Note 299 — Chapter II · (continued 3)

लिङ्गशरीर called also शुच्मशरीर sukshma sarîra or “subtile body.”

It is essential to know the exact meaning which the Hindus attach to the three words, linga, linga śarîra, and sthula śarîra.

I must premise that, according to them, the soul is incased as in a sheath, or rather in a succession of sheaths. The first, or inner case, is the intellectual one: it is composed of the pure, or simple, elements, uncombined, the archetypes of elementary matter (तन्मात्र tanma tra), and consists of the intellect (buddhi), joined with the five senses. The next is the mental sheath, in which mind is joined with the preceding. A third sheath comprises the organs of action and the vital faculties, and is termed the organic or vital case.

These three sheaths (कोषाः kóshas) constitute the subtile frame, s ukshma śarîra, or linga-śarîra, “the rudimental body which attends the soul in its transmigration.”

Linga is “the naked rudiment;” the word expresses “designating, apprising,” synonimous with “characteristic,” rendered also by “mergent,” and by “subtile.” The linga and linga-śarîra are ordinarily, though perhaps not properly, confounded, the linga consisting of thirteen component parts, namely (see the table of categories, p. 122): of intellect, egotism, and the eleven organs; whilst the linga-s arîra adds to these a bodily frame, made up of the five rudimental elements. In this form however they always coexist; and it is not necessary to consider them as distinct.

The “gross body,” sthúla śarîra, is composed of the coarse elements formed by the combination of the simple elements in a particular proportion, which the Hindus determine with an acuteness, their own (see Vedanta sara, edit. of Calc., p. 11), but which is not necessary here to adduce. This exterior case, composed of elements so combined, is the “nutrimentitious sheath,” and being the scene of coarse fruition, is therefore termed “the gross body.” This is however animated from birth to death, in any step of its transmigration, by the interior rudiment confined to the first-mentioned inner case, which is called कारणशरीर kárańa-śarîra, “the causal frame”—(See Colebrooke on the Phil. of the Hindus in the Transact. of the R. A. Soc., Vol. II. Part I. pp 35, 36, etc., and Sankhya Karika, p. 129).