The ninety-six tattvas

Thathvikas expand the description of the existing apparatus; they are not sixty additional supreme principles.

The 36 Tattvas gives the three groups: five pure, seven Vidya and twenty-four Atma tattvas. The present account adds 25 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 3 = 60 developments. Together they make ninety-six.

A faculty and its activity can receive separate entries in this fuller description. Speech as a capacity belongs among the thirty-six; speaking is also named among the sixty. Likewise, a gross element and the bodily features associated with it occupy different places in the reckoning. These are related ways of describing experience, not ninety-six unrelated substances.

The reckoning followed here ends its sixty with three ahankaras. The shorter account in The 36 Tattvas, following Siddhanta Gnana Ratnavali, instead ends with three desires. Both totals are sixty, but their contents differ. A familiar total does not guarantee an identical list.

✦The sixty in their groups

The three gunas and three forms of ahankara describe the material apparatus of thought and action. They are not ingredients from which the conscious soul is manufactured. Naming desire or fear within an elemental group likewise records the associations Siddhanta makes; it does not turn a feeling into an isolated piece of a gross element.

The vayus name vital functions and the nadis their traditional pathways; both belong to the equipment of embodied life.

The names follow the Siddhanta reckoning. The first table adds Swami Sivananda's account in The Science of Pranayama as a comparative explanation of their work. The second uses the ten-channel account in Agathiyar Nool Thirattu. These descriptions concern traditional accounts of subtle function, rather than an identification of each name with an anatomical nerve or vessel.

Purudan here is a channel name. It is distinct from Purusha tattva, the designation of the soul joined to its conditioning principles. A repeated name must be understood within its own list.

The five actions of the organs are more immediate to recognise: vasanam, speaking; gamanam, going; danam, giving or taking; visargam, discharge; and anandam, sexual enjoyment. Here anandam names an embodied function. It is not the limitless bliss of the Lord.

The four speech modes likewise trace a function: subtle speech, undifferentiated inner formation, inwardly articulated speech and audible utterance. They are named Sukshma, Paisanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari. Their fuller account belongs with the six paths of sound and objects; they are included here to complete the sixty.

Emergence has distinct branches and presiding agencies; Siva orders Maya for the soul without becoming its material.

Thotram, தோற்றம், is emergence into differentiated operation. The account gives Suddha Maya and Asuddha Maya as distinct material branches. Siva presides over the pure group; Ananta Deva over the Vidya group; Srikantha Rudra over the twenty-four Atma principles. Their agency belongs within Siva's governance.

Read the following flow in sections. A new branch is named when the account changes branch; adjacency in the list does not make everything one continuous chain.

1. 1

   Pure branch: Suddha Maya

   Under Siva: Nada, Bindu, Sadasiva, Isvara and Suddhavidya; Nada and Bindu are associated with Siva and Sakti tattvas

2. 2

   Impure branch: Asuddha Maya

   Under Ananta Deva: time, Niyati and Kalai branch from Maya

3. 3

   Kalai to Vidya, then Raga

   Limited action, knowing and desire become available to the obscured soul

4. 4

   Purusha as conjunction

   The soul joined to the five conditions is designated Purusha; the soul is not a material product

5. 5

   Kalai's material branch to Mula Prakriti

   Under Srikantha Rudra, the basis of the twenty-four is furnished

6. 6

   Chittam or the gunas in equilibrium

   The causal account is related to the inner-instrument count without adding an extra numbered item

7. 7

   Buddhi to Ahankara

   Determination and the assertion of I and mine become differentiated

8. 8

   Sattvic branch

   Taijasa: Manam and the five knowing faculties

9. 9

   Rajasic branch

   Vaikarika: the five acting faculties

10. 10

    Tamasic branch

    Bhutadi: the five tanmatras, sound, touch, form, taste and smell

11. 11

    Gross elemental manifestation

    Space, air, fire, water and earth, with their corresponding subtle objects

The tanmatras are subtle objects, not the gross elements themselves. Hearing is not sound, and sound is not the ear. The traditional tables associate the five knowing faculties with sound, touch, form, taste and smell; its elemental correspondences link ear with space, skin with air, eye with fire, tongue with water and nose with earth.

Those correspondences should be read beside the causal branches. A faculty's object and elemental support do not replace the account of its emergence from ahankara. Keeping the two questions separate prevents a table of functions from becoming a contradictory second creation diagram.

✦Keeping the count at thirty-six

Prakriti names the causal basis. Its balanced gunas are related to Chittam in this exposition; Buddhi and Ahankara follow, while Manam belongs to the sattvic branch. The four inner instruments remain Chittam, Buddhi, Ahankara and Manam. Adding Prakriti and Gunam as two further numbered instruments would change the count.

Return reverses the dependence of effects upon causes; the soul is not dissolved into the material it used.

Odukkam, ஒடுக்கம், is the subsiding of a manifested effect into its causal condition. Siddhiyar's account of emergence and withdrawal keeps the material cause available when its manifest forms cease. The reverse route therefore follows the branches back, not the numbers as an undifferentiated countdown.

1. 1

   Gross elements withdraw

   Earth, water, fire, air and space subside through their subtle causal order

2. 2

   The subtle objects withdraw

   The tanmatra branch returns to Bhutadi ahankara

3. 3

   The faculty branches withdraw

   Acting faculties return through Vaikarika; knowing faculties and Manam through Taijasa

4. 4

   Ahankara returns through Buddhi

   The differentiated inner operations subside into their prior causal condition

5. 5

   The Prakriti branch subsides

   The balanced-guna or Chittam condition returns through Mula Prakriti towards Kalai

6. 6

   The Vidya conditions withdraw

   Raga, Vidya and the other conditions return through their respective causes into Asuddha Maya

7. 7

   The pure order withdraws in reverse

   Suddhavidya, Isvara, Sadasiva, Bindu and Nada subside into Suddha Maya

8. 8

   Manifest equipment rests in its causes

   Siva remains the Lord; the soul remains distinct from the withdrawn apparatus

The two Maya branches are not collapsed into one another. Nor is the last line a claim that the soul has been manufactured, destroyed or absorbed as a portion of matter. Purusha's designation concerns a conjunction; the withdrawal of the conditions does not turn the conscious soul into their material cause.

Cosmic withdrawal also differs from liberation. The soul can lose access to its instruments while Anavam remains. For freedom, the bond's obscuring hold must be removed through grace. Returning to a cause is an account of the apparatus; knowing Siva through grace is a change in the soul's relation to bondage.

Shapes, colours, letters and divine acts give the elements a contemplative order alongside their functions.

Siddhanta teaching places the five elements within a symbolic scheme. A square or crescent here is a form used to contemplate an element, not a statement that every portion of earth or water has that outline. The correspondences gather material function, sacred sound and divine agency.

Unmai Vilakkam 7 gives La, Va, Ra, Ya, A. Some Siddhanta accounts follow that sequence; others give the different space letter shown above. These are different letters, and each belongs with its own textual and ritual tradition.

The act column belongs to this fivefold correspondence. It does not mean that a material element consciously performs the Lord's work by itself. The element, its presiding deity and the Lord's governance remain distinguishable. Unmai Vilakkam joins these relations to its wider inquiry into the soul and grace.

Read the causal account and the expanded count together, then return to the distinction between the soul and its instruments.

• Unmai Vilakkam, Tamil text: verses 5–22, the elements, faculties and three tattva groups.
• Sivagnana Siddhiyar, Tamil text: Supakkam 144–155, the lower causal branches and functions.
• T. N. Ramachandran's Unmai Vilakkam exposition: the relation of Prakriti, Gunam and Chittam.
• Siddhanta Gnana Ratnavali: II.45–47, a different sixty-item reckoning.
• Swami Sivananda, The Science of Pranayama: the comparative explanation of the ten vayu functions.

The 36 Tattvas remains the starting map. Unmai Vilakkam asks who knows through the apparatus, and Sivaprakasam carries that distinction towards the soul's ripening and grace.