Śivasaṃhitā 4.24

This verse opens an enumeration of haṭhayoga’s great techniques, presented in series as a coherent ensemble. The first three share the prefix mahā («great, supreme»): mahāmudrā, mahābandha, mahāvedha. The fourth, khecarī, belongs to a distinct but equally elevated category. The enumeration serves a pedagogical function: it establishes the canon of the highest practices.

Mahāmudrā («the great seal»), mahābandha («the great lock»), and mahāvedha («the great piercing») form a functional triad in which each technique prepares or complements the next. Khecarī — from kha («space, ether») and cara («one who moves») — is «she who moves through space,» the tongue mudrā that, according to the text, enables the yogi to dwell in the space of pure consciousness.

This enumeration appears across multiple texts of the haṭhayoga corpus, including the Haṭhapradīpikā (III.6-7) and the Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā, indicating that by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries these four practices had crystallized as the undisputed core of advanced mudrā. Their systematic grouping reflects the maturity of a tradition that had already organized its techniques into well-defined pedagogical hierarchies.