been elaborately discussed in the Gommentaries on the Sankhya Darshanam(i). The, Pjah Vindus (germ cells) pulsate with the vibrations (rhythmic movements), which are^the relics of the primordial ethereal vibrations, which ,ushered in the birth-throes of the universe. ^ As such, they are essential to the evolution of life ; and man, as an offspring of the universe, still retains them in his reproductive cells as the best condition for calling out the life in his offspring, when its seK enters into the impregnated ovum in the mother's womb. Life is the essence of self, and not the prjoduct of any chemical or physiological process. It is an influx ; and microscopes and spectroscopes mav not expose to view the hinterlands of birth and genesis. Perhaps it was this theorv of will-force and intensity of parental desire as determining the sex in the child, together with the facts of parthenogenesis observed in lower animals, from which Sushruta was disposed to extend the analogy to the human species, and believed that conception without sexual union is possible in women.
The conception of the nature of these Matrika and J '.rika Shaktis is more clearly set forth in the Pauranika n jth regarding the origin (etiology) of fever ; Sushruta relates the story as follows : — Daksha, the father of the universal mother, (or constructive metabolism in man) insulted the divine father, her consort (destructive meta- bolism), by witholding his quota of sacrificial oblations. The wrath of the insulted deity broke out in the shape of a morbific heat (hyperpyrexia) which is fever. The process of digestion in man has been often compared 'to an act
(l) (a) (
Indic characters)
Sankhya Sutra Ch. I. 122.
(b) (Indic characters)
Ibid. Ch. III. 3.
(c) (Indic characters)
Sankhya Prabachana Vashya (Vijn^n Bhikshu) Ch. I. S. I.
