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Generally two types of yantras are found in the present times. Yantras are always a combination of diagrams. But letters of mantras are also written in them. But as shown above, diagrams of yantras are nothing but a visible form of letters of mantras. In order to help a common man to know which mantra letters are visibly represented by a particular yantra, the learned sages and monks also write mantra-letters in yantras. That is the reason why we find, yantras along with mantras simultaneously. While in some yantras there are numbers written in squares or various geometrical diagrams. There are various types of yantras related to these numbers, e.g. the yantra of fifteen, the yantra of twenty, the yantra of thirty four, the yantra of sixty five, the yantra of one hundred seventy. In the yantra of fifteen, numbers from one to nine are used and they are so arranged that each set of three numbers added vertically, horizontally or transversely, gives a total of fifteen. That is why they are called yantras of fifteen.
Books on mantras and yantras show four varieties of yantras of fifteen. Each variety of these yantras has different elements, colours and effects. Besides, when those yantras are written on a piece of paper or on a bark of the birch tree with special kind of materials, if the order of writing numbers in the same variety of yantras is different, different effects are produced.26
8 1 6 This yantra of fifteen 3 57 is known by the technical 4 9 2 Brahmin
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2 9 4 This yantra of fifteen
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This yantra of fifteen 4 3
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is known by the techni9 5 1 cal term Ksatriya
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This yantra of fifteen is known by the technical term Śūdra
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Such other yantras are made in respect of the Sun, the Moon, the Mars and other planets in order to propitiate them. The yantra for the sun is a yantra of fifteen. It is different from all the four yantras shown above. For the moon, there is a yantra of eighteen. For the Mars, there is a yantra of twenty-one.
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