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The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c10: Chapter V: The Data of the Vedic Samhitas on Physiology

The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c10

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Chapter V: The Data of the Vedic Samhitas on Physiology

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THE INFORMATION that we can obtain from the hymns and from sacrificial formulae relating to the ideas the Vedic authors could have had concerning the play of organic functions, is obviously scanty. Numerous allusions have yielded us the names of diseases, of organs, of parts and elements of the body, but they cannot replace the enunciations of theories. However, people have tried to find in the Veda proofs to show that the fundamental theory of Ayurvedic physiology, that of the three active elements—wind, bile and phlegm—was already known at the time of the composition of hymns.

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A hymn addressed to the Aśvins, after saying that they give thrice the remedies of the Sky, of the Earth and of the Waters, calls on them to carry (vahatam) to the son of the reciter the *tridhātu śárma* (RV., I-34-6). *Śarman* denotes "protection" or "well-being", but the latter sense has come in only classical Sanskrit. The commentator Sāyaṇa has understood it to refer to the well-being of the three bodily elements of classical medicine. However, *tridhātu* means literally "consisting of three objects", therefore "triple", and it refers to the triple protection of three sorts of remedies which are mentioned here. Moreover, the following verse also contains the word *tridhātu*, and there the sense of triple is unchallenged. The translators have, at a very early date, recognised that the interpretation of Sāyaṇa had been abusive. Langlois who published in 1848 the first complete translation of the *Ṛgveda*, although, generally speaking, he has not been a faithful translator, has rightly recognised and pointed out in a note that *tridhātu śárma vahatam* simply signified "triplex auxilium ferte", although, in translation, he has followed the sense of the commentary. The majority of other translators have not even taken note of the interpretation of Sāyaṇa, except Wilson¹ who has accepted it without reserve because he had made it a rule to follow the commentary, and has thus led the historians of medicine to believe that the fundamental theory of Indian pathology was to be found in the *Ṛgveda*. Reinhold Müller has done well to refute this view once again.¹

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¹ *Ṛgveda Saṃhitā*, Vol. 1, p. 95, and the French adaptation of this translation by Pauthier and Brunet in the *Livres sacrés de tous les peuples* . . . , Migne ed., Vol. II, p. 39, Col. 2.

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¹ *Die Medizin in Ṛgveda*, in *Asia Major*, Vol. VI, p. 335. Cordier, although he quotes only the translations of Langlois and Grassmann, had, like Wilson, admitted on the basis of Sāyaṇa that the theory of the *tridhātu* was already found in the *Ṛgveda* (in his first work on Indian Medicine: *Etude sur la médicine hindoue*, Paris, 1894, p. 27).

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The question has been raised again *á propos* the *Atharvaveda* by Dasgupta.² In an article in the *Hastings Encyclopaedia*,³ Bolling had quite rightly said that the theory of the *tri-doṣas* or *tri-dhātus* did not appear in the early Vedic texts and was found for the first time only in the *Atharvaveda-pariśiṣṭa* (68), a later appendix of the Veda itself. He had also maintained that the expression *vātīkṛtanāśanī* (*AV*, VI, 44-3) does not prove that the wind was already conceived as a bodily element and a cause of diseases; this expression signified "which destroys what is transformed into wind" and not "which destroys that which is made by the wind". Moreover this compound qualifies a remedy which in the preceding verse is called "remedy of the flux (diarrhical, probably)" *āsrāvabheṣajam*, and the wind in question is undoubtedly that of the intestines.⁴ But Dasgupta thinks that another passage shows clearly that diseases were divided into three categories caused by the wind, the water and the fire. In the *AV*., I, 12, 3 the words, *yó abhrajā vātajā yáś ca śuṣmo . . .*, seem to signify "(the disease) which is born of the cloud (of the humid), one that is born of the wind and the one which is dry . . ." At least this is the type of translation which results from the explanations of Dasgupta who derives *śuṣma* from the root *śuṣ*, "to dry". But Reinhold Müller⁵ has justly remarked that the words *abhrajā* and *vātajā* merely qualify *śuṣma*. One must understand these words to mean, as translators have done so far: ". . . the *śuṣma* which is born of the cloud and the one that is born of the wind . . . ” Besides the sense of śuṣma in this passage is uncertain. The root śuṣ in Vedic can also denote “to whistle”; in the AV. this word has even the sense of “vigour”. In any case Bloomfield translates it here¹ by “lightning” and Whitney as “blast” (with doubt). One should, therefore, renounce all attempts at finding the formal proof of the existence of the theory of the tridhātu or tridoṣa in the Atharvaveda. Dasgupta also gives another argument; he observes that in AV., VI, 109, pippalī, the long pepper, is at the same time called “the remedy of the vātīkṛta” and “the remedy of the kṣipta”. He interprets vātīkṛta as denoting “that which is produced by the wind” and kṣipta as madness. The classical literature does consider madness as being due to the wind of the organism. But we have just now seen that vātīkṛta denotes “that which is transformed into wind” (grammatically no other interpretation is possible), and kṣipta cannot denote madness. The root kṣip denotes “to throw”. In classical Sanskrit it also frequently signifies “to destroy, to wound”. In the passage referred to above, kṣipta denotes, as in the classical, “wounded” or, what comes to mean the same thing by a roundabout interpretation, “that which is produced by an arrow that is shot” (Roth : Schuss-oder Wurfwunde). In kṣiptacitta, kṣipta applies to the spirit to signify that the spirit is troubled or distracted and it is least probable that one has to suppose here, in place of the most natural one, some other sense.

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² *A History of Indian Philosophy*, Vol. II, Cambridge, 1932, p. 299.

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³ *Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics*, 1911, Diseases and Medicine (Vedic).

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⁴ Moreover *Vātīkāra* (*AV*., IX, 8,20, cf., above, p. 101, n. 1) which appears to be another form of *Vātīkṛta*—can denote only "that which is produced by the wind". On the interpretation of Sāyaṇa, see Dasgupta, *loc. cit.*

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⁵ *Uber pitta oder galle unter Bezug zur Tridoṣa-Lehere der Altindischen Medizin* in *Janus*, 1934, pp. 77 ff.

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¹ cf., also Bloomfield, On the Meanings of the Word Śuṣma, in ZDMG, 418, pp. 565 ff. Last of all L. Renou, Anthologie sanskrite, Paris, 1947, p. 55: “violence”.

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But, if the fundamental pathological theory of classical medicine had not assumed shape at the time of the redaction of the Rgvedic hymns and even of those of the Atharvaveda or, if at least nothing can prove to us that it had assumed shape, it does not seem to be doubtful that right from the time of the Atharvaveda, elements had, in part, been prepared for its elaboration. We have seen (p. 117) that balāsa designated swellings, the aqueous infiltration of tissues and that it has become a name of the aqueous element of the organism, the śleṣman, “phlegm” or “mucus”. The fire which has a manifest rôle in affections like fever, was accepted as an important element in physiology, because of the equivalence postulated since the Veda between the macrocosm and the microcosm and already the bile had been assimilated with the fire as it is in medical theory.

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As regards the wind, the Veda shows that it was already conceived simultaneously as an organic and cosmic force and the multiplicity of the organic winds, already distinguished one from the other, shows that pneumatology which dominates the physiology of Āyurveda was already in the course of formation.

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We have already examined in the Vedic texts the most characteristic ideas of ancient India concerning the wind, the cosmic and universal force and the prototype of all motor-force in the microcosm and the macrocosm (pp. 61 ff.). Comparison with the Avestic data has shown us that these ideas were largely Indo-Iranian. Here we still have to show the extent to which the Vedic texts already contain, either in germ or in full form, the special concepts of Āyurvedic medicine on the rôle of the wind in the economy of the organism. For this purpose we have to study those principal passages of the Veda which contain the names of the vital winds, the prāṇas.

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Arthur H. Ewing has patiently collected the references to these breaths in the entire Vedic literature, adding in an appendix some of their definitions found in classical literature.¹ He has frequently compared and reproduced various translations proposed by philologists. All this work of analysis and classification is and will remain extremely useful. The conclusions reached by him are given briefly here:—

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¹ The Hindu Conception of the Functions of Breath—A Study in Early Hindu Psycho-physics, in JAOS, Vol. XXXII, Pt. 2., 1901, pp. 249-308. But he neglects the data of Yajurveda (cf., p. 280) in giving (p. 257) a statistical table of the use of the names of breaths in the White Yajurveda. On the concept of the breath in the Upaniṣads: G. W. Brown, the Human Body in the Upaniṣads, Jubbulpore, 1921.

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1. The point of departure for the series of prāṇa is the word prāṇa, “breath in general”;
2. The division of the respiratory activity into inspiration and expiration is primitive and appears at an early date in the dual compound, prāṇāpānau;
3. With his habit of careful observation, the Hindu could have, and in all probability, has observed from an early date the interval between respirations, wherefrom the supposition of a breath remaining even in the absence of prāṇa and of apāna, i.e., vyāna, “separate respiration”;
4. With a desire to create a more varied play of symbols, terms analgous to prāṇa, apāna and vyāna have been multiplied by grafting the root an on to the pre-verbs sam- and ud-, which gives us samāna and udāna;
5. Apāna in the sense of expiration has been superceded by udāna; secondarily udāna appears, etymologically more convenient, to denote expiration;
6. Wishing to establish similarities between the different members of the series of prāṇas and the bricks of the altar of Agni, one has been led to give to apāna a sense other than the original one;
7. In the Upaniṣads efforts have been made to explain secondarily the localisations adopted to meet the ends of sacrificial symbolism for diverse prāṇas. For example, the fact that apāna had been placed in the tail of the bird-shaped altar has led to its localisation in the intestines and in the urinary canals; samāna, having been placed in the middle, could become an agent of digestion;
8. Deductions of this type on localisations and functions of prāṇas are more or less the contributions to Indian ideas of anatomy and physiology but have no value in themselves, as they do not account for the formation of the series of prāṇas on an empirical basis. Each attempt at explanation is to be taken, as the expression of an individual opinion insofar as it is not merely traditional;
9. As regards the translation, the results are mostly negative. Where the entire series appears, it is always symbolic and one can do no more than transliterate.
10. However, a positive result of some value is there: prāṇa signifies either the double process of respiration or “inspiration” in opposition to “expiration”.

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The majority of these conclusions are not at all valid as they are implicitly based on the double postulation that the Indians, speculating on breath in the organism, could only have originally, in view the respiratory breath and that they had, later on, given it no thought except those relative to ritual symbolism. The idea that for the mere requirements of this symbolism and because of the mechanical play of the grammatical rules of the formation of nouns, the Indians found themselves in possession of a nomenclature of breaths and that they have been obliged to invent physiological reasons for justifying this nomenclature, is presented as a result. This, however, is only a strange hypothesis.

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Ewing has been led here by the method adopted rightly by him but which he has blindly applied. He has studied the mention of the breaths successively in the diverse strata of the Vedic literature and this was necessary. But, when in an earlier stratum, the context would not yield a definite sense, he has seldom tried to enlighten himself about the definite meaning found in a more recent stratum. He does not seem to have envisaged that the sense given in the more recent texts could have been anything but a novelty in these texts; he had believed that it was the result of an attempt at interpreting a more ancient text. In fact, lightly inserting a value guaranteed only by a Brāhmaṇa or an Upaniṣad into a Vedic Saṃhitā could lead to anachronism. But the lack of seriousness is reflected in the belief, without proofs, that a value clearly expressed only from a certain date did not exist earlier. If an obscure or apparently absurd ancient text gets clarified when such a value is brought in there, one may believe that it was in its place there although it had been found there in so explicit a manner only in a text of later date, from where it had been drawn.

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Moreover, although having collected in an appendix (p. 307) the definitions of the prāṇas given by Suśruta, Ewing has not thought of seeking light from the works of Indian physiologists regarding the physiological concepts of the breaths. Not only has he limited himself to the data of his texts without clarifying the ones by the others, unless they were of the same epoch, but he has also neglected the tradition of the specialists of the question studied by him. It is true that in this respect he was merely following a usage then current among the translators of Vedic texts. Those could have rejected the evidence of Āyurveda as being very late, but they did frequently accept the still more recent interpretations of commentators like Śaṃkara, who were not physiologists. Evidently the question must be taken up again. It must be taken up here specially as regards the most ancient references to the diverse organic breaths.

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In the Ṛgveda appear only two names which are given to them later on, firstly the one that is used as the generic designation of all of them: *prāṇa*, followed, only once, by *vyāna*. But the root *an*, "to breathe", is also found accompanied by the pre-verbs *apa-* and *sam-*. *Prāṇa* has the general sense of breath, of life. The most important passage wherein it occurs is the one already noted by us (p. 63) where the atmospheric wind is regarded as produced by the breath of the Cosmic Man. The cosmic wind is already clearly conceived as having for its motor this breath or wind, even when it does not show itself in the form of wind itself because in a hymn to the Sun it is said, "Inside it circulates the brilliant, breathing by its own breath."¹ The passage is obscure, inasmuch as the female being designated by the "brilliant" cannot be surely identified² and hence it is not possible to affirm whether *apa* denotes here the "downward" direction or more generally "outside", "keeping itself away", which is imparted to the breath. With the pre-verb *sam-*, *an* is once used in "today he is dead, Yesterday he has gathered his breath".³ As regards *vyāna*, it is assimilated in the spring of the chariot of *Sūrya* in verse 12 of the epithalamium of *Sūrya* and *Soma* (X, 85) a large part of which is found again in the *Atharvaveda* (XIV, 1).⁴

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¹ *antāś carati rocanāsyá prāṇād apānatī*—RV., X, 189, 2 . . . "Sound" is in the masculine; it can, therefore, stand for the breath of the Sun, because of whom the brilliant one (the Dawn) progresses while breathing.

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² cf., Oldenberg, *Rgveda*, ad. loc. (p. 366). It is difficult to understand why Ewing says here, "It is clear that *prāṇa* is here viewed simply as physical breath" (p. 251), whereas *prāṇa* belongs precisely to a luminous celestial being.

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³ *adyā mamāra sā hyáḥ sám āna*—RV., X, 55, 5.

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⁴ cf., infra, p. 180.

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These passages are not very significant and it should be noted that all the uses of *prāṇa*, that of *vyāna* and those of the root *an* with the prefixes *apa-* and *sam-* are found, except one, in the Ist and the Xth Books of the *Rgveda* which are the latest. The only exception is in the IIIrd Book. Evidently, it does not follow that breath was not still well-known at the time of the composition of the most ancient hymns. The subjects of these gave no opportunity to its mention. But the references become more numerous in the Xth Book and in the *Atharvaveda* where relations between the Cosmos and the human or animal body are referred to more often, which leads to a mention of breath and the breaths; at the same time the limbs of the body are referred to more frequently and there is speculation on the whole subject.

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*Prāṇa*, alone, has the same meanings as in the *Ṛgveda*, meanings which have become fixed elsewhere. It denotes the vital breath, hence life, and hence the cosmic soul. But in the *Atharvaveda*, *prāṇa* is sometimes used in the plural number; upto seven *prāṇas* are counted¹ and the names of seven of them are given. These figures suffice to establish that the breaths in question are not, all of them, respiratory. Thereafter one must ask oneself if they do not correspond to the breaths which are mentioned in classical medicine under the same names, explicitly defining them the while.² Even when profound differences in nature could be discerned between the known breaths of the Veda and those whose existence is taught by medicine, it will be evident, solely because of the plurality of the breaths and the identity of their names, that medicine, for its pneumatology, depends on the ancient ideas of the Veda.

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¹ There are seven *prāṇas*, seven *apānas* and seven *vyānas* (*AV.* XV., 15, 1). The three hymns XV, XVI and XVII of Book XV are devoted to an enumeration of these breaths identified with the astronomical elements of the Universe and some other connected entities.

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² Regarding the medical definition of the *prāṇas*, cf., *supra*, p. 28.

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Two breaths are most frequently named, *prāṇa* and *apāna*, mentioned separately or in a dual compound. Making a pair in this manner, they seem, at first view, to represent inspiration and expiration and the contexts generally go well with this natural interpretation. The texts of classical medicine sometimes use the compound *prāṇāpānau* in the same sense,³ when they refer to vital breaths in general and do not limit themselves to mention only *prāṇa*. As these texts interest themselves in the *apāna* chiefly insofar as it circulates downwards in the body, they can group under this name the totality of organic breaths opposed to *prāṇa*. That is why *prāṇāpānau*, even though nominally denoting only two breaths, can represent the complete series of five recognised by medical theory. One may be led to believe that here lies a later extension of the sense of *apāna*, at first limited to that of inspiration,⁴ but, if in the *Atharvaveda* the interpretation of *apāna* as inspiration fits in generally well with the contexts, it is not always so. Some of them are explicable only if the words *prāṇa* and *apāna* have already meanings approaching those attributed to them by the doctor and also by the Upaniṣads which frequently understand *prāṇa* in the sense of thoracic breath and *apāna* or the abdominal breath as has been very well demonstrated by G. W. Brown.¹

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³ cf., for example Caraka, *Śar.*, I, 98. Cakradatta explains here by *ucchvāsaniḥśvāsa*, "inspiration and expiration", III, 16.

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⁴ For a long time the translators have indifferently given the sense of "inspiration and expiration" to *prāṇa* and *apāna*. Caland has maintained (Zur exegese und Kritik der rituellen Sūtras XXXIV., *Prāṇa und apāna* in ZDMG, Vol. LV, 1901, pp. 261 ff. and vol. LVI, 1902, p. 556) that originally *prāṇa* was expiration and *apāna* inspiration.

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¹ *Prāṇa and Apāna*, JAOS, XXXIX, p. 104.

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The hymn XI, 4 applies to the cosmic breath, it exalts the functions of the breath in the universe and mentions twice together, but otherwise separately, *prāṇa* and *apāna* or the corresponding functions, “The *prāṇa* and the *apāna* are rice and barley: The (Cosmic) Bull is called *prāṇa*. *Prāṇa* consists of barley and *apāna* is called rice”.²

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² *prāṇapānáu vrīhi-yaváu anaḍvān prāṇa ucyate.* *yáve ha prāṇá áhito’ pāṇó vrihir ucyate* //13// AV., XI, 4, 13. The assimilation of *prāṇa* and of the Cosmic Bull is apparently explicable by the fact that both of them are in turns the centre of the pantheistic speculations, familar in the *Ṛgveda*.

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The identification of *prāṇa* with barley and of *apāna* with rice has not been explained. Henry³ and Deussen⁴ have contented themselves by noting that rice and barley were the chief bases of nourishment, but this does not show in the least how the idea of identifying barley with expiration and rice with inspiration could arise if *prāṇa* and *apāna* had denoted nothing but these two phases of breath. Now in hymn XIII, 3, there is the question of an all-powerful god “who, with *prāṇa*, fills up the Sky and the Earth, who with *apāna* fills up the stomach of the Ocean”.⁵ This shows the idea of a connection between *prāṇa* and nourishment and also of a connection between *apāna* and the waters. These connections will be purely absurd if *prāṇa* here denotes inspiration and *apāna* expiration. But in the classical tradition of physiology, *prāṇa* sits in the mouth and is the agent of digestion of the aliments; *apāna* sits in the lower part of the body where it pushes the liquids to excretion. If it is admitted that their rôles could have been already envisaged in this manner at the time of the Atharvaveda, one can understand the relation established between prāṇa and nourishment and apāna and the waters. Moreover, as barley is a cereal of high terrain and rice is a plant of flooded terrain, in a theoretical repartition of the two aliments between two types of breaths, barley naturally had to be assigned to prāṇa and rice to apāna. Besides it is not only in the physiological traditions of Suśruta and Caraka that prāṇa and apāna are conceived under forms other than those of breath. The Chāndogya-upaniṣad says of the prāṇa, “of the mouth” (mukhya), which is the principal one at the same time¹: “Because therewith one eats, one drinks, one supports the other breaths”². In the Atharvaveda the epithet of bhuridhāyas³ is given to prāṇa. The localisation of apāna in the lower part of the body is current in later Vedic literature.

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³ *Les Livres*, X, XI, XII . . . p. 148.

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⁴ *Allgemeine Einleitung und Philosophie des Veda*, 4th ed., Leipzig, 1920, p. 302.

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⁵ *yáh prāṇéna dyāvā-pṛthivī tarpáyaty apánéna samudrásya jaṭháram yáh prpati*—AV., XIII, 3, 4.

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¹ Also in Bṛh.-up. I, 3, 7 ff.

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² tena yad aśnāti yat pibati tena itarān prāṇān avati—Chānd.-up. 1, 2, 9.

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³ AV., VI, 41, 2: cf., infra p. 181, n. 1.

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The verse of the Atharvaveda which follows the one identifying prāṇa and apāna with barley and rice, contains yet another inexplicable proposition if prāṇa and apāna are understood as respiratory breaths: “He puts to play apāna, he puts to play prāṇa, the Man, inside the matrix. When thou, prāṇa, thou, pushest, then he is born again”⁴. This refers to the Cosmic Man compared in his development with the embryo and probably to that of the Sun which can concretely represent the Cosmic Man and which is reborn every morning. In any case we understand that the embryo was conceived as having, inside the matrix, pneumatic activity and as being born under the sush of the breath. Now, of all the conceivable organic breaths, the only ones which can have no rôle in the embryo are inspiration and expiration. The others, the animal spirits, which circulate in all parts of the body in formation are according to the classical physiological doctrine the agents of its growth and it is the breaths which determine the delivery. If, following this, we translate, “He put in play his inferior breath, he puts in play his superior breath the Man, inside the matrix . . .”, we can avoid the necessity of making the embryo breathe in a full space.¹

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⁴ ápānati prāṇati púruṣo gárbhe antará| yadā tvám prāṇa jínvasi átha sá jāyate púnah||—AV., XI, 4, 14.

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¹ It may be objected that if the assertion is absurd, it can in any case be thought to have been made by the author of the hymn. An example may be found in the Chinese Taoist, Ko-hung (Pao-pou-tseu), referring precisely to an intra-uterine respiration (*t'ai-si*). This is pointed out by P. Wieger and he expresses his surprise about it in European medicine (*Histoire des croyances . . .*, 3rd ed., Hien-Hien, 1927, p. 391). But with Ko-hong it does definitely refer to ideas borrowed from India, as underlined by Wieger himself and the respiration in question is, in reality, a *garbha-prāṇa*, a play of animal spirits in the matrix and in the foetus.

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Moreover, one would except that *prāṇa* and *apāna* would not, in the *Atharvaveda*, always designate exhaled air and the inhaled air. As the *prāṇa* or the breath in general of the Cosmic Man is the wind, it is an internal wind because the wind circulates inside the Universe, the body of the Cosmic Giant.

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The examination of the data on breaths other than *prāṇa* and *apāna* in the *Atharvaveda* confirms the existence of speculations concerning organic breaths during the period of its composition. These speculations were already quite close to Āyurvedic theories.

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Translators have often recognised *vyāna* as a wind diffused all over the body. Ewing has, in this case², taken recourse to the reference in the *Chāndogya-upaniṣad* (I, 3, 3) which says that *vyāna* is the “joint” (*sandhi*) of *prāṇa* and *apāna*. He saw therein respiratory air retained between two movements and then circulating inside the body. Elsewhere, the passage of the *Ṛgveda*, where *vyāna* figures as the spring of the symbolic car, had already indicated that this *vyāna* was conceived as the element of junction. But if *prāṇa* is the breath of the upper part and *apāna* that of the lower one or of the back part, then *vyāna* circulating in the middle of the body is exactly the one that unites them.

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² *loc. cit.*, pp. 277 and 280.

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It is their permanent intermediary in somatic spaces rather than being the occasional interval between expiration and inspiration. The simultaneous mention of the three is more complete as the enumeration of organic breaths than that of *prāṇa* and *apāna* and less equivocal, as the latter two answer also to the two phases of respiration.

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This is how, undoubtedly, should be interpreted the passages where the three breaths are mentioned in the *Atharvaveda*.

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For example, XI, 5, 24, where the pair *prāṇāpānau* and *vyāna* are declared to have been engendered by the Brahmanic student, mythically transposed into a sort of Cosmic Man. For example, once again and chiefly, VI, 41, which is an ordinary charm for health “for the spirit, the thoughts . . . the *apāna*, the *vyāna*, the *prāṇa* giving much of nourishment¹ . . . where evidently *prāṇa* so qualified is not at all the expiration but, as we have seen, the nourishing breath localised by the *Chāndogya-upaniṣad* in the mouth and which will be known to classical physiology.

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¹ *mánase cétasea...pānāya vyānāya prāṇāya bhūridhāyase*—AV, VI, 41, 1-2.

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*Samāna* is mentioned once in a verse of the *Atharvaveda* where the other three are also named. This is in the hymn X, 2, which asks as to who has made all the things in the cosmic body: “who has woven therein *prāṇa*? Who has woven *apāna* and *vyāna*? Which god has founded the *samāna* in the Man?”² This is one of the hymns which enumerate most carefully all that is found in the man; it is natural that its list of organic breaths is more complete than in any other passage of the same collection. The expression *avayat*, “has woven”, recalls by pun, as noted by Henry, *avayat*, “has breathed”, but it also evokes the idea of the network of the *dhamanis* and of the *sirās* stretched all over the body. One may ask oneself if the author has consciously desired to evoke it as being the one where the *prāṇas* circulate in the body. In any case nothing allows us to specify the special value of *samāna* in this passage.

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² *ko asmín prāṇám avayat kó apānám vyānám u| samānám asmín kó devó dhi śíśrāyapūruṣe*—AV., X, 2, 13.

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*Udāna*, the fifth breath of the classical list, is mentioned twice (XI, 8, 4 and 26) in a hymn which like the preceding one gives us an “inventory of the man”. With him are named *prāṇa* and *apāna* in a pair in dual number and it is itself associated in the pair *vyānodānau* with *vyāna*. *Samāna* does not figure in this series. The context does not help us understand the correct sense of *udāna* but its mention does at least show that the *Atharvaveda* already knows all the breaths of the classical series.

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Before leaving the data of the *Atharvaveda*, it should be observed that the hymn to the breath (XI, 4), wherein are found very clear passages preventing us from translating *prāṇa* and *apāna* as “expiration” and “inspiration”, occupies a separate place in the rituals prescribed in the Atharvanic Sūtras.¹ This could induce us to suppose that it is a case of aberration or has been introduced specially in the Veda and that it reflected opinions alien to the rest of the collection. But nothing of the kind can be supposed as the interpretations which are valid there, are also valid in the hymns beyond suspicion. The absence of use in the ritual, which, moreover, is not total, does not bear the least significance and, even if it were proved that the doctrine of this hymn was an aberration from the rest at the time of its appearance, it will no less remain a proof of the Vedic sources of classical physiology.

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¹ cf., V. Henry, *Livres X, XI et, XII* . . . p. 147.

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The data of the Saṃhitā of the Yajurveda on the prāṇas lend itself, like that of the Atharvaveda, to an interpretation of the series of breaths made in the light of the physiological theories, expounded later on. Wherever more than two breaths are mentioned, it is not possible to identify these breaths with inspiration and expiration. Even where only two breaths appear, this identification is not always satisfactory.

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The formulae wherein prāṇas are referred to are mostly limited to a call for prosperity. All the five prāṇas are mentioned together a number of times. In the Vājasaneyī-saṃhitā, XXII, 33, it is said "That, thanks to the sacrifice, life may succeed, svāhā! That, thanks to the sacrifice, the prāṇa . . . apāna . . . vyāna . . . udāna . . . samāna . . . the eye . . . the ear . . . the speech . . the spirit, . . . the ātman . . . Brahman . . . light . . . the sky . . . . the celestial vault (literally: the back) . . . the sacrifice, thanks to the sacrifice, may succeed, svāhā!"² The Kāṭhaka contains a series of homages to different breaths enumerated in an order a little different, prāṇa, vyāna, apāna, samāna and udāna.³ Thus the following formula is twice repeated: "Protect my prāṇa and apāna, protect my samāna and vyāna, protect the two forms of my udāna".⁴ The Maitrā- yaṇī-saṃhitā also makes an invocation of each of the five prāṇas which recalls the one of the Vājasaneyī-saṃhitā: “For life svāhā! For prāṇa . . . apāna . . . vyāna, samāna, udāna . . . the eye . . . the ear . . . the spirit . . . the speech . . . svāhā!”¹

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² *āyur yajñéna kalpatām svāhā prāṇó yajñéna . . . apānó vyānó . . . udānó . . . samānó . . . cákṣur . . . śrótram . . . vāg . . . máno . . . ātmā . . . brahmā . . . jyótir . . . svár . . . prṣṭhám . . . yajñó . . . yajñéna kalpatām svāhā*—VS., XXII, 33.

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³ . . . *prāṇāya námo . . . vyānāya . . . námo* in the midst of similar other formulae of homages addressed to numerous entities and diverse divinities—*Aśvamedha*, II, 1-5.

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⁴ *prāṇāpānau me pāhi samāna-vyānau me pāhi udānarūpe me pāhi*.—*Kāṭh.*, V, 5; VIII, 13.

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¹ āyuṣe svāhā prāṇāya . . . cákṣuṣe . . . śrótrāya . . . mánase . . . vācé svāhā, —Maitr.—s., III, 12, 9.

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These litanies do not furnish any indications on the precise sense attached to each name. They present the series of five breaths with changes in the order of enumeration proving that the enumeration does not have an essential importance. The one of Kāṭhaka asking for protection for the breaths has for its pendent a similar formula but therein figure only prāṇa, apāna and vyāna and this formula is common to the Vājasaneyī-saṃhitā and the Maitrāyaṇī-saṃhitā². Similarly the formula of this latter Saṃhitā beginning with “For life . . .” is also found in a shorter form in the Vājasaneyī-saṃhitā: “For prāṇa, svāhā! For apāna . . . vyāna . . . the eye . . . the ear . . . the speech . . . the spirit, svāhā!”³ This proves that the enumerations of three or five breaths are absolutely equivalent and that there is no ground for seeking to identify the three breaths with the phases of respiration, which one should not be tempted to establish when there are five of them. Besides prāṇa which itself alone designate the totality of organic breaths, the series also designate the same ensemble irrespective of the particular forms that are given and the five particular forms are quite clearly the same as the ones whose notion is preserved in classical medicine while developing the theory thereof.

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² prāṇám mé pāhi|apānám mé pūhi vyānám mé pāhi . . . —Vāj. S. XIV, 8; Maitr.—s., II, 8, 2.

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³ prāṇāya svāhāpānāya vyānāya svāhā cákṣuṣe svāhā . . ., etc.—Vāj.—s., XXII, 23. It can be seen that the suppression is preferably of the udāna and the samāna. When there are four breaths, it is samāna which is omitted, cf.; Kāṭh., XXXIX, 3: XL, 5, where it is omitted. But others are also omitted, for example in Vāj.—s, I, 20 are mentioned only prāṇa, udāna and vyāna.

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We should also take note of the nature of entities arranged besides the breaths in the preceding litanies; these are the organs or the psychic faculties or they refer to psychic activity. Now according to the physiology of the Āyurveda, the breaths are the agents or the motors of these faculties and of these organs in the body. It is not by accident that they are put side by side in the litanies of the Yajurveda. Moreover the speculation of the authors of the Brāhmaṇas and the Upaniṣads has given rise to numerous texts which give us an insight into relations conceived in ancient times between organic breaths and psychic phenomena, particularly sensorial ones. The “prāṇic”, “pneumatic” nature of the ātman, of the soul is a major principle of Vedic philosophy. It is not, therefore, surprising that from the epoch of the Yajurveda, the organic breaths have been placed beside the elements of psychic activity. The medicine of Suśruta and Caraka, in explaining the psychic activity in terms of the interplay of the prāṇas, was once again following the organic tradition of Vedic antiquity.

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One should therefore not be surpised in having to suppose, at an ancient date, a pneumatic concept of life, carrying the notion that breaths are found in the entire body and command the actions of the same. This is not attributing extremely advanced ideas to the Vedic times. The air coming out of the lungs during expiration is not the only breath of the body, it appertains to the upper part of the front part of the body, which contains others in the abdomen. The pains and the involuntary movements of the entrails are felt as being in evident relationship with the flatuosities which are independent of respiration. Many centuries were not needed, nor as Ewing believed, mystic speculations as intermediaries were necessary so that, knowing and naming inspiration and expiration, one should have noticed the existence of other breaths in the body. And from the time the breath in general had been, since an early date, assimilated with the wind, which latter had from the time of Indo-Iranian pre-history been conceived as the principle of activity, it was easy to conceive a system of pneumatic cosmo-physiology or to feel its existence. If the Vedic Saṃhitās do not themselves offer us a systematic explanation, which they need not have offered, they at least give us, in an already constituted form, the technical vocabulary which was, later on, to accompany the pneumatic theory in its period of full development. Under these conditions, when the intelligibility of Vedic formulae postulates the existence of at least a start of this pneumatic theory during the period of their composition, it is perfectly normal to accept the same.

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One can, then, come back to the desperate conclusions of the exegetes who, envisaging only the speculations regarding inspiration and expiration, have declared that the interpretation of the lists of multiple prāṇas in ancient Vedic texts is impossible.¹ These exegetes had the tendency to see, in the use of the names of breaths which could not be brought back to those of respiration, a purely verbal and mechanical amplification, wherein primitively only the names of the air coming out of the lungs during expiration had figured as a matter of right. It will be more correct to see therein the first traces of physiological conceptions, very simple besides, but which have later dominated Indian medicine and also the mystical technique of the Yoga, based in part on the control of breaths.²

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¹ Ewing already quoted and Deussen on whom Macdonell and Keith (Vedic Index, see prāṇa) base themselves for saying: "The exact sense of each of these breaths when all are mentioned cannot be determined". Keith, in particular, is sure that the Brahmins understood nothing of what they themselves said of the five prāṇas: "The term prāṇa is subdivided into five elements among other divisions, and these five are obviously incapable of presenting any intelligible picture to the mind of the priests." (The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upaniṣads, Cambridge, Mass., 1925, p. 484). Oldenberg has justly recognised the correlation existing between the nomenclature of the breaths in the Brāhmaṇas and in Medicine (Die Weltanschauung der Brāhmana-text, Gottingen, 1919, p. 66), but he has, on that occasion, gone back to the data of the Saṃhitās and has not directed his reflections to that subject, not having recognised the importance of the physiological concepts in the "pre-scientific science" (Vorwissenschaftliche Wissenschaft) which he was studying (cf., p. 67).

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² cf., Les origines d'une technique mystique indienne, in Revue Philosophique, April-June, 1946.

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