The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c10.14

c10.14

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.