hindu-cosmosWe're still mapping where this idea was first discussed. Key passages and related ideas below.
Tattva 18 — Touch (Tvak)
The power to feel: the subtle faculty of touch and contact, working through the skin.
Tvak is the capacity for touch — the subtle power of feeling contact, pressure, and texture that operates through the skin. The second of the five knowing-faculties, it is how the embodied self senses what it meets physically. Like the other sense-capacities, it is a subtle principle, distinct from the bodily organ through which it works.
Key passages(2)
High
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3,2.9↗explains
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
High
'The skin is one Graha, and that is seized by touch as the Atigraha, for with the skin one perceives touch. These are the eight Grahas and the eight Atigrahas.'
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