NB (Bokmål)
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Secondary channel
Shankhini
Śaṅkhinī · शङ्खिनी
Named for the conch, shankha. It runs down the left of sushumna, between gandhari and saraswati, and ends at the anus in the common list.
conch
elimination
left side
- Side
- Left
- Ends at
- The anus
- Carries
- Hearing, inner sound and equilibrium
- Name means
- Conch-shelled, spiral
- Variant termination
- The left ear, in the sense-organ tables
- Associated wind
- Apana
- Group
- One of the eleven secondary nadis
- Sources
- Shiva Samhita, Gheranda Samhita, later commentaries
Where it runs
Shankhini runs downward on the left of the central channel and terminates in the region governed by apana. In the sources that read it that way it belongs with kuhu and varuni as a channel of elimination rather than of sense.
The minority reading sends it to the left ear, which puts it in the sense group instead. That is the widest kind of variation in the list, and it is worth noticing that nobody in the tradition seems to have found it troubling.
The tables that group the fourteen by sense organ give shankhini the left ear and pair it with pusha or payasvini on the right. That grouping is tidier than the mixed list and is probably later for exactly that reason.
The name
A conch is spiral, and the word carries a ritual charge in Indian religion, being blown to open ceremonies. As a channel name it describes the coil rather than the sound.
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