The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c10.17

c10.17

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 Apāna in the sense of expiration has been superceded by udāna; secondarily udāna appears, etymologically more convenient, to denote expiration;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”.