The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c9.114

c9.114

The mythology of the fire hidden in the waters or of the fire in aquatic form is Indo-Iranian, as already seen by us (pp. 58 ff). What is new and characteristic here is the identification of the fire with bile. We do not understand how this identification is made, how the fire hidden in the waters, the fire whose prototype is the thunder about to burst, has been assimilated to the fire but the fact that the assimilation is made in the Vedic texts is valuable for its date. The medical concept of the fiery quality of bile goes back to antiquity.