The whole subtle body; the network of which the named channels are the principal members.
Function
The total count of the nadis. The texts disagree, and the disagreement is the doctrine: 72,000 in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Goraksha Sataka, 350,000 in the Shiva Samhita 2.13, 101 arising from the heart in the Prasna Upanishad 3.6 and the Katha Upanishad, and 350,000 again in related Natha material. These are scheme-bearing round numbers, not a census of anything: 72,000 is a thousand times 72, 350,000 is three and a half lakh, a round figure in the Indian manner, and 101 is the count of the channels said to rise from the heart. Each figure says something about the body as a microcosm rather than something about its anatomy. The same texts then reduce the field to fourteen principal channels, and among those to three.