The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c6.131

c6.131

The prāṇa is divided into prāṇa proper, “breath of the front”, which stays in the mouth and ensures respiration and deglutition; udāna, “breath which goes upwards”, which produces speech; samāna, “concentrated breath”, which provides the necessary amount of air to the internal fire for cooking, that is to say, for the process of digestion of the aliments; apāna, “breath which goes downwards”, ensuring the functions of excretion and delivery; finally vyāna, “diffused breath”, which circulates in all the limbs and explains their movement.² In effect, all the movements of the body are related to the action of the wind; this is by analogy with what passes in the Universe where the wind is the motor par excellence.