The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c10.70

c10.70

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