The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c9.57

c9.57

The sense of *nāḍī* (written as *nāḷī*) in the oldest passage where it appears (*RV.*, X, 135-7) is "flute" or "straw": ". . . here is the seat of Yama which is called the residence of the gods; this flute of his is blown; it is prepared by the chants”.¹ The root dham, used here for “blowing”, is the one from which is derived dhamáni practically becoming a synonym of nāḍī, but which, in the Ṛgveda (II, 11-8), is a “breath”² (“sent by Indra,” indreṣitām dhamánim . . .) and not a tube which conducts the breath. The term nāḍī, on the contrary, was definitely a conduit of air and it has remained the same in the anatomical exercises of the Yoga. But it has also been a “tube”, capable of being filled up with any material. The Atharvaveda (VI, 138-4), regards as nāḍī, the two conduits of the human body, which are the spermatic ducts or the cordons (cf., p. 124). Moreover, the word nāḍī is to be met with as a derivative of naḍa, “reed”.³ Similarly, in the Ayurvedic texts, nāḍī does not exclusively denote “channel for air”, but is commonly used to denote “channel” in general. This is how nāḍī has come to denote the nourishment-providing vessel of the umbilical cord: “the umbilical vessel of the embryo is connected with the maternal vessel carrying the organic sap”.⁴ It also denotes the tubulure of an inhalatory apparatus, an apparatus causing “vaporisation by tube”, nāḍīsveda.⁵ Therefore, the general notion of nāḍī in the classical medical texts is the same as it had been in the Vedic epoch.