It is essential to know the exact meaning which the Hindus attach to the three words, linga, linga śarîra, and sthula śarîra.
I must premise that, according to them, the soul is incased as in a sheath, or rather in a succession of sheaths. The first, or inner case, is the intellectual one: it is composed of the pure, or simple, elements, uncombined, the archetypes of elementary matter (तन्मात्र tanma tra), and consists of the intellect (buddhi), joined with the five senses. The next is the mental sheath, in which mind is joined with the preceding. A third sheath comprises the organs of action and the vital faculties, and is termed the organic or vital case.
These three sheaths (कोषाः kóshas) constitute the subtile frame, s ukshma śarîra, or linga-śarîra, “the rudimental body which attends the soul in its transmigration.”
Linga is “the naked rudiment;” the word expresses “designating, apprising,” synonimous with “characteristic,” rendered also by “mergent,” and by “subtile.” The linga and linga-śarîra are ordinarily, though perhaps not properly, confounded, the linga consisting of thirteen component parts, namely (see the [table of categories], p. 122): of intellect, egotism, and the eleven organs; whilst the linga-s arîra adds to these a bodily frame, made up of the five rudimental elements. In this form however they always coexist; and it is not necessary to consider them as distinct.
The “gross body,” sthúla śarîra, is composed of the coarse elements formed by the combination of the simple elements in a particular proportion, which the Hindus determine with an acuteness, their own (see Vedanta sara, edit. of Calc., p. 11), but which is not necessary here to adduce. This exterior case, composed of elements so combined, is the “nutrimentitious sheath,” and being the scene of coarse fruition, is therefore termed “the gross body.” This is however animated from birth to death, in any step of its transmigration, by the interior rudiment confined to the first-mentioned inner case, which is called कारणशरीर kárańa-śarîra, “the causal frame”—(See Colebrooke on the Phil. of the Hindus in the Transact. of the R. A. Soc., Vol. II. Part I. pp 35, 36, etc., and Sankhya Karika, p. 129).
[300] वैकुणटं is the Paradise, or world of Vichnu; its site is variously described, either as in the northern ocean, or on the eastern peak of Meru.
[301] Here the same as linga sáríra. Parusha means generally “a subtile body;” it is unconfined, too subtile for restraint, hence termed अतिवाहिक ativáhika, “surpassing the wind in swiftness,” incapable of enjoyment until it be invested with a grosser body, affected, nevertheless, by sensations.
[302] अन्धतमसं “great darkness.”
Without entering here into the details of metaphysical refinements which the Hindus exhibit in their various systems of philosophy, we may content ourselves to state that, in general, they adopt two kinds of bodies or persons, a subtile, and a substantial or grosser one. The first transmigrates through successive bodies, which it assumes as a mimic shifts his disguises to represent various characters. In the Bhagavad gita, it is intimated, that soul retains the senses and mind in the intervals of migration: “At the time that spirit obtains a body, and when it abandons one, it migrates, taking with it those senses, as the wind wafts along with it the perfumes of the flowers.” The grosser body, propagated by generation, is perishable. According to Manu (XII. 16): “After death, another body, composed of the five rudimental elements, is immediately produced, for wicked men, that they may suffer the tortures of the infernal regions.” This concords with what is said above.
[303] They are also called Brahma Sampradáyis. The founder of this sect was Madhwácharya, a Brahman, born in the Saka-year 1121 (A. D. 1199), in Tuluva, on the western coast of the Indian peninsula; he died in his seventy-ninth year. He was early initiated into the order of Anchorets, and devoted to Vichnu; he composed thirty-seven works, built eight temples, and founded as many maths, or “monasteries” of his particular sect, which is one of the four great sects. The superiors, or “Gurus” of it are Brahmans and Sanyásis; their lay-votaries are members of every class of society except the lowest; they profess perpetual celibacy. These sectaries reside now chiefly in the peninsula, and are altogether unknown in Gangetic Hindostan. To what is above said of their doctrine, I shall add, that they distinguish the principle of life from the supreme Being, or they deny the absolute unity of the Deity, and the possibility of absorption into the universal spirit, and the loss of independent existence after death.—(See an explicit account of this sect, by Professor Wilson, As. Res., vol. XVI. p. 100-108.)