[INDOLOGY] Help with a simile

[Andrea Acri]

Dear Jim,

I see your problem, and I think that the replies you have got so far are being helpful in clarifying this matter. Thinking about how to make sense of your passage in the light of other occurrences of kuñcikā in a yogic context (sorry in advance for stating things that may seem just obvious to you), I’m wondering whether the use of haṭhāt in your passage could refer to the quintessentially/necessarily forceful nature of utkrānti, even if one has the ‘key’ that opens the doors (keeping in mind the remarks by Matthew Kapstein etc.). As you know (better than me, as I am using your own writings as a reference!), the word kuñcikā is sometimes used in Sanskrit (and, I add, Old Javanese) texts in connection with practices of drawing up (utkrānti) the kuṇḍalinī along the central subtle channel of the body (some sort of ‘yogic suicide’), as well as practices involving breath control, and sometimes the retention and violent expulsion of the breath (kuñcikā would refer to the retention in some Old Javanese texts, which mention the kuñci rahasya or ‘secret key’ through which one may close rather than open the doors). See, e.g., Kubjikāmatatantra 8.73 (kuñcikodghāṭayed bilam), 23.114 (eṣu sthāne ’rgalaṃ yojya kuñcikordhvaṃ niyojayet; this seems to imply the same metaphor: if my understanding is correct, one has to impel the kuñickā upwards when the orifices are locked with the bolts, meaning one has to break them open by way of the ‘key’/kuñcikā?), and the related passages that yourself discuss in Mallinson 2007:21 and 177, notes 79–80. It seems interesting that the Old Javanese texts seem to use kuñcikā in the context of closing the doors and then breaking them open, and I’m wondering whether this represents some alternative or perhaps even earlier trend of thought/practice.

Best,

Andrea

> Le 14 mai 2021 à 22:44, James Mallinson <jm63 at soas.ac.uk> a écrit :
> 
> 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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