The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c10.48

c10.48

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.