Mānavadharmaśāstra and Breath control

Linking to the injury—and self-injury discussed in the Mahābhārata—the Mānavadharmaśāstra (second to third century CE) teaches breath control to cleanse the ascetic of unwittingly injuring creatures (Mānavadharmaśāstra 6.69-72). Breath control is prescribed for burning away the faults of the organs: ‘As the impurities of metallic ores are burnt away when they are blasted in a furnace, so the faults of the organs are burnt away by suppressing the breath’ (Mānavadharmaśāstra 6.71) (Olivelle 2004/2009:103). O’Brien-Kop draws on this example from the Mānavadharmaśāstra in her discussion of the destruction of the germinating power of the seed by burning it in her study of Pātañjalayoga and Buddhism (2021). She notes that fire is necessary to remove the germinating impulse of the seed and that the image of heat or fire in the body itself is linked to tapas, but also to the medical context of fever, as a potentially healing force (2021:206). She notes that while kleśas are the faults that are burnt in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, in Brahmanism the related term doṣa is that which can be remedied by a counterstate.

She points to Mānavadharmaśāstra 6.72 as yogic meditation as counterstates, where the yogi ‘should burn away his faults by suppressing his breath’ (Olivelle 2005:152) and notes:

Being linked to defects of the body and their remedies, this metaphor maps qualities from the medical domain. Interestingly, however, the counterstate for eliminating the doṣas in the Mānavadharmaśāstra is not a remedy or antidote but rather the application of intense heat to destroy impurity. This image of intense heat to remove a problematic factor in the self is… the fire necessary to remove the germinating impulse of the seed. (O’Brien-Kop 2021:205n5)

The possible genealogy of baking the body as derived from agricultural metaphors of burning out the generative power of seeds (see O’Brien-Kop 2017, 2021) is intriguingly suggested by the title of the Yogabīja itself—‘the seed of yoga’.