Indriyas · Suvarnaveda

THE LIVING ARCHIVE

About Indriyas

The five Jnanendriyas, also called Buddhindriyas, are hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell. Their familiar bodily associations are the ear, skin, eye, tongue and nose. Here the classification concerns the capacities of perception, rather than merely an anatomical list of visible body parts.

The five Karmendriyas concern speech, grasping, locomotion, excretion and generation. They are associated with the voice, hands, feet, organs of elimination and reproductive organs. Manas is counted as the eleventh faculty because its coordinating and deliberative activity relates to both perception and action.

AT A GLANCE

Identity & Context

Identity: Cosmic Principle
Form: The Faculties of Perception and Action
Tradition: Puranic Cosmology
Also Known As: Indriya · Faculties of Perception and Action

THE STORY

The Idea Explained

Perception, Action and the Mind

The perceptive faculties receive their respective objects: hearing is directed toward sound, sight toward visible form, and the other senses toward touch, taste and smell. The active faculties perform different functions, such as speaking, taking hold of something or moving from place to place. Receiving an impression and responding through action are connected processes, but are not identical activities.

Manas participates in both sides of this arrangement. In the wider Samkhya analysis, mind, Ahamkara and Buddhi have distinguishable inner functions: coordination or deliberation, I-making, and ascertainment. Counting Manas with the faculties does not make it identical to the conscious Purusha for whom experience is presented.

A Branch of Manifestation

The eleven faculties belong to one branch arising from Ahamkara; the five Tanmatras belong to another, and the gross elements develop through the latter. Indriyas are therefore not simply the next thing produced after earth or water in a single straight chain. Their relationship to the elements is the relationship between capacities of experience and the world encountered through them.

The Puranic accounts describe these powers within a cosmos sustained by divine agency and connect them with presiding deities. Those deities, the faculties themselves and their bodily seats remain distinguishable. The Vishnu Purana also explains that differentiated principles must associate before an inhabited world can arise.

ROLE & ESSENCE

Attributes & Significance

The Indriyas explain how a differentiated cosmos is experienced from within an embodied life. They make the distinction between a sensible quality, a perceiving capacity and an active response clear, while Manas connects the perceptive and active sides.

Role

The Indriyas are the faculties through which embodied beings perceive and act. Samkhya’s elevenfold group comprises five perceptive faculties, five active faculties and Manas, the mind that coordinates both. They form a distinct development from Ahamkara alongside the five Tanmatras.

TRADITION & MEANING

Traditions & Interpretations

Samkhya groups the eleven faculties under the Sattvic development of Ahamkara with an active contribution from Rajas. The Vishnu Purana discusses the ten organs, mind and presiding powers with its own distribution of the Gunas. Their common vocabulary does not make every detail of these accounts identical.