chapter three 92 Sakayanya concludes his discourse with a paraphrase of ChU 8.6.

6, here calling the multicolored channels of the heart rays, of which one leads up to the world of brahman (brahmaloka). This narrative closes the frame story in a number of ways. First, the repetition of the expression he who has done what he had to do indicates that B?hadratha has in fact fulfilled the requirements necessary for attaining knowledge of the self. Second, by now naming him He Who Shines, Sakayanya confirms that his disciple has been transformed from a renouncer king named B?hadratha into a luminous being. As such, B?hadratha, who has advanced upward (urdhvam utkranta) through the stoppage of the breath, has in fact become the brahman-self that dispels the darkness. 35 Here a word on breath control long considered to have been an essential part of archaic yogic practice is in order. One of the mystical insights of the Upani?ads was that mind and breath were linked: in order to halt fluctuations in the mind, the upanishadic thinkers reasoned, it was necessary to control the breaths. In this regard, TU 3.10.2, which is several centuries earlier than MU 6.29, reads the compound yoga-k?ema as in-breath and out-breath. However, as is the case with this MU passage, the bulk of early references to breath control actually refer to the complete cessation of the breath, or to forcing the breaths up out of the body entirely. This is the case in the dharmasutra literature in which the term pra?ayama first appears and it resurfaces in several later sectarian sources, which will be discussed below. As for the BhG, it enjoins both the regulation (5.27) and the stoppage (4.29) of the breaths; a similar alternation is found in YS 2.49 53. As we will see in chapter six, rather than the regulation of the breaths that is the hallmark of hathayogic pra?ayama, it has been their complete stoppage that has characterized yogi practice.36 Finally, Sakayanya s direct discourse in this passage parallels the rise of the brahmin sons of Brahma-Prajapati to the highest path with B?hadratha-Marut s own apotheosis.37 Behind the dense intertextual references found in this passage stands the sun itself, one of whose rays leads upward to the worlds of the gods (i.e., to a place beyond the solar disk), while the others filter down into the world of existence, where the unliberated wander from rebirth to rebirth. Unlike the later Sa?kara, the redactors of MU 6 viewed advancing upward as a willful yogic act, undertaken before one s natural death, for the attainment of release and immortality.38 So too did the author of the YS (3.39), which states, From mastery of the upward breath (udana) . . . [the power of] progressing aloft [out of the body] (utkranti). In the light of Van Buitenen s demonstration that the MU as we know it is the work of several hands, there can be no question that Sakayanya s