Hindu Medicine c8.66

c8.66

The very term for swan, “haṃsa,” in post-Vedic tradition, is supposed to express in its two syllables the activity of inhaling and exhaling; it is onomatopoeic: “haṃ” describes the sound of inhaling, “sa” of exhaling, breath. Prāṇa is the inner swan, which, through the unceasing song of its very name, brings about the twofold activity of the essential breathing down and breathing forth. The outgoing movement, breathing forth, is compared in the hymn to the swan’s withdrawing one foot from the body, the realm below, which evolved from the primal waters. But the virtue of the Breath Swan most worthy of wonder lies in its keeping “one leg” in the “water”; it does not withdraw from the body, though it proceeds out of the body with every exhaling movement. Miraculously, prāṇa abides with man, though, like the wandering swan, it is free to depart at any moment from the human body and to return to the ethereal sphere, its other home. When in “breathing forth” it withdraws one foot for a while, prāṇa seems ready to leave the realm below, and to soar up far away into the vast upper space; then, however, in “breathing downward,” it again drops its foot back into the watery realm of earthly existence.