[INDOLOGY] Help with a simile

[Matthew Kapstein]

Dear Jim,

Perhaps try thinking of a heavy medieval lock opened by a very large metal key, requiring rather a lot of force to turn or slide, depending upon the type of lock being used. Maybe my imagination is too influenced by images of huge Tibetan locks and keys that served also as lethal weapons. Might not some old Indian locks be preserved in one or another of the palace museums?

best ever,
Matthew

Matthew Kapstein
Directeur d'études, émérite
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris

Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies,
The University of Chicago
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From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces at list.indology.info> on behalf of James Mallinson <jm63 at soas.ac.uk>
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2021 3:44 PM
To: Indology <indology at list.indology.info>
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Help with a simile

Dear colleagues,

I wonder if anybody can help me understand a simile in a haṭhayoga text I’m editing, the Vivekamārtaṇḍa. Verse 34 reads:

udghāṭayet kapāṭaṃ tu yathā kuñcikayā haṭhāt |
kuṇḍalinyā tathā yogī mokṣadvāraṃ vibhedayet ||

My incomplete translation is as follows: “The yogi should use Kuṇḍalinī to break open the doorway to liberation in the same way that one might use a kuñcikā to force open a kapāṭa.” I had been translating kuñcikā as “key” and kapāṭa as “door”, but this isn’t altogether satisfactory. A key does not force a door to open. But I am unable to think of what this kuñcikā and kapāṭa might be. I am aware that a kapāṭa is usually a double door (I think of saloon doors in cowboy films) but what then is the kuñcikā? Of course it is quite possible that it is just a rather sloppy simile.

All the best,

Jim
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