Gorakṣaśataka 81–88: An Unusual Path to Śiva

cālite and ravau can be read together as a temporal subordinate construction: “when the sun has been moved”. With Mallinson (2012, p. 271), I interpret rakta-pittam as the destination of this movement, “towards blood and bile”, rather than a new subject. The Sanskrit supplies no separate expression for their location; its compressed construction remains unusual. The sentence continues into 83. śoṣayate means “dries up” and is not reinterpreted as “drinks”.

I read yātenducakram as yātā + indu-cakram: Kuṇḍalinī has reached the lunar wheel. The relative clauses in both translations rearrange this connection. I relate the masculine accusatives siktam and uṣṇam to kapham: Kuṇḍalinī consumes the poured-out, heated phlegm, whose nature is cold. “The hot” is therefore not a separate subject. This reading accords with Mallinson 2012, p. 271. The double role of the lunar wheel as a destination and as the referent of yatrāste remains syntactically compressed.

Following Mallinson (2012, p. 271), I distinguish two subjects: feminine kṣubdhā, “agitated”, belongs to Kuṇḍalinī; the intensified flowing concerns the white fluid. Subjects supplied in the translations make these references visible. sravatetarām remains an unusual intensified formation from the verb of flowing. No equivalence with a modern bodily process is inferred.

I provisionally follow Mallinson’s sentence construction (2012, p. 271): the taste of the fluid releases the mind from its attachment to sense objects; the young person delights in the self. I understand bahiṣṭham as “outside” those objects. The supplied indication of a previous state and the first sentence’s verb make this interpretation readable. I connect the genitive svasthasya to paramam: the highest [state] of one who rests in oneself. This closer correspondence to the words remains awkward compared with Mallinson’s freer interpretation as inward enjoyment; the syntactic connection is uncertain. yuvā remains “the young person”. The replacement with bhavet considered in the working text is not adopted.

prakṛtyaṣṭaka names eightfold nature without listing its constituents here. The objects of the two occurrences of kroḍīkṛtya are supplied from context; no fixed attribution to a philosophical system is inferred.

For the red below and the white above, I supply “merge” from the preceding vilīyate. Thereafter mārutaḥ, the wind, is the subject of samāyāti; I read prāṇāpānau and sahajātau as accusative dual, not as a second subject. The forms permit both cases. This yields the sense that the wind comes together with the jointly arisen pair Prāṇa and Apāna. Mallinson (2012, p. 271) supports this connection. Red and white remain historical bodily substances without a modern biological identification.

I provisionally read the locatives as conditions: the material element becomes small; the speaker gains greatness. As the subject of vardhate and drāvayati, I supply the breath mentioned in the preceding verse. This interpretative aid follows Mallinson (2012, p. 271), who himself marks the first half-verse as a crux. What “small” and “greatness” mean here remains open. The comparison in the second half-verse is clearer: the winds melt like gold in a heated crucible. The translation introduces no Sanskrit conjecture.