mana in heart or head?

[Dipak Bhattacharya]

It is very difficult to remember the exact details but at least this much can be said with certainty that the late Debiprasad Chattopadhyay had pointed out in the Lokayata Darshan (Beng.Calcutta 1956) or in its English version Lokayata:A Study in Indian materialism  (Calcutta,1959), perhaps in both, that Tantrikas who desected human bodies held that the location the mind was in the skull. In fact their discovery was that the brain is responsible for thought. I read the books in the sixties.
DB 

--- On Wed, 8/4/09, Dominik Wujastyk <ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK> wrote:


From: Dominik Wujastyk <ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: mana in heart or head?
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Date: Wednesday, 8 April, 2009, 2:33 PM


Hi, Peter,

The Bhelasamhita is unique in being an ancient Skt text that locates mind, 
manas, in the head (between the palate and the skull).  References in 
Bhelasamhita ch.8, e.g.,

śirastālvantaragataṃ sarvendriyaparaṃ manaḥ 2cd

and

ūrdhvaṃ prakupitā doṣāḥ śirastālvantare sthitāḥ 10ab

Best,
Dominik

-- 
Dr Dominik Wujastyk

long term email address: wujastyk at gmail.com




On Wed, 8 Apr 2009, Peter Friedlander wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
> I am looking at a, probably 16th century Nath Siddha work, the Gorakh Machindra bodh, and note that in it the seat of the mana is still located in the heart, not the head.
> 
?? Nowadays in Hindi mana means both the heart and the mind, but I am not sure when it began its migration up into the head as it is now imagined. In particular was it only under the influence of western thought or are there pre-colonial period texts which speak of the seat of thought as being in the head?
> 
?? regards
> ---------------------------
> Peter Friedlander
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