The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c7.s2.105

c7.s2.105

The Fire:—The same is true of the fire. Under the principal name of atar in the Avesta and of Agni in the Veda, it plays an essential rôle, specially in the cult. The Veda recognises it everywhere in the universe under multiple forms; it is the lightning, the Sun, the terrestrial fire and shows itself in many other idden or manifest forms. In one of them sometimes hidden, sometimes manifest, it is specially in relation with human beings or better still with the beings of five races, those of the cardinal points and of the sky.¹ He is at that time the vaiśvānará, the ‘pan-human’. In this capacity he has been conceived, at the end of the Vedic period and may be earlier still, as a physiological element with a precise function. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad situates it in man and ascribes to it the rôle of the digestive fire: “This Agni, the pan-human one, who is man, it is by him that all edible food is cooked”.² The hymn of the Ṛgveda to the Puruṣa, to the cosmic Man, had already caused to be created by His mouth, the fire accompanied by Indra (RV., X, 90, 13), but it is possible that there is only a reference to the warmth of the breath therein. Another hymn, a charm of the Atharvaveda seems to have already implied the idea of a relationship between digestion and the vaiśvānará fire because it constitutes a benediction of the nourishment partaken and not only does it demand that Agni render this nourishment as ‘well presented in oblations’ (suhuta) but also desires that nourishment eaten when not due (ánṛtena) and of doubtful character, be made ‘of honey’ (mádhumant) ‘by the greatness of the great Agni, the vaiśvānará’ (VI, 71, 3). It is possible that at first this hymn had been conceived for a purely ritual use and solely destined to render offerings of nourishment a dakṣiṇā given to a Brahmin in conformity with the ṛta. But, if followed to the letter, it was well-made at least for preparing the notion, found in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad of the rôle of the fire in the digestive functions⁴.