Nadis
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Origin 1000 to 1500
Gandhari is one of the fourteen principal nadis of classical yogic physiology, described in the Yoga Upanishads alongside Ida, Pingala and Sushumna. It runs behind or alongside Ida, associated with the left side of the body, though the Upanishads that describe it do not agree on exactly where it ends.
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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 Disputed
Meaning in the Attesting SourceGandhari runs behind or alongside Ida, associated with the left side of the body. The Yoga Upanishads do not agree on precisely where it terminates: the Trishikhibrahmana Upanishad and the Shandilya Upanishad give the left eye, the Yogachudamani Upanishad places it in the left eye as well, but the Darshana Upanishad instead gives the right eye. No harmonised reading appears anywhere in the corpus; the disagreement stands between the individual Upanishads themselves, not between later interpreters of them. 4 Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 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. 3 Cross-Tradition Connections
Originates in Language
Source Roots of YogaJames Mallinson and Mark Singleton (trans. and eds.) Sources
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