History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c94.250

v7.c94.250

In this work it is not necessary to enter upon an exhaustive discussion on prāṇa from the Upaniṣads. A controversy has gone on about the meaning of prāṇa and apāna Caland, Keith, Dumont and a few others hold that 'prāṇa' means in the ancient Vedic literature 'expiration' and 'apāna' means 'inspiration', but that this meaning was revised in later days On the other hand almost all Sanskrit commentators and writers and G. W. Brown, Edgerton and others hold the opposite view.²³⁵⁴ The present author agrees with the latter view viz. that 'prāṇa' meant and means 'inhalation or thoracic breath', while 'apāna' means 'abdominal breath.' All scholars are agreed that these are certainly the meanings of the words prāṇa and apāna in all classical Sanskrit literature, the opposite view being confined to the ancient period even by those who hold that prāṇa and apāna meant respectively 'expiration' and 'inspiration'. We should as far as possible construe all Upaniṣad passages as to yield the same sense consistently. The Praśna Up. (certainly an early Upaniṣad, though not among the earliest ones) contains the following interesting and rather decisive passage "just as the king appoints his officers saying '(each of) you should govern such and such villages', in the same way this prāṇa assigns to the other prāṇas separate spheres viz. apāna in the organs of excrement and generation, the prāṇa going in from the mouth and nose establishes himself (as king) in the eyes and ears, Samāna in the middle (of the spheres of Prāṇa and Apāna) i. e. in the navel, since it is he (Samāna) that carries the food offered (in the fire i e in the stomach) equally (to all bodily parts)."