Origin 1000 to 1500
Yashasvini is one of the fourteen principal nadis of classical yogic physiology, described in the Darshana Upanishad as running from the big toe of the left foot to the left ear.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin Period Origin PeriodNamed within Tantric literature from the eighth century CE, and given its classical systematisation in the hatha yoga corpus between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries CE. 1 Place of OriginThe Indian subcontinent. 1 Origin of the NameNadi is Sanskrit for a tube, pipe or channel, from a root meaning to flow. It is not the word for a nerve, and the channels of this physiology are not nerves; the nerve reading is a modern Western gloss. 1 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseThe channels of this physiology are widely presented in modern wellness and yoga material as an anatomical or neurological system. They are not: no channel corresponds to a nerve, a vessel or any identified structure, and the classical descriptions belong to a religious physiology worked with in practice rather than a claim about the body's neuroanatomy. 4 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe Darshana Upanishad describes Yasasvini's course as stretching to the tip of the big toe of the left foot, with its course also reaching the left ear. 3 Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Connections
Originates in Language
Source Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.)
Sources
1. Roots of Yoga
James Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.), Penguin Classics, 2017View the Source 2. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century
Geoffrey Samuel, Cambridge University Press, 2008
3. The Yoga Upanishads
T. R. Srinivasa Ayyangar (translator), edited by S. Subrahmanya Sastri, The Adyar Library, 1938View the Source 4. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.