The Ṣaṭcakranirṇaya: A Kashmiri Yoga Text on the Rise of Kuṇḍalinī

The Ṣaṭcakranirṇaya is a brief and hitherto unedited Kashmiri Sanskrit treatise on yoga, composed in the Śāradā script by an anonymous author. As part of the Ka-Sa-Ha Rakṣa roject funded by the ERC at the University of Marburg, a critical edition of this work is currently in preparation, alongside several other Kashmiri treatises on yoga.

The text is devoted entirely to expounding an early Śaiva yogic paradigm involving six cakras, sixteen ādhāras, three lakṣyas, and five vyomans—a schema closely associated with the rise of kuṇḍalinī. This paradigm is first codified in the Netratantra and features in other Śaiva tantric works. Variants of this system were later integrated into the Haṭha and Rājayoga traditions from the medieval period onwards. However, there is no conclusive evidence to place the Ṣaṭcakranirṇaya within this corpus. Rather, the teachings of the text align more closely with Śaiva yoga variants of the paradigm.

This paper traces the historical evolution and multiple iterations of this influential yogic paradigm, presents the Ṣaṭcakranirṇaya and its unique contributions, and concludes by situating the text within the broader history of yoga.