The Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā, the seven limbs of haṭha

A dialogue about the body as a pot

The text opens as a conversation. Caṇḍa Kāpāli comes to the hut of the sage Gheraṇḍa, bows, and asks to learn ghaṭastha yoga (1.1-1.2). Ghaṭa is a pot or jar in Monier-Williams' dictionary, and here it means the body. The image that justifies the whole method comes in verse 8:

आमकुम्भ इवाम्भःस्थो जीर्यमाणः सदा घटः । योगानलेन संदह्य घटशुद्धिं समाचरेत् ॥

āma-kumbha ivāmbhaḥ-stho jīryamāṇaḥ sadā ghaṭaḥ | yogānalena saṃdahya ghaṭa-śuddhiṃ samācaret ||

Like an unbaked pot standing in water, the body is always wasting away. Firing it in the fire of yoga, one should purify the pot.

Date. The text names no date or historical author. Jason Birch, following James Mallinson, places it in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, which makes it later than the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (fifteenth century). It shares many verses and techniques with the Pradīpikā; it even opens with a version of the Pradīpikā's first verse.

The seven limbs

Where Patañjali has eight limbs, Gheraṇḍa has seven, each with its result:

षट्कर्मणा शोधनं च आसनेन भवेद्दृढम् । मुद्रया स्थिरता चैव प्रत्याहारेण धैर्यता ॥

ṣaṭ-karmaṇā śodhanaṃ ca āsanena bhaved dṛḍham | mudrayā sthiratā caiva pratyāhāreṇa dhairyatā ||

By the six acts comes purification; by posture one becomes firm; by mudrā, steadiness; by withdrawal of the senses, calm.

प्राणायामाल्लाघवं च ध्यानात्प्रत्यक्षमात्मनि । समाधिना निर्लिप्तं च मुक्तिरेव न संशयः ॥

prāṇāyāmāl lāghavaṃ ca dhyānāt pratyakṣam ātmani | samādhinā nirliptaṃ ca muktir eva na saṃśayaḥ ||

By breath control, lightness; by meditation, direct perception of the self; by samādhi, freedom from taint: this is liberation, there is no doubt.

Verse counts in the GRETIL edition: 61, 45, 100, 18, 99, 23 and 23. Vasu's 1914-1915 translation mostly keeps the same numbers, with small shifts in chapter 5 (the eight kumbhakas are 5.47 in GRETIL, 5.46 in Vasu).

Chapter 1: the six cleansing acts

The list (1.12) almost matches the Pradīpikā's, but nauli is called laulikī, and each act is divided further. Dhauti alone has four kinds: internal (with four sub-kinds, among them swallowing air, drinking water and the "fire" practice of drawing the navel back towards the spine a hundred times), cleaning of the teeth, of the heart region and of the rectum (1.13-1.20). Kapālabhāti has three forms: breathing in through one nostril and out through the other, drawing water in through the nose and out through the mouth, and the reverse (1.55-1.60). See our ṣaṭkarma page before trying any of them.

Chapter 2: thirty-two postures

तेषां मध्ये विशिष्टानि षोडशोनं शतं कृतम् । तेषां मध्ये मर्त्यलोके द्वात्रिंशदासनं शुभम् ॥

teṣāṃ madhye viśiṣṭāni ṣoḍaśonaṃ śataṃ kṛtam | teṣāṃ madhye martya-loke dvātriṃśad āsanaṃ śubham ||

Among them, a hundred less sixteen were singled out as excellent; and among those, thirty-two postures are beneficial in the world of mortals.

"Among them" refers to the previous verse: Śiva taught as many postures as there are species of living beings, eighty-four hundred thousand (2.1). The thirty-two (2.3-2.6) are:

The grouping is ours, from the descriptions in 2.7-2.45. Beware of identical names: Gheraṇḍa's uṣṭrāsana (camel) is done lying on the belly (2.41), his utkaṭāsana is a squat on the toes with the buttocks on the heels (2.27) and his garuḍāsana (eagle) is a kneeling seat (2.37): none is the modern pose of the same name. The forward bend is listed as paścimottāna (2.4), the name used today, but described as paścimatāna, as in the Pradīpikā (2.26). The names of the postures page explains what each word means.

Chapter 3: twenty-five mudrās

The list (3.1-3.3) takes up the Pradīpikā's ten and adds others: nabho-mudrā, yoni, taḍāgī (the tank), māṇḍukī (the frog), śāmbhavī, five concentrations on the elements counted as five mudrās, aśvinī (from aśva, horse: contracting the anus), pāśinī (the noose), kākī (the crow), mātaṅgī (the elephant) and bhujaṅginī (the serpent). Like the Pradīpikā, the text keeps them secret and promises extraordinary powers; read these promises as those of a devotional manual.

Chapter 4: withdrawing the senses

The shortest chapter is perhaps the most usable today:

यतो यतो निश्चरति मनश्चञ्चलमस्थिरम् । ततस्ततो नियम्यैतदात्मन्येव वशं नयेत् ॥

yato yato niścarati manaś cañcalam asthiram | tatas tato niyamyaitad ātmany eva vaśaṃ nayet ||

Wherever the restless, unsteady mind wanders off, from there one should restrain it and bring it back under the control of the self.

The following verses apply the rule to each sense: wherever the gaze goes, praise and blame, pleasant or frightening sounds, heat and cold, pleasant and bad smells, tastes (4.3-4.7). The verse is word for word Bhagavad Gita 6.26: the haṭha manual borrows the Gītā's method. Our page on pratyāhāra turns it into a practice.

Chapter 5: breath, season and diet

Before breathing: the right place, the right time, moderate food, then the purification of the channels (5.2). The place is a hut in a well-governed land, not too far away, not in a forest or a city (5.3-5.7). Start in spring or autumn, never in winter, summer or the rains (5.8-5.9, 5.15). Fill half the stomach with food, a quarter with water and keep the last quarter for the movement of air (5.22). The channels are purified with the seed syllables (bīja) of air, fire and the moon (ṭhaṃ), repeated in a set rhythm of 16, 64 and 32 counts (5.36-5.45). Then come eight kumbhakas, two of them different from the Pradīpikā's:

सहितः सूर्यभेदश्च उज्जायी शीतली तथा । भस्त्रिका भ्रामरी मूर्च्छा केवली चाष्ट कुम्भिकाः ॥

sahitaḥ sūrya-bhedaś ca ujjāyī śītalī tathā | bhastrikā bhrāmarī mūrcchā kevalī cāṣṭa kumbhikāḥ ||

Sahita, sūrya-bheda, ujjāyī, śītalī, bhastrikā, bhrāmarī, mūrcchā and kevalī: these are the eight retentions.

The chapter also gives the ajapā gāyatrī, the "unrecited" mantra: the breath goes out with the sound haṃ and comes in with saḥ, 21,600 times in a day and a night (5.86-5.87). Our prāṇāyāma page gives the safe way in.

Chapters 6 and 7: meditation and samādhi

स्थूलं ज्योतिस्तथा सूक्ष्मं ध्यानस्य त्रिविधं विदुः । स्थूलं मूर्तिमयं प्रोक्तं ज्योतिस्तेजोमयं तथा । सूक्ष्मं बिन्दुमयं ब्रह्म कुण्डली परदेवता ॥

sthūlaṃ jyotis tathā sūkṣmaṃ dhyānasya trividhaṃ viduḥ | sthūlaṃ mūrtimayaṃ proktaṃ jyotis tejomayaṃ tathā | sūkṣmaṃ bindumayaṃ brahma kuṇḍalī paradevatā ||

Meditation is known to be of three kinds: gross, of light, and subtle. The gross is said to have a form; that of light is made of radiance; the subtle is brahman in the form of a point, Kuṇḍalī, the supreme goddess.

The gross meditation visualises your chosen deity on a jewelled island in an ocean of nectar within the heart (6.2-6.8), or the guru in the thousand-petalled lotus at the crown (6.9-6.14). Samādhi is of six kinds (7.5-7.6), each reached by one technique: śāmbhavī mudrā, khecarī, bhrāmarī, yoni mudrā, devotion (bhakti) and the "swoon of the mind" (manomūrcchā). The text ends on a devotional note: "Viṣṇu in the water, Viṣṇu on the land, Viṣṇu on the mountain top… the whole world is full of Viṣṇu" (7.18).

Gheraṇḍa and the Pradīpikā side by side

Free editions

• Sanskrit: GRETIL, after Peter Thomi's edition (1993).
• English, public domain: Śrīśa Chandra Vasu, The Gheranda Samhita, published with the Śiva Saṃhitā in volume 15 of the Sacred Books of the Hindus (Allahabad, 1914-1915), Sanskrit text and translation, on the Internet Archive. Vasu had already published a translation in 1895.
• Protected: modern translations, such as James Mallinson's (2004). Buy them; do not download pirated copies.

Questions people ask

Sources

1. Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā, Sanskrit text after the edition of Peter Thomi (Wichtrach, 1993), GRETIL, University of Göttingen checked October 17, 2026
2. The Sacred Books of the Hindus, vol. 15: the Śiva Saṃhitā and the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā, Sanskrit text with English translation by Śrīśa Chandra Vasu (Allahabad, 1914-1915), Internet Archive checked October 17, 2026
3. Jason Birch, The Meaning of haṭha in Early Haṭhayoga, Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.4 (2011), p. 527-554 (dates of the haṭha texts) checked October 17, 2026
4. Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), entry ghaṭa, Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries checked October 17, 2026

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