The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c10.65

c10.65

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.