7362 PRAN: A
of the universe from his mind, falls into a deep, dreamless
sleep inside the cosmic waters. And at the end of that sleep,
at the end of the period of quiescence, the universe, or the
consciousness of the god, is reborn once more out of the wa-
ters of chaos.
This circular pattern contains within it an infinite num-
ber of linear segments. For India, like Greece, developed a
theory of four ages of declining goodness. Whereas the
Greeks named these ages after metals, the Indians called
them after throws of the dice, the first and best being the
kr: tayuga, which is followed by the treta, the dvapara, and fi-
nally the present age, or the kaliyuga. The importance of the
metaphor of dice is also manifest in the fact that the royal
ceremony of consecration included a ritual dice game; in the
second book of the Mahabharata, King Yudhis: t: hira loses his
entire kingdom in a game of dice against an opponent whom
he knows to be a cheat, thus inaugurating a period of exile
that is also a part of the ritual of consecration. Moreover, as
Madeleine Biardeau has convincingly argued, the catastroph-
ic battle that ends the Mahabharata, an Armageddon in
which all the heroes as well as all the villains are killed, is a
reenactment on the human level of the cosmic doomsday
that is constantly alluded to in the epic. This human dooms-
day, like the big dice game in the sky, begins with
Yudhis: t: hiras unlucky loss and ends, inevitably, with the los-
ing throw for humankind.
Yet the end that comes after the kaliyuga is not the
end at all, but a new beginning; a new kr: tayuga will follow
after the fallow interval. Moreover, there is a seed of hu-
manity that survives doomsday to form the stock of the new
race of humans. Sometimes this seminal group is said to be
the Seven Sages, whom Vis: n: u in the form of a fish saves from
the cosmic flood; sometimes it is Manu, the ancestor of all
humankind, and his family; sometimes it is an unspecified
group of good men who resist the corruption that over-
takes everyone else at the end of the kaliyuga, a group that
retires to the forest to live in innocence while the cities of
the plain drown in their own depravity. This seed func-
tions on the macrocosmic level as a metaphor for the trans-
migrating soul on the microcosmic level, the atman that leaps
across the barrier between individual human death and re-
birth, just as the good seed leaps across the barrier between
one pralaya and the next cosmic emission, or prasarga. In the
Vedantic mythology of the late Puran: as, and in Indian litera-
ture in general, recurrent images of doomsday serve to em-
phasize the insubstantiality of the world; the things that peo-
ple think of as permanent are constantly destroyed and re-
created.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A good introduction in English is provided by Hermann Jacobis
article on the Ages of the World, in the Encyclopaedia of
Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, vol. 1 (Edin-
burgh, 1908). Details of the Sanskrit texts are cited in Wil-
libald Kirfels Das Puran: a Pacalaks: an: a (Bonn, 1927),
though without any useful interpretation. The classic discus-
sion remains Mircea Eliades Time and Eternity in Indian
Thought, in Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, vol. 3, Man
and Time, edited by Joseph Campbell (New York, 1957),
pp. 173200. A thoughtful and complex interpretation of
the pralaya may be found in Madeleine Biardeaus tudes de
mythologie hindoue published in the Bulletin de lcole Fran-
aise dExtrme Orient (Paris, 1968, 1969, 1971, and 1976).
WENDY DONIGER (1987)
PRAN: A. The Sanskrit term pran: a (from the conjunction
of pra and ana, breathing forth) can signify (1) the Abso-
lute (brahman) as the transcendental source of all life, (2) life
in general, (3) the life force or breath of life in particular,
(4) respiration, (5) air (in secular contexts only), and (6) the
life organs (i.e., the five cognitive senses, the five conative
senses, and the sense-related mind, or manas).
The third connotation is of special interest to the histo-
rian of religion, because it conveys a vibrant psychophysical
reality (visible to the yogin) similar to the Greek pneuma and
the Melanesian mana. In this sense, pran: a is a creative force,
defined in the Yogavasis: t:ha (3.13.31 et passim) as the vibra-
tory energy (spandasakti) that is responsible for all manifes-
tation. Most metaphysical schools of Indiaone of the ex-
ceptions being Hnayana Buddhismsubscribe to this
notion, although the details of interpretations differ.
In archaic Vedic thought, pran: a is considered to be the
breath of the macranthropos, the cosmic Purus: a (e.g.,
R: gveda 10.90.13; Atharvaveda 11.4.15), and the breath or
life force of the human body is regarded as a form of that
all-pervading pran: a. Later writers make a terminological dis-
tinction between the life force that interpenetrates the entire
universe as a sort of subtle energycalled mukhyapran: a or
principal breathand the life force that sustains and ani-
mates the individual body-minds. Pran: a in this latter sense
has from earliest times been classified into five individualized
breaths. These speculations, dating back to the Atharvaveda
(see esp. chap. 15), betray a culture of intense introspection
and acute sensitivity to bodily processes.
The five individualized breaths, sometimes known col-
lectively as vayu (wind), are the following:
(1) pran: a, the ascending breath issuing from the navel or
the heart and including both inhalation and exhalation;
(2) apana, the breath associated with the lower half of the
trunk;
(3) vyana, the diffuse breath circulating in all the limbs;
(4) udana, the up-breath held responsible for belching,
speech, and the spontaneous focusing of attention in the
esoteric centers (cakras) of the brain, as realized in or
associated with higher states of consciousness;
(5) samana, the breath localized in the abdominal region,
where it is chiefly associated with the digestive process.
The soteriological literature of the post-Sankara period often
adds to this classical pentad a further set of five secondary
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

breaths (upapran: a), about whose locations and functions,
however, there is no unanimity. These are the following:
(1) naga (serpent), generally held responsible for belching
and vomiting;
(2) kurma (tortoise), associated with the opening and
closing of the eyelids;
(3) kr: kara (kr-maker), thought to cause hunger, hiccups,
or blinking;
(4) devadatta (God-given), associated with the processes
of sleep, especially yawning;
(5) dhanam: jaya (conquest of wealth), responsible for the
decomposition of the corpse; also sometimes said to be
connected with the production of phlegm.
These ten types of breaths are generally conceived of as circu-
lating in a complex lattice of bioenergetic pathways called
nad: s (ducts). They are widely thought to constitute an ex-
periential field or bodily sheath, the pran: amaya-kosa
(Taittirya Upanis: ad 2). In the Chandogya Upanis: ad
(2.13.6), the five principal breaths are styled the gatekeepers
to the heavenly world, which hints at an esoteric under-
standing of the close relationship between breathing and
consciousness. This connection was later explored in the var-
ious soteriological schools, notably in hat:hayoga.
Sometimes pran: a and apana simply represent inhalation
and exhalation, but in yogic contexts both terms are used in
the technical sense noted above. Particularly in hat:hayoga,
both breaths play an important role in the technique of
breath control (pran: ayama) as a means of curbing, through
sensory inhibition, the rise and fall of attention.
SEE ALSO Breath and Breathing; Cakras; Hat: hayoga; Yoga.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, George William. Pran: a and Apana. Journal of the Ameri-
can Oriental Society 39 (1919): 104112.
Ewing, Arthur H. The Hindu Conception of the Functions of
Breath. Journal of the American Oriental Society 22 (1901):
249308.
Wikander, Stig. Vayu: Texte und Untersuchungen zur indo-ira-
nischen Religionsgeschichte. Uppsala, 1941.
New Sources
Connolly, Peter. Vitalistic Thought in India: A Study of the Pran: a
Concept in Vedic Literature and Its Development in the
Vedanta, Sam: khya and Pacaratra Traditions. Delhi, 1992.
GEORG FEUERSTEIN (1987)
Revised Bibliography
PRATITYA-SAMUTPADA. The term prattya-
samutpada (Pali, pat:icca-samuppada), dependent origina-
tion or dependent arising, was first used by the Buddha
to characterize the understanding of the nature of human ex-
istence that he had attained at his enlightenment. Essentially
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION
PRATITYA-SAMUTPADA 7363
a doctrine of causality, this notion is so central to Buddhist
thought that a proper understanding of prattya-samutpada
is often declared tantamount to enlightenment itself. In it,
an entire complex of notions about moral responsibility,
human freedom, the process of rebirth, and the path to liber-
ation coalesce.
Prattya-samutpada was promulgated against a back-
ground of four contemporary theories of causality. These
were (1) self-causation (svayam: kr: ta), advocated by the tradi-
tional Brahmanic philosophers; (2) external causation
(parakr: ta), upheld by the materialist thinkers; (3) a combina-
tion of self-causation and external causation, advocated by
the Jains; and (4) a denial of both self and external causation,
probably championed by certain skeptical thinkers who re-
fused to recognize any form of causation. While all four of
these theories were explicitly rejected by the Buddha, the
brunt of his analysis was directed against the former two.
According to the Buddha, a theory of self-causation
leads to the belief in permanence (sasvata), that is, the recog-
nition of a permanent and eternal self (atman), which the
Buddha found to be an unverifiable entity. External causa-
tion, on the other hand, implies the existence of an inexora-
ble physical law of nature (svabhava) that would render the
human being a mere automaton with no power to determine
the nature of his own existence. Ultimately, such a position
divests beings of all bases for personal continuity and hence,
moral responsibility. This he referred to as the theory of an-
nihilation (uccheda). Prattya-samutpada, on the other hand,
is presented as the middle (madhyama) position between
these two extremes. This middle position is explained in
great detail in the Discourse to Katyayana, which serves as the
locus classicus of all subsequent interpretations of the Bud-
dhas middle path. Following is the text of the discourse
in the Pali version:
Thus have I heard. The Blessed One was once living in
Savatthi. . . . At that time the venerable Kaccayana of
that clan came to visit him, and saluting him, sat down
at one side. So seated, he questioned the Exalted One:
Sir, [people] speak of right view, right view. To what
extent is there right view? This world, Kaccayana, is
generally inclined toward two [views]: existence and
nonexistence. For him who perceives, with right knowl-
edge, the uprising of the world as it has come to be,
whatever view there is in the world about nonexistence
will not be acceptable. Kaccayana, for him who per-
ceives, with right knowledge, the ceasing of the world
as it has come to be, whatever view there is in the world
about existence will not be acceptable. The world, for
the most part, Kaccayana, is bound by approach, grasp-
ing and inclination. Yet, a person who does not follow
that approach and grasping, that determination of
mind, the inclination and disposition, who does not
cling to or adhere to a view: This is my self, who thinks
[instead]: suffering that is subject to arising arises; suf-
fering that is subject to ceasing ceases, such a person
does not doubt, is not perplexed. Herein, his knowledge
is not other-dependent. Thus far, Kaccayana, there is
right view.