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Thus some dhamanis have very fine apertures, and others grosser apertures. yatha svabhavatah khani mrndlesu bisesu ca dhamaninam tathaé khani raso yair upaciyate. Ibid. 1x. 10. X1It] The Circulatory and the Nervous System 351 kapha and rasa; two, connected with the intestines, carry the food-juice; two carry water; two are connected with the bladder for ejecting urine; two are for the production of semen (sukra- pradur-bhava), two for its ejection, and it is these which regulate the menstrual flow in the case of women; two, connected with the larger intestines, eject the excreta; there are eight others which carry perspiration. It is by these dhamanis that the intestines, waist, urine, excreta, rectum, bladder and penis are held together. Each of the other four dhamanis, which go crosswise (tiryag-gah), has hundreds and thousands of branches, which, innumerable as they are, are spread all over the body, like so many windows; their mouths are at the holes of the hairs, through which perspiration goes out and which nourish the body with rasa, and through these the effective principles (virya) of oil, watery sprinklings, oint- ments, etc. enter the body after being acted on by bhrajaka (heat of the skin)!. It is again these which carry the pleasurable and painful sense-impressions of touch?. The dhamanis direct the five senses to the five sense-objects for their cognition. There is the cognizer (mantr) and the manas organ; the dhamani which is con- nected with manas on one side and the dhamanis which carry the different sense-impressions on the other make the sense-data cognized by the self’. The various sensory and motor dhamanis are further named in Susruta, 11. vi. 28. Down below the back of the ear there are two dhamanis, called vidhura, which, when injured, produce deafness; inside the two nostrils there are the two dhamanis called phana which, when hurt, arrest the sensation of smell. Below the eyebrows on the two sides of the eye there are the two dhamanis, called apanga, which, when hurt, produce blindness: there are also two other dhamanis, above the eyebrows and below them, called dvarta, which, when hurt, also produce blindness. Susruta also speaks in this connection of a place inside 1 Susruta, Sarira, 1x. ’7 and 8; see also Dalhana’s commentary on it. 2 Dalhana, in commenting on this passage of SuSruta, III.ix.9, says: “‘tair eva mano-’nugataih sukhasukha-riipam sparsam karmatma grhnite.” (It is through these dhamanis, as connected by manas, that the self, as associated with the subtle peas receives the pleasurable and painful impressions of touch.) pancabhibhitas tv atha pafica-krtvah paticendriyam paticasu bhadvayanti paticendriyam paficasu bhavayitva paticatvam ayanti vindsa-kale. SuSruta, 11. ix. 11. _ Dalhana, in commenting on the above, says: ‘‘ manta hi Sartre eka eva, mano ’py ekam eva, tena manasa yaivadhamani sabdddi-vahasu dhamanisv abhiprapanna saiva dhamani sva-dharmam grahayati mantaram nanyeti.” 352 Speculations in the Medical Schools [cH. the skull on the upper part of the brain, where all the sivas have met together, as the adhipati superintendent. In describing the sivas (700 in number) Susruta says that these are like so many canals by which the body is watered and by the contraction and expansion of which the movements of the body are rendered possible. They start from the navel and branch out like so many fibres of leaves. The principal siras are forty in number; of these ten are for the circulation of vata, ten for pitta, ten for kapha and ten for rakta (blood). The siras of vata circu- lation again branch out into 175 sivas, and the same is the case with those which circulate pitta, kapha and rakta. We have thus altogether 700 siras. When vata is properly circulated through the Siras, it becomes possible for us to move our limbs without ob- struction and to exercise our intellectual functions. But it should be noted that, though some s?ras are regarded as mainly circulating vayu or pitta or kapha, yet they all, at least to some extent, circulate all three?. There are goo sma@yus, and these have also holes within them (susirah), and these, as well as the kandaras, which are also but special kinds of sm@yus, serve to bind the joints of the body, just as the several pieces of planks are held together in a boat. Susruta also mentions five hundred muscles. The marmas are vital spots in flesh, s7va@, sn@yu and bones which are particularly the seats of prana: when persons are hurt in these places, they may either lose their lives or suffer various kinds of deformity. The srotas are again described by Susruta as being ducts, other than sir@ and dhamani, which start from the cavity of the heart and spread out through the body?. These srotas carry the currents of prana, food- juice, water, blood, flesh, fat, urine, excreta, semen and menstrual blood. The Nervous System of the Tantras. The nerve system of the Tantras, however, is entirely different from that of the medical systems of Caraka and Susruta. It starts with the conception of the spinal column (meru-danda), which is regarded as one bone from the bottom of the back to the root of 1 na hi vatam sirah kascin na pittam kevalam tatha Slesmadnam va vahanty eta atah sarvavahah smrtah. Susruta, 11. vii. 16. 2 Susruta, Sarira, 1X. 13: miilat khad antaram dehe prasrtam tv abhivahi yat srotas tad iti vijneyam sira-dhamani-varjitam. XIII] The Nervous System of the Tantras 353 the neck. In the passage inside this spinal column there is a nerve (nadi), called susumna, which is again in reality made up of three nadis, susumna, vajra and citrini1. All nadis start from the root at the end of the vertebral column, called kanda, and they proceed upwards to the highest cerebral nerve-plexus, called sahasrara, and are seventy-two thousand in number. The place of the root of these nddis (kanda) is an inch above the anus and an inch below the root of the penis. If suswmnd is the central nerve of the spinal cord, then on its extreme right side is the ida, and then parallel to it towards the susumna are the gandhari, stretching from the corner of the left eye to the left leg, hasti-jihva, stretching from the left eye to the left foot, sankhini, branching on the left, kuhi (the pubic nerve on the left) and also the visvodara, the lumbar nerves. On the extreme left of it is the piigala, and between it and the susumna are the pasa, stretching from below the corner of the right eye to the abdomen, pasyanii, the auricular branch or the cervical plexus, sarasvati and varand (the sacral nerve). The sankhini (the auricular branch or the cervical plexus on the left) goes parallel to the susumnd, but takes a turn in the region of the neck and passes on to the root of the left ear-holes ; in another branch it passes through the inner side of the region of the forehead, where it gets joined with the citrini nadi and enters into the cerebral region. The susumna nadi is a sort of duct inside the spine, which encases within it the vajra nadi, and that again encases within it the c7tvini nadi, which has within it a fine aperture running all through it, which is the fine aperture running through the spinal cord?. This inner passage 1 But according to the Tanira-ciidamani, susumnd is not inside the spinal column but outside it. Thus it says, “tad-bahye tu tayor madhye susumnd vahni- samyuta.”’ This, however, is against the view of the Sat-cakra-niriipana, which takes susumnda to be inside tlie passage of the spine. According to the Nigama-taitva- sara-tantra, ida and pingald are both inside the spine, but this is entirely against the accepted view. Dr Sir B. N. Seal thinks that susumnd is the central passage or channel of the spinal cord and not a separate nadi (The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus, pp. 219, 226, 227). Mr Rele in his The Mysterious Kundalini (pp.35,36) thinks that it is anddiwhich is situated centrally and passes through the spinal column (meru-danda) ; but, judging from the fact that it is said to originate in the sacrum, from which it goes upwards to the base of the skull, where it joins with the plexus of a thousand nerves called brahma-cakra (cerebrum in the vault of the skull) and is divided at the level of the larynx (kantha) into anterior and posterior parts between the two eyebrows (dfid-cakra) and the cavity in the brain (braima-randhra) respectively, Rele thinks that this susumnd nd@di is nothing but the spinal cord. 2 Nddiis derived by Parnananda Yati, in hiscommentaryon the Sat-cakra-niri- > pana, from the root nad, to go, as a passage or duct (nada gatau iti dhator nadyate gamyate ’naya padavya iti nadt). Mahamahopadhyaya Gananatha Sen makes a Dil 23 354 Speculations in the Medical Schools [cH. within the citrini nddi is also called brahma-nadi; for there is no further duct or nadi within the citrini!. The susumna thus in all probability stands for our spinal cord. The susumna, however, is said to take a turn and get connected with the sankhini in the inside region of the forehead, whence it becomes connected with the aperture of the sankhini (sankhini-nalam alambya) and passes to the cerebral region. All the nadis are connected with the susumna. Kundalini is a name for supreme bodily energy, and, because the channel of the susumnda, the brahma-ndadi, is the passage through which this energy flows from the lower part of the trunk to the regions of the nerve-plexus of the brain, susumna is sometimes called kundalini; but kundalini itself cannot be called a nerve, and it is distinctly wrong to call it the vagus nerve, as Mr Rele does?. The ida nadi on the left side of the susumnd outside the spine goes upwards to the nasal region, and pigala follows a corresponding course on the right side.