Hindu Medicine c8.152

c8.152

The elaborately and imaginatively described functions of the breath-powers and life-centers, with their metaphysical and mythical connotations in Kundalinī-yoga, bear the same archaic character and evidently refer back to the old stock of pre-Aryan or non-Brahmin tradition. They have a striking parallel in the idea of the macrocosm in Jaina tradition, where the universe is believed to have the shape of a Great Man, a giant human organism: a male being, the cosmic man (puruṣa) of older tradition, or the all-embracing body of the world-mother of later sources. Jaina tradition, in this respect, though biased by ascetic tendencies, constitutes the most faithful reflection preserved by history of what formed the basic conceptions with regard to man and the universe in the ancient pre-Aryan civilization of Northwestern India.