The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c7.s2.134

c7.s2.134

¹ The complete text of the passage is as follows: *Candrámā mánaso jātáś cákṣoḥ sūryo ajāyata/múkhād índraś cāgníś ca prāṇād vāyúr ajāyata* (X, 90, 13). “The Moon is born from his spirit, the Sun from his eye, and from his mouth are born Indra and Agni; the Wind is born from his breath”. But this text is taken up again with a noteworthy variant in the 2nd part of the *Vājasaneyī-saṃhitā*, XXXI, 12: *śrotrād vāyūś ca prāṇāś ca, múkhād agnir ajāyata*, “from his ears the wind and the breath, from his mouth the fire were born”. Here the Wind and the Breath are not drawn one from the other, they are brought together as twins. If their origin is placed in the ear of the Cosmic Man, it is undoubtedly because the Vedic poetry voluntarily emphasises the noise of the Wind (*RV*., IV, 22; VIII, 91, 5; X, 168, 1) which is heard but which is not seen (X, 168, 4). If the breath (*prāṇa*) is said to have issued from the ear and not from the mouth or the nostrils as one may have expected, it is apparently because it was conceived as the image of the wind, the audible element, rather than as the image of the breath of a man. *Vāc*, the Speech, which is the Cosmic Noise but which, in the form of human voice, comes from the Breath, is besides assimilated to the Wind (X, 125, 8) and the singer pushes forward his praises as the wind the clouds (I, 116, 1, cf., Bergaigne, *Rel. véd.*, I, p. 279) as if the speech and the song drew their power from their participation in the nature of the Cosmic Wind. . . In an article (*Rév. philos*, Nov.-Dec., 1933, p. 420) I had proposed that in the Vedic comparison of the human body and the Cosmos, efforts had been directed more towards explaining the body by the Cosmos rather than the Cosmos by the body. Mr. Mus has objected (*BEFEO*, 1933, p. 849 and *Barabudur*, Hanoi, 1935, p. 445) that, from the hymn to the Puruṣa saying formally that the wind was born from the breath of the Puruṣa, one should, on the contrary conclude that the world was first conceived anthropomorphically. But the variant of the *Vājasaneyī-saṃhitā* answers this objection. In any case it should be conceded that the assimilation of the Cosmos and of the body is reciprocal and that in particular the wind is the breath of man just as this breath is the wind.