The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c7.s2.144

c7.s2.144

While examining the passages relative to Vāyu in the Avesta, first of all, it is found that all of them do not proceed from the same spirit. A litany simply proclaims, “we honour the audacious wind created by Mazdā”.¹ In the same passage other elements (except the fire) and the chief beings habitually adored in Zoroastrianism are also declared to be worthy of adoration. The Yasna again invokes the wind, either under the name of Vāta or under that of Vayu. In XXII, 23, the sacrificer announces his desire to operate for the satisfaction of Ahura Mazda, of Aməsa Spənta, of Mithra, of Rāman (who, as we shall see, is already a personification of the wind) and in the following passage (24), “from Vayu to superior action, who gets the better of other creatures, (and of) that which of you, O Vayu, is of Holy Spirit”,² wherefrom it results both that the wind is a pre-eminent being and that it is not entirely good. Further on another litany declares: “We honour Vayu which is of the Order, we honour Vayu having the superior action...”, etc. (as in the preceding passage).³ At the end of the Yasna comes back another invocation of ‘the wind which possesses the Order’,⁴ but this time it is to the name of Vāta that the epithet asavan, ‘who possesses the Order’, is joined, which proves that Vāta and Vayu are, at least in the Yasna, two names of the same wind, simultaneously a mythical element and a mythical personality. Moreover the epithet *asavan* is remarkable as by a characteristic trait it proves the relationship of the Avestan concept of the Wind, Vayu or Vāta with that of the Vedic Vāyu or Vāta, the latter one also, as we have just now seen, places the wind in close relationship with the Order, the *ṛta*, equivalent of the Avestan *asa*.