Hindu Medicine c8.14

c8.14

Another Vedic source describes the sense-faculties and life-forces of the human body as the divine “guardians of the world spheres” (lokapāla), which, at the dawn of creation, emanate from the organs and parts of the puruṣa, when the supreme Self (ātman) has extracted and condensed the latter from the fluid life substance of the primal waters.² Proceeding from the mouth, nostrils, eyes, ears, and other parts of the puruṣa, the lokapāla fall into the primeval ocean and seek for an abode wherein they may be established and may eat food. They decline to enter the bull and the horse, offered them first, saying, “Verily, this is not sufficient for us”;—whereupon the Supreme Being offers them man, and they say, “Oh, well done.” On His advice, “Enter into your respective abodes,” they proceed to invade the human organism. “Fire became speech, and entered the mouth; wind became breath, and entered the nostrils; the sun became sight, and entered the eyes; the quarters of space became hearing, and entered the ears; plants and trees became hair, and entered the skin; the moon became mind, and entered the heart; death became breathing down (apāna), and entered the navel; waters became semen, and entered the male organ. . .”