The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c12.s2.2

c12.s2.2

[1] “We will now explain all that relates to the functions and the disorders of the wind,” says the blessed Ātreya.² [2] “Which is the chief element of trouble, and the least important one?³”, one asks. Having saluted Ātreya the black, the great ṛṣis gave a discourse. [3] *Physiological Functions of the Wind*: Someone has said concerning the same, the main effect: As long as the wind subsists which decomposes⁴ nourishment, man lives. [4] It is the wind which, in sooth, causes the semen to fall in the woman. The wind decomposes the menstrual blood of the woman. Because of the wind woman becomes sterile. [5] Neither men nor women are sterile (by nature): either, in the receptacle, the wind is cold and has dried the sperm, [6] or the wind has diminished the sperm and the sperm is suppressed by the wind. All that is seen, blinked and moved, [7] and the diseases of the black (?), in women, it is assuredly thus that they occur. It is because of the wind that the hunchbacked, the crippled, the lame and persons suffering from lumbago, [8] as also those having atrophied limbs or having limbs in excess exist, along with others of the same type. *Cosmic Functions of the Wind*: The inertia of animated beings and the silences of the rivers⁵, [9] the quaking of the earth also, is due to the wind. Steam is produced under the influence of the wind, from steam is born the cloud, [10] from the cloud escapes water from where are born the germs; or the thunder issues therefrom(?). One must know that the force of the group of stars and that of lightning comes from the wind. Thanks to wind, the fire, the husband of the holy oblations, burns. [12] Because of the wind the rivers flow and reach the earth. *Divine Nature of the Wind:* The semen spread in the matrix is affected by the wind of properties. It can destroy bile¹ and phlegm. With² one of them, the wind, excited, disperses itself in the body. *Varieties of Organic Breath:* Thus are distinguished the diffused breath, the breath on high, the concentrated breath, [15] the breath below and the breath of the front, according to its multiple specialisations in corporeal beings. The diffused breath, which ensures its own horizontal extension, regularises the breath on high, [16] the breath of the front ensures the placement of the breath below but starts, among corporeal beings³, the raising of the concentrated breath. It holds also under its dependence, [17] the faculties, the spirit and the soul of the beings, of the corporeal beings. Considered as special, another wind is called "breath below".⁴ [18] Drying and marching, and also thought to be without feet, the wind is said to be the principal element among the five elements. [19] These four are linked with the wind; the wind is everywhere, always. From the wind results the emission of the wind, of the sperm and of the excrements, [20] and it is from the cooking of that which