Saṅkalpa and the ontology of invested forms: a Sanskritic typology of consciousness–form relations from Upaniṣad and Epic

Abstract

This paper reconstructs, from Sanskrit sources, a philosophical account of how purposive consciousness persists in the forms it produces. The concept of saṅkalpa, read across Chāndogya Upaniṣad 7.4, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.5 and the ritual practice of declared intention, supplies the ground for what I call the investment hypothesis: humanly organised forms carry forward, as a structured constraint on future possibility, the directional organisation of the consciousness that made or used them, and they continue to do so after that consciousness has withdrawn. Three narratives are then asked to do systematic work. The Trojan Horse exemplifies constitutive investment, a form built around a purpose. The Aśvasena episode of the Karṇa-parvan exemplifies supervening investment, an autonomous resolve covertly entering a form already in use. Hanumān's carrying of the herb-bearing mountain in the Yuddhakāṇḍa exemplifies incorporative mobilisation, the temporary expansion of an agent's action-body to include an external form. Together they show that consciousness and form are related not by one structure but by a family of structures, each with its own mechanism, persistence profile and ethical consequence. A comparative section places the typology beside the Māori hau, Kongo minkisi, Buddhist image consecration, Byzantine icon theology and the Japanese tsukumogami, and argues that while the intuition of the invested form is very widely attested, the Sanskrit narrative tradition is distinctive in presenting all three topologies with the precision required for philosophical analysis.