Breath
The Catalogue of Acts
The tradition's central deliverable: which undertakings belong to the lunar breath, which to the solar, and why nothing worldly at all belongs to suṣumṇā — with the rule of the flowing side for first steps, giving and receiving.
Strip the svarodaya literature of its cosmology and its divination and a working core remains that any householder could use by tomorrow morning: a catalogue that sorts the acts of a life into those begun under the left breath, those begun under the right, and those — a very short list — reserved for the moment when neither flows. This is that catalogue, as the tradition transmits it.
How the catalogue is usedप्रयोग
The rule of use is stated before the lists, because the lists mislead without it. The catalogue governs beginnings. What is keyed to the current is the moment an act is undertaken — the first step of the journey, the first word of the petition, the laying of the foundation, the swallowing of the first mouthful of medicine — on the principle that runs through the whole science: the quality of the current at the outset is impressed on everything that follows from it. The texts do not ask anyone to monitor the breath continuously through a day's work; they ask that the door be entered on the right foot.
The sorting principle is the character of the two currents, given doctrinally on the science of breath. The lunar current is cooling, even, sustaining: to it belong acts that are meant to last, to nourish, or to begin auspiciously. The solar current is heating, forward, consuming: to it belong acts that are harsh, urgent, contested, or spent in the doing. A useful test when a case is not in any list: ask whether the act is one you want to endure or one you want to be over. The literature's assignments almost always fall out of that question.
Acts of the lunar breathचन्द्र-स्वर
The left current's list is the longer in every text, because most of what a settled life consists of is meant to endure. The following are the assignments most consistently attested across the svarodaya literature — the Śiva Svarodaya's sections on the acts proper to each nāḍī, and the svara-karman chapter of the Svara Cintāmaṇi, which is a catalogue of exactly this kind:
| Sphere | Acts begun under iḍā |
|---|---|
| Founding | Laying foundations; building and first entry into a house; digging of wells and tanks; planting and sowing; setting up anything meant to stand |
| Alliance | Marriage; betrothal; reconciliation and the making of peace; meeting friends; entering a new fellowship |
| Nourishing | Medicine and the beginning of treatment; the care of children; feeding others; the buying of cattle and land |
| Auspicious beginnings | Beginning study and the taking of instruction; religious acts, vows and charity; putting on new clothes and ornaments; first audiences sought as a favour |
| The long road | Setting out on a distant journey — the near journey belongs to the sun; the full travel rules are on travel and departure |
| Keeping | Depositing valuables; collecting and storing; service of elders and superiors |
The pattern needs no forcing: water-acts, root-acts, bond-acts. What is planted under the moon, the tradition says, grows.
Acts of the solar breathसूर्य-स्वर
The right current's list is shorter, sharper, and franker about what a life also contains. The texts' own word for its province is krūra — harsh, cruel — and they do not use it as a reproach; the harsh acts exist, and the science's claim is only that they have their hour:
| Sphere | Acts begun under piṅgalā |
|---|---|
| Contest | Battle and single combat; litigation and dispute; gambling; the confrontation of an enemy or a rival |
| Urgency | The short journey on pressing business; the errand that must be done at once; mounting and riding; crossing a river |
| Exertion | Hard physical labour; the practice of arms; the taming and breaking of animals; climbing |
| Consuming | Eating — the solar current is held to kindle the digestive fire, and this single assignment has passed into general regimen; the rest of the daily rules are on vitality |
| Heat and force | Acts of command; punishment; demolition of what must come down; the harsh operations the applied texts describe for kings |
| Union | The received lists assign the act of union to the solar current of the man; the conception chapters read the matter more finely, by fortnight and element, and are not compressed here |
Suṣumṇā: nothing worldlyसुषुम्णा
Between the two lists stands a third whose entire worldly content is a prohibition. When the breath runs in neither nostril decisively — both open, or wavering side to side — the texts withdraw every undertaking at once. No journey, no petition, no contract, no medicine, no meal of consequence: the Śiva Svarodaya calls action under the middle current ruinous in terms it uses nowhere else, and the applied manuals repeat the warning without softening it. The practical instruction is short: wait, or turn the breath — the methods are on knowing the flow — and if neither is possible, keep still.
What the middle current is for is the other half of the teaching. The same texts that forbid it everything worldly assign to it the two things they value most, enjoyment of the highest kind and liberation — by which they mean that its hour belongs to practice: japa, meditation, dhāraṇā. The first of the Vijñāna Bhairava's meditations waits at exactly this point of the breath — the pause where the movement turns — and the convergence of the two literatures here is one of the quiet arguments of this whole site.
The rule of the flowing sideपूर्ण-अङ्ग
One further rule runs through the applied literature and belongs with the catalogue because it governs the manner of acts rather than their timing. The side of the body on which the breath flows is the pūrṇa side — full, strong, favoured — and the empty side is śūnya. From this the tradition draws a family of small, consistent instructions: the first step of an undertaking is taken with the foot of the flowing side; the threshold is crossed with that foot leading; in giving and receiving, the favourable position is to give from, and receive on, the full side; and a person whose favour is sought is kept toward the full side of one's own body during the meeting. The same polarity read outward — where the other party stands relative to one's full side — is the hinge of the question-science, on questions answered from the breath, and of the audience rules on travel and departure.
The commentarial tradition works these rules hard. The Subodhinī of Gaṇeśa Datta Pāṭhaka (Varanasi, 1971), on the Narpati Jayacaryā, is where the full-and-empty reasoning is most systematically applied to the approach, the petition and the contest; Narapati's own text raises the stakes of the same rule from the householder's doorstep to the battlefield. The doctrine is one; only the scale changes.