YUG-SADDAN, or Yug-bmsht, or Yug-byasa, in Hindu belief are person.s who, by extraordinary pious pains, obtain miraculous longevity, pro longing their lives to some hundreds of years. As far as can be gathered, it is regarded by them as the faculty of drawing, by degrees, all the breath (or perhapst lie principle of life, or the soul) into the upper part of the head, and thus continue for any number of years the aspirant may have previously determined on, or, as others say, in proportion to his piety, in a state of insens ible absorption, exempt from the destructive operations of earth or water, but not of fire. The sect called 13yragi or Viragi arc apparently the most frequent and successful pretenders to this extraordinary power. Perhaps the following tale in Wilford's Eg,ypt and the Nile may allude to the practice. 011 the banks of the Kali dwelt a Brahman, whose name was Lechayanasa, a sage rigorously devout, skilled in the learning of the Vedas, and firmly attached to the worship of Hari ; but, having no male issue, he was long disconsolate, and made certain oblations to the god, which proved acceptable, so that his wife Saukriti became pregnant, after she had tasted part of the Charu, or cake of rice, which had been offered. In due time she was delivered of a beautiful boy, whom the Brahmans, convened at the jatakarma or ceremony on his birth, unanimously agreed to name Ilaridata, or given by the divinity. When the Sanskara, or institu
tion as a BraInnan, was completed by his investi ture with the sacerdotal string, and the term of his studentship in the Veda was past, his parents urged him to enter into the second order, or that of a married man ; but he ran into the woods, and passed immediately into the fourth order. Disclaiming all worldly connections, and wholly devoting himself to Vishnu, he continually practised the Samadhi yoga, or union with the deity by contemplation, fixing his mind so intensely on God, that his vital soul seetned concentrated in the 13raluna Randhra, or pineal gland ; while his animal faculties were suspended, but him body still uncorrupted, till the reflux of the spirita put them again in motion. Hindus assert that some Yogi have remained in thia state for years, aud the fanciful gradations are minutely described in the Yoga Sastra, and even delineated in the figures called Shat-chakra, under the emblems of lotus flowers with different numbers of petals. according to the supposed stations of the soul in her mystical ascent.—Colernan, Mythology of the Hindus, p. 425; As. Res. iii. p. 456.