Story of Śarīra

(body) Body is constituted of the five elements, earth, water, fire, air and sky (ether). What is solid or hard in the body is earth; liquid, is water; hot or burning, fire; what gives motion to the body is air and what are pores in the body is sky.

Body is that which exists and functions with the five organs of knowledge eye, ear, nose, tongue and skin, and the five organs of action like Upastha (sex organ), Pāṇi (hand), Pāda (leg) and Vāṇī (speech). The body depends on the six tastes, sweet, sour, saltish, bitter, hot and astringent. (Kaṭu, amla, madhura, lavaṇa, tikta and kaṣāya). The body is composed of seven internal elements (dhātus) of seven colours, white, red, dark (black), black and white, yellow, brassy and faint-white (Pāṇḍura). Vātapittakaphas (wind, bile and phlegm) are intertwined in the body. Since the body is formed of vital fluids from the sex organs of the father and the mother it is dviyoni (males with male and females with female organs of reproduction). The body exists by four kinds of foods, bhojya, bhakṣya, khādya and lehya. After coitus, within one night, the male and female semen and blood combine into one body in the womb (Kalala). Within seven days it becomes foamy (budbuda). After a fortnight it becomes solid (piṇḍa) and after one month hard (kaṭhina). During the second month the head of the child is formed; in the third month its feet: in the fourth its ankles, stomach and waist are formed. In the fifth month is formed the back (Pṛṣṭha) and face, nose, eyes and ears are formed in the sixth month. During the seventh month life enters the child’s body. By the eighth month all the signs of the human being are completed in the child. If the vitality and effulgence of the mother are more than those of the father the off-spring will be female and vice versa; if both are in exactly equal proportions the child will be a eunuch, neither male nor female. If the parents were sad and worried during the time of the mother’s conception, the child born would be either blind, lame or a pigmy. If the semen is cleft into two by wind (in the womb) the mother would give birth to twins. In the ninth month the child will be gifted with knowledge and it will remember to what caste it belonged and what all good and evil actions it did in its previous life.