The purus&dotbelow; a---the "person" addressed throughout Indic texts---is not a microcosmic replication of the macrocosmos; he is the phenomenal world itself. This dissertation provides a textual and historical examination of the purus&dotbelow; a concept in the Vedic Sam&dotbelow; hitas, Brahman&dotbelow; as, Upanis&dotbelow; ads, Pali Nikayas, pre-classical Sam&dotbelow; hitas of early ayurveda, and the Mahabharata. I argue that, contrary to the dominant scholarly position, the cosmos is only 'in' the person insofar as the person expands to be the same measure as the cosmos. In the political and religious poetry of the Vedas, the person is modeled after Indra, who creates the world by swelling to its limits in the guise of the Sun. In the Brahman&dotbelow; as, the sacrificer toils to become like Indra, to discover the purus&dotbelow; a in the Sun, and thereby attain the immortal expansiveness of svarga-loka. In the Upanis&dotbelow; ads, the person is the recursively reproducing, blissfully autophagous eater of the world, who transcends space and time by "yoking" up to ever greater expanses through yoga. In the early teachings of the Buddhist Pali canon, the person is non-different from the "empty" elementality of the world, and the bhikkhu meditates on this fact to extinguish his belief in self, person, or world. These earlier views of the person are synthesized and given paradigmatic expression in the pre-classical Sam&dotbelow; hitas of ayurveda and the Mahabharata, where the logics of Yoga and early Sam&dotbelow; khya dictate that person and world are "identical" and "the same measure." In the words of the foundational Caraka Sam&dotbelow; hita, the pre-classical person who is fully realized, "bears the yoke" of the world as the sovereign master of its materiality, harmoniously conjoined to the phenomenal totality that is named purus&dotbelow; a..