methodology of Vedic interpretation does entirely solve the problem of logically establishing the scientific nature of the Vedas. The deciphering of this content is my project during the last 15 years. This deciphering revealed extraordinary important layers of precise mathematical-astronomical meaning. Visit my page http://key.itved.com