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The five subtle elements and the ten indriyas: the membrane where five faculties face outward and five face in.
This lens lights 5 points on the shared cross-section rather than replacing it. Every record below names its source, and carries one of three tags: classical where a named text can be cited, later addition where an idea is modern and is said to be modern, and sources differ where the tradition itself disagrees.
Gandha is smell as a quality — the fifth and last tanmātra, carried by earth alone. It is the quality that marks the densest end of the descent, and the only one no other element possesses.
Earth carries all five qualities, which is why it is the only element available to every sense and why smell belongs to it alone. Gandha pairs with the nose among the senses of knowing and with generation among the organs of action. It emerges last in the sequence and is the point at which the tanmātra series completes.
Source: Sāṃkhya Kārikā (gandha, accumulation); the olfaction parallel: modern resonance, not classical claim
Rasa is taste as a quality — the fourth tanmātra, carried by water and by earth. It is the sense the tradition connects most directly to what is taken in and made part of the body.
Water carries four qualities, adding taste to sound, touch and form. Rasa pairs with the tongue among the senses of knowing and with excretion among the organs of action. Because taste requires moisture, the scheme holds that nothing dry can be tasted, which is offered as confirmation of the assignment.
Source: Sāṃkhya Kārikā; Caraka Saṃhitā (rasa dhātu, six rasas); Nāṭyaśāstra (rasa in aesthetics); rasaśāstra (mercury)
Rūpa is form and colour together — what sight is of. The Sanskrit does not separate shape from hue, which is itself a claim about what seeing delivers.
Fire carries three qualities: sound, touch and form. Rūpa pairs with the eye among the senses of knowing and with the foot among the organs of action, on the reasoning that motion is fire's quality and the foot is motion's instrument. The pairing of sight with fire follows from light being fire's own property.
Source: Sāṃkhya Kārikā (rūpa as tanmātra); Buddhist Abhidharma (rūpa-skandha)
Sparśa is touch as a quality — contact considered in itself, before there is a surface doing the contacting. It is the second tanmātra, and air is the first element to carry two.
Air carries sound and touch, since each element accumulates the tanmātras of those before it. Sparśa pairs with the skin among the senses of knowing and with the hand among the organs of action, and it is the quality by which air is held to be perceptible at all.
Source: Sāṃkhya Kārikā (accumulation of tanmātras)
Śabda is sound considered as what hearing is of — not the vibration and not the sensation, but the quality itself. It is the first tanmātra and the only one ether carries.
In the Sāṃkhya sequence śabda emerges from ahaṃkāra under tamas and gives rise to ākāśa, so sound is prior to space rather than propagated through it. It pairs with the ear among the senses of knowing and with speech among the organs of action, which places its production and its reception on the same tattva level.
Source: Sāṃkhya Kārikā (tanmātra sequence); Mīmāṃsā (śabda as eternal, apauruṣeya Veda)
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