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Kara-nyāsa’s six loci, the ṣaḍaṅga body map, the daśa-mudrā ring on the nine enclosures, the Amṛtasiddhi transmission tree — and the finger-to-element scheme shown beside the passage that refutes it.
Five drawings: the six kara-nyāsa loci; the finger-to-element scheme shown beside the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā passage that refutes it; the ṣaḍaṅga body map; the daśa-mudrā ring on the nine enclosures; and the Amṛtasiddhi transmission tree. The written module is the Mudrā lens.
Before mudrā is anything a hand does, it is what consciousness does: vimarśa, the reflective self-awareness that turns on its own light. The Yoginīhṛdaya places this operation on the cidātmabhitti, the wall or screen of the Self — the universe shown, delighted in, and dissolved, on a surface that is not other than the one watching.
Source: Yoginīhṛdaya 1.56–57; Abhinavagupta, Tantrāloka (bimba-pratibimba); Kṣemarāja; Vijñāna Bhairava
The five elements are dissolved into one another inside the practitioner’s own body — earth into water, water into fire, fire into air, air into space — and then rebuilt in reverse. The body is unmade and remade before it is used.
Source: Śāradā Tilaka; Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 3.70–81 (the dhāraṇā element-map); Śaiva paddhatis
Thumb is fire, index is air, middle is space, ring is earth, little is water. Hold two together for a set number of minutes and an imbalance is said to correct. It is the most widely repeated claim in the entire subject.
Source: Acharya Keshav Dev, Mudra Vigyan, and successor popularisers; Swami Satyananda, Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha (1969); contrast Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 3.70–81
Mudrā is usually translated "gesture," and that translation is the reason most of this subject is misunderstood. The word carries at least seven distinct senses that share nothing but the syllables: the ritual gesture-seal; the haṭha body-lock; parched grain, the fourth of the five makāras; the Vajrayāna consort; a class of Śrīvidyā goddesses; the ordinary seal, stamp or coin; and the doctrinal seal that marks a thing as belonging. Popular wellness writing collapses all seven into "healing hand gestures," which is the thinnest and youngest branch of the whole field.
Source: Yoginīhṛdaya 1.56–57 (Padoux 2013; the same passage is I.57–58 in Kaviraj 1979) with Amṛtānanda’s Dīpikā; Viṣṇu-saṃhitā 7.43 — number not confirmed against a critical edition; Siddha-Siddhānta-Paddhati; Arthaśāstra (the lexical sense)
Abhaya the fearlessness hand, varada the boon hand, dhyāna the meditation hand, bhūmisparśa the earth-touching hand, dharmacakra-pravartana the wheel-turning hand, vitarka the reasoning hand, añjali the joined palms — and a dozen more, each fixed by text.
Source: Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇa III; Mānasāra; Aṃśumadbhedāgama; Rūpamaṇḍana; Pratimālakṣaṇa; Śilparatna
The Nāṭyaśāstra gives twenty-four single hands and thirteen joined hands, and then a further set used only in pure dance — three classes, though the field usually reports two.
Source: Nāṭyaśāstra 9; Nandikeśvara, Abhinaya Darpaṇa; Puṇḍarīka Viṭṭhala, Nartananirṇaya (16th c.); Coomaraswamy, The Mirror of Gesture (1917)
Mudrā systems travelled with tantra out of India, through Central Asia into Chinese mìjiào and from there into Japanese Shingon, where in-zō remains a living and highly elaborated practice.
Source: Shingon in-zō literature; scholarship on the kuji nine-syllable formula and its Daoist origin
Nyāsa means placing. It is the procedure by which something — a syllable, a deity, an element, a whole set of tattvas — is installed onto a named location of the body, with a touch and a mantra, until the body is no longer generic. Ritual does not begin until the body has been made into an altar this way.
Source: Śāradā Tilaka (11th–12th c. per Goudriaan & Gupta; a minority 8th-c. dating circulates); Mantra Mahodadhi 1588 with the Naukā; Somaśambhupaddhati; Īśānaśivagurudeva Paddhati; proto-nyāsa in Vedic ritual
Six loci, taken in order: the two thumbs, the index fingers, the middle fingers, the ring fingers, the little fingers, and the palms with the backs of the hands. Each receives a syllable of the mantra being installed, with the touch specified.
Source: Śāradā Tilaka; Mantra Mahodadhi; Parāśurāma Kalpasūtra with Rāmeśvara’s commentary
Six limbs, in a fixed order: hṛdaya the heart, śiras the head, śikhā the tuft, kavaca the armour, netra the eyes, astra the weapon. Each is touched and sealed with its own syllable.
Source: Śāradā Tilaka; Somaśambhupaddhati; the Śaiva and Śākta paddhati corpus
Mahāmudrā, mahābandha and mahāvedha — the three great seals, taught together and in that order in every haṭha text that has them.
Source: Amṛtasiddhi (ed. Mallinson & Szántó, IFP/EFEO 2021); Haṭhapradīpikā 3; Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 3
The earliest text of the haṭha tradition, and it is not a haṭha text by self-description. Composed before 1160, probably in the Deccan, it teaches the yogic body and the three seals without using the word haṭha as a system name.
Source: Mallinson & Szántó, The Amṛtasiddhi and Amṛtasiddhimūla (IFP/EFEO 2021, open access since Dec 2022); Amaraughaprabodha
Three locks: jālandhara at the throat, uḍḍīyāna at the abdomen, mūla at the perineum. Applied singly or together, they are the structural half of the seal repertoire.
Source: Haṭhapradīpikā 3; Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 3.82 — number not confirmed against a critical edition; Kuvalayananda & Karambelkar, Yoga-Mīmāṃsā (Kaivalyadhāma, 1956–57); Bhole, Kulhánek & Nešpor 1979
Khecarī means moving in the void, and the word carries three separate referents that the literature routinely conflates.
Source: Mallinson, The Khecarīvidyā of Ādinātha (2007); Yoginīhṛdaya; Haṭhapradīpikā 3
Ten mudrās, mapped onto the nine enclosures of the Śrīcakra. The Yoginīhṛdaya treats them first, not last — before the enclosures themselves — which tells you how central they were understood to be.
Source: Yoginīhṛdaya; Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇava with the Setubandha; Parāśurāma Kalpasūtra; Nityotsava; Tantrarāja Tantra; Lalitā Sahasranāma 977
The tenth mudrā, trikhaṇḍā, described in the Yoginīhṛdaya as vyāpikā — all-pervading. It does not sit on an enclosure; it stands to the whole ring as the bindu stands to the Śrīcakra.
Source: Yoginīhṛdaya; Parāśurāma Kalpasūtra; Nityotsava; contemporary Śrīvidyā practitioner sources on gating
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