303DOI: 10.4312/as.2021.9.3.303-320
The Food, Water, Air and Fire Doctrines in  
Ancient Indian and Greek Philosophies from  
a Comparative Perspective
Lenart ŠKOF*
Abstract
The main aim of this article lies in the comparison of ancient cosmico-natural elements 
from the Vedic period with their counterparts in the Presocratics, with a focus on food, 
air, water and fire. By way of an introduction to the ancient elemental world, we first 
present the concept of food (anna) as an idiosyncratic Vedic teaching of the ancient ele-
ments. This is followed by our first comparison—of Raikva’s natural philosophy of Vāyu/
prāṇa with Anaximenes’s pneûma/aér teaching in the broader context of both the Vedic 
and Presocratic teachings on the role of air/breath. Secondly, water as brought to us in 
pañcāgnividyā teaching from Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and Chāndogya Upaniṣad is com-
pared to the teaching of the Greek natural philosopher Thales. Finally, the teaching on fire 
as heat being present in all beings (agni vaiśvānara) and in relation to cosmic teachings 
on fire in the ancient Vedic world are compared to Heraclitus’ philosophy of fire as an 
element. Additionally, this article also presents a survey and analysis of some of the key 
representatives of comparative and intercultural philosophy dealing with the elemental 
and natural philosophy of ancient India and Greece. 
Keywords: Vedic philosophy, Presocratics, food, air, water, fire, philosophy of nature, com-
parative philosophy 
Doktrine hrane, vode, zraka in ognja v stari indijski in grški filozofiji s kom-
parativnega vidika
Izvleček 
Članek se ukvarja s primerjavo starih kozmično-naravnih elementov iz vedskega obd-
obja s predsokratskimi elementi: hrano, zrakom, vodo in ognjem. Najprej se v uvodu v 
starodavni svet elementov ukvarjamo z elementom hrane (anna) kot indijsko posebnos-
tjo v okviru starih učenj o elementih. Temu sledi prvi od treh osrednjih delov članka, 
v katerem se posvečamo primerom indijske filozofije narave (Raikva in nauki o Vāyu/
prāṇa) ter grškemu nauku filozofa Anaksimenesa o pneûma/aér – oboje v širšem kontekstu 
starih vedskih in predsokratskih učenj o vlogi zraka/vetra/diha. V drugi osrednji analizi 
* Lenart ŠKOF, Institute for Philosophical Studies, Science and Research 
Centre Koper.
 E-mail address: lenart.skof@guest.arnes.si
304 Lenart ŠKOF: The Food, Water, Air and Fire Doctrines in Ancient Indian...
se posvečamo učenju o vodi (pañcāgnividyā) v Bṛhadāraṇyaka upaniṣadi in Chāndogya 
upaniṣadi ter sorodnih starih vedskih tekstih in ta nauk primerjamo s starimi grškimi 
nauki o vodi, ki jih najdemo v Talesovi filozofiji narave. V sklepnem delu se posvečamo 
še indijskim vedskim naukom o ognju kot toploti, prisotni v vseh bitjih (agni vaiśvānara), 
ter spremljajočih kozmičnih učenjih stare Indije. Te nauke primerjamo s filozofijo grškega 
misleca Heraklita. Poleg tega članek prinaša pregled in analizo najpomembnejših del s 
področja primerjalne in medkulturne filozofije, ki se ukvarjajo z omenjenimi temami stare 
elementarne misli in filozofije narave v vedski Indiji in predsokratski Grčiji. 
Ključne besede: vedska filozofija, predsokratiki, hrana, zrak, voda, ogenj, filozofija narave, 
primerjalna filozofija
Introduction
Within the ancient Vedic tradition, the elemental mystery of the world and the 
ontology of emanations of being and blossoming of life through the elements is 
in the forefront of its mytico-religious revelation. Thus air, water, food, earth and 
fire can be traced in their cosmic emanations through Vedic gods and mesocosmic 
“connections” (understood as bandhu and upaniṣad) (Upaniṣads 1996, lii–lvi). The 
main aim of this article is to compare these ancient elements from the Vedic pe-
riod to the Presocratics: as already observed by Ranade in his Constructive Survey 
of Upanishadic Philosophy (1986), it is through the independent parallelism that we 
can compare Raikva’s natural philosophy of vāyu/prāṇa with Anaximenes’s pneû-
ma/aér teaching. Vedic teaching on water as brought to us in pañcāgnividyā from 
Chāndogya Upaniṣad and Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad will be brought into dialogue 
with Thales’s natural philosophy of water; finally, teaching on fire as heat being 
present in all beings and the related cosmic teachings on fire will be compared to 
Heraclitus’ natural philosophy of fire. Additionally, we will elaborate on the an-
cient Vedic element of “food” (anna), representing an idiosyncratic and archaic 
(and unique) contribution to elemental thinking.
As far as research by comparative philosophers is concerned, among the first 
to devote some attention to these two topics was Conger (1952). However, he 
only briefly examines Anaximenes, comparing his theory with the doctrines of 
the Upaniṣads, and fails to discuss Heraclitus’ concept of fire in any detail. In 
his work on the history of Indian philosophy, Ruben mentions Anaximenes 
when analysing the Indian philosopher Uddālaka Āruṇi, whom he identifies 
as “the earliest of the materialists” (Ruben 1947, 81), chronologically locating 
him among the third generation of philosophers of the Upaniṣads, flourishing 
in the second half of the 7th century. But it is only with the work Early Greek 
305Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 303–320
Philosophy and the Orient by West (1971), which reserves ample space for ex-
tensive treatments of Anaximenes and, particularly, Heraclitus, that a broader 
insight into a series of possible direct and indirect links with the Upaniṣads, is 
enabled. Pajin, too, calls attention to the similarities between the teachings of 
Anaximenes and Raikva (Pajin 1980); and West’s analytical work is completed 
with the markedly historicist approaches of Sedlar and Karttunen.1 Standing 
out among the students of Indian philosophy is the already mentioned Ra-
nade (1986), who in his chapter on the development of Upaniṣadic cosmology 
also touches on the link between Anaximenes and Raikva, a philosopher of the 
Upaniṣads (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 4.3.1–4), and in his conclusion, amid numer-
ous examples of analogies in the teachings of the two, upholds the importance 
of “independent parallelism” (Ranade 1986, 74) which allows comparison of 
cognate doctrines without constraining them into a framework of direct or in-
direct influences, historic contact, or even a common source (i.e., of Indo-Eu-
ropeans), which are so extensively studied by West and Karttunen. Boland and 
Wessel (1993) finally asserted the close affinity between these teachings of an-
cient philosophers (Anaximenes in particular) and the Indian “wind-breath 
doctrine” (the so called Wind-Atem-Lehre2), while comparisons between Hera-
clitus and later Greek thinkers and Indian philosophers from Uddālaka Āruṇi 
onwards have been examined by Scharfstein (1998). 
Food as an Element in Ancient Indian Philosophy3
Let us begin with an idiosyncratic example of an ancient teaching of the ele-
mental world and its cosmico-natural significance. Within Western and East-
ern traditions of mythological thinking and philosophy there are only few 
testimonies for the philosophical or even metaphysical relevance of food and 
eating. With few exceptions—such as Aristotle and Feuerbach—the philosophy 
or metaphysics of food and nutrition has been poorly represented in Western 
1 Sedlar draws interesting parallels between regarding the role of wind/breath in Greek and Indian 
medicine (and mentions Anaximenes from the Greek pole of this learning); he ascribes to Heracli-
tus points of convergence with Buddhism, but also associates him with the Upaniṣadic doctrines of 
breath and fire (Sedlar 1980, 17ff.). Karttunen rejects any (even indirect) link between Anaximenes 
and Heraclitus, on the one hand, and Indian doctrines, on the other, but he does mention some 
similarities between them (Karttunen 1989, 11ff.). 
2 For this teaching we draw on Die Wind-Atem Lehre in den älteren Upaniṣaden (Boland 1997).
3 This part of our essay draws on an earlier encyclopaedic article titled “Food in Ancient Indian Phi-
losophy” (Thompson and Kaplan 2014). Reprinted with permission.
306 Lenart ŠKOF: The Food, Water, Air and Fire Doctrines in Ancient Indian...
philosophical tradition.4 In contrast, the ancient Indian natural philosophy of 
the Vedas brings important mythico-philosophical testimonies on the cosmic 
food cycle, as well as early philosophical elaborations on the role of food. More-
over, it is only in the Vedas that an old mythico-philosophical theory of food 
as an element is presented in a cosmico-ontological key. Apart from their rich 
philosophical, ethical and comparative relevance for various philosophies or dis-
ciplines of the body (yoga, vegetarianism), ancient Vedic teachings on food and 
the food cycle can also substantially inform contemporary environmental phi-
losophy and philosophy of religion (or philosophical theology). 
For the Upaniṣadic philosophers there existed four or five originary elements of 
the world: earth, water, fire, air, and ether/space (see Praśna Upaniṣad 4.7: “[…] 
earth and the elements of earth; waters and the elements of water; fire and the 
elements of fire; wind and the elements of wind; space and the elements of 
space […]” (Upaniṣads 1996, 284)). As such they are fully parallel to the five 
Greek elements as listed by the Presocratic philosophers (interestingly enough, 
in Feuerbach we have earth, water, light, air, and food; see Feuerbach 1989). 
But it is in the special role attributed to food that the natural philosophy of 
ancient Vedic India substantially diverges from the related Greek testimonies. 
Being aware of natural relations between “food” (anna) and “eater” (attṛ), some 
Vedic philosophers included food among the originary elements and even at-
tributed it a primary role among them. Here two interrelated doctrines ap-
peared: about the water-cycle and about food. Of course, both food and eater 
are fundamental categories of biology: plants and animals produce food, or, 
rather, constitute the food for each other in the cycle of life. On the other hand, 
water is another originary source of life for early Vedic thinkers—such as rain, 
which falls on the ground and “feeds” plants, animals, and humans. Book XI 
of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa presents the legendary story of Bhṛgu, the son and 
pupil of the god Varuṇa. Being too proud and too confident, Bhṛgu was sent to 
the jungle by his father. As Bhṛgu looked in all four directions, he experienced 
horrible scenes of cannibalism, men dismembering men and eating their limbs. 
Upon his return to his father, Bhṛgu receives Varuṇa’s explanation: what he has 
witnessed were scenes from the world beyond, where men were representing 
the angry souls of plants, trees and the animals, all of them seeking retribution 
for being killed and eaten in their lives in this world. Bhṛgu thus receives from 
Varuṇa a lesson about the interconnectedness of all living things: he learns that 
the whole universe is nothing but food (Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 11.6.1-135). But 
4 Cf. here an excellent book on food and theology titled Food & Faith (Wirzba 2011). On Feuer-
bach’s teaching on food see Škof (2015, ch. 5).
5 See The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (1994, 108–12).
307Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 303–320
at the same moment, the story of Bhṛgu is also an early example of a deep-
er sacrificial awareness—not yet about vegetarianism, but about the elemen-
tal meaning of food and a lesson about the deeper meaning of food sacrifice 
(Ruben 1947). Later, this will lead to a new ethical awareness, as exemplified 
in the teachings of Buddhism and Jainism, and the tradition of vegetarianism 
in Hinduism. Now, in Taittirīya Upaniṣad III there is another version of this 
legend. Here Bhṛgu learns the doctrine about bráhman and food: according to 
Varuṇa, bráhman is food, for it is from food that beings are born, on food they 
live, and to food they pass upon death. Given the Vedic meaning of bráhman 
as a mysterious power of poetic formulation, or truth formulation (and later, in 
Vedānta, the absolute), and equating it with food, Bhṛgu is finally instructed by 
Varuṇa to practice austerity. 
In the early Upaniṣads food is recognized both as an originary material/empirical 
as well as spiritual/metaphysical substance: in Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.2.1, a human 
being is formed from the essence of food:
From food, surely, are they born;
all creatures that live on Earth.
On food alone, once born, they live;
and into food in the end they pass.
For food is the foremost of beings,
so it is called ‘all herbs’.
(Upaniṣads 1996, 185)
Similarly, in the earlier Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.5.1, food is worshiped as the 
highest of all, as bráhman itself. The poetic verses read as follows: 
By wisdom and by toil,
when the father produced
the seven kinds of food – 
One was common to all here.
Two he assigned to the gods.
Three he kept for himself. 
One he gave to the beasts.
308 Lenart ŠKOF: The Food, Water, Air and Fire Doctrines in Ancient Indian...
All beings depend on it,
both those that breathe 
and those that do not. 
Why aren’t they exhausted, 
when they are eaten every day?
The man who knows it
as the inexhaustible – 
he eats food with his face;
he reaches the gods;
he lives on invigorating food. 
(Upaniṣads 1996, 18)
Here this pre-Buddhist Upaniṣad lists seven kinds of food, being created by the 
father of the gods, Prajāpati: among the various foods given to the creatures, milk 
is of the foremost importance (as explained in the commentary to the above vers-
es in the Upaniṣad itself—see Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.5.2). Next, by following 
the Upaniṣadic teaching, and by the means of daily sacrifice, the sacrificer who 
knows this (in famous Upaniṣadic phrase “ya evaṃ veda”) and follows this ancient 
teaching—i.e. the sacrificer who firmly establishes himself/herself as a Person/
Creator—also knows the inexhaustible spiritual origin (food) of everything, and 
thus receives an inexhaustible amount of (material) food.6 So it is clearly stated in 
this passage how food serves both as a material and spiritual basis of everything. 
Food and liturgical acts (rituals, including various daily practices) are interde-
pendent and have ethical consequences. 
In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.2.1 we have a famous cosmogonic story about 
Death (Mṛtyu, m.) as the primeval deity: according to the Upaniṣadic philoso-
phers Death is equated with hunger, and this thus indirectly indicates the key cos-
mologico-ontological role of food for the living. Moreover, Death emitted water, 
6 See Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.17: “Anyone who knows this obtains this whole world” (Upa-
niṣads 1996, 17); Sskt: tad idaṃ sarvam āpnoti ya evaṃ veda (Limaye and Vadekar 1958, 190). 
309Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 303–320
which then solidified into earth, and from the heat (tapas) emitted in this process 
fire was created. Air is also added to the elements. Mṛtyu began to eat everything 
he created and thus he became the eater of this world, with the entire world being 
his food (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.2.5: “He began to eat whatever he gave birth 
to,” Upaniṣads 1996, 8). Finally, there is another important correlation, namely 
between food and breath (prāṇa). In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad V, both “Brah-
man is food” and “Brahman is lifebreath” are uttered by the Upaniṣadic philoso-
pher (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 5.12.17). But food and breath (or air) are closely 
interdependent. In a story about Prātṛda and his father from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka 
Upaniṣad 5.12.1, Prātṛda is instructed about reaching pre-eminence as follows: all 
beings need food, and all beings likewise need (life) breath. This ancient Upaniṣad-
ic teaching of the elements of food and air suggests the following: bodies subsist 
on a hidden cosmic, or empirico-metaphysical reserve of food and cosmic wind, or 
breath. The ancient “wind-breath-doctrine”, as presented in the early Upaniṣads, 
strongly attests this (see Boland 1997). Finally, the whole universe is nothing but 
food; in his substance, man is now identical to the metaphysical food, or bráhman, 
the first and ultimate creator and consumer of everything (Geib 1976, 225–28). 
Another of the key early Upaniṣads, Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.2.1-4, reveals a cos-
mogonical story closely related to food: in the beginning this world was One, 
without a second. In the process of becoming many, this primeval One first emit-
ted heat, then water (as a result of cosmic perspiration), and finally from the rain 
it emitted food. Important teachings on the essence of food can be found also in 
Aitareya, Kauṣītaki, and Muṇḍaka Upaniṣads. Aitareya Upaniṣad 1.2.1 brings a 
cosmogonical story about hunger and thirst, which both affected the micro- and 
macrocosmic deities (i.e., cosmic realities) in the Upaniṣads, such as the human 
body and the cosmos. Immediately after they were created/emitted from the Self 
(ātman), they fell into the cosmic waters/ocean. From these waters, food was cre-
ated for them by this Self:
Once these deities were created, they fell into this vast ocean here. It 
afflicted him with hunger and thirst. Those deities then said to him: 
‘Find us a dwelling in which we can establish ourselves and eat food’. 
(Upaniṣads 1996, 196)
To sum up: within the ancient Upaniṣadic teachings, food is frequently presented 
as the “the material substratum of all beings” (Geib 1976, 226), which is revealed 
in the seed from which all living things evolve. Taittirīya Upaniṣad describes how 
7 Sskt: “annaṃ brahma [… ] prāṇo brahma” (Limaye and Vadekar 1958, 262).
310 Lenart ŠKOF: The Food, Water, Air and Fire Doctrines in Ancient Indian...
all beings evolve from food, live in it, and revert to it,8 and in this Upaniṣad the 
world, analogously to the passage from Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.6, is divid-
ed into two poles: the food (anna) and the eater (attṛ). Food is thus “pre-existing 
matter” and “empirical food consisting of beings eating each other”, whereby all is 
“reduced to the one metaphysical substance” (ibid.).
Ancient Indian Water Doctrine and Comparison with Thales’s 
Philosophy
The earliest Upaniṣads bear testimony to the beginnings of philosophical think-
ing comparable to the role of the Ionian philosophers, at least with regard to their 
philosophy of nature in ancient Greece. Schneider thus speaks of the “morpho-
logically comparable phenomena of two high cultures” (Schneider 1961, 1). The 
question concerning both cultures is to what extent it is possible in this case to 
speak of a philosophy of nature. The definition adopted by Boland in her mono-
graph about the wind-breath doctrine (Boland 1997) is centred on the following 
constituents of natural philosophy: the question of the principle (or the element 
of being: e.g. water in Thales); an observation method that breaks with the exclu-
sively mythological discourse; the related knowledge; and, ultimately, the (philo-
sophical) explanation of the whole of cosmic and human life (ibid., 8).
A presentation of this kind within ancient Indian philosophy was attempted by 
Frauwallner in his History of Indian Philosophy from 1953. In the framework of 
Upaniṣadic philosophy, Frauwallner was the first to systematically speak of three 
doctrines: the water doctrine, breath doctrine, and fire doctrine (Frauwallner 
1953, 36–47). The doctrine of water as a lifegiving principle is based on insight 
gained by ancient philosophers of nature through observation: water in the form 
of rain nourishes plants, humans are sustained by mothers’ milk, and at the time 
of a person’s death, through the moisture carried into the sky by the smoke from 
the funeral pyre, water returns to its source and comes full circle. Ancient Indians 
claimed that water flows out of the Moon, which is constantly, as it were, “filing 
up” and “emptying out” according to its phases. It is an old Vedic belief that the 
Moon contains soma, the beverage bestowing immortality to the gods, and that 
the heavenly waters raining down on humans, feeding them, also originate in the 
Moon (ibid., 37–39). Now, Schneider argues that the doctrine about the circula-
tion of water—from its origin in the Moon through rain to the plants and from 
8 Sskt.: “annādvai prajāḥ prajāyante | yāḥ kāśva pṛthivīṃ śritāḥ | atho annenaiva jīvanti | athainadapi-
yantyanttataī |” (TU 2.2); “annāddhyeva khalvimāni bhṛtāni jāyante | annena jātāni jīvanti | annaṃ 
prayantyabhisaṃviśantīti |” (TU 3.1.2) (Limaye and Vadekar 1958, 55, 59).
311Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 303–320
there through the food consumed by man, into the seed from which an embryo 
develops—is evidence of an already rational philosophical thought that does not 
require śrāddha or faith to be understood (Schneider 1961, 4–5). This doctrine 
does reveal a clear tendency to search for that material first cause of the incessant 
emergence and passing away of the things that are in the world. 
Do the food and water doctrines have any parallels in the Greek world of thought? 
Can water, the material cause or arché in Thale,9 also be conceived of as the (ma-
terial) substratum/substance/essence (hypokeímenon) of being? Such an interpre-
tation, as well as the terms “element” (stoicheîon) and “substratum” (hypokeímenon), 
would already be in line with the ideas of Aristotle (and here we can note that it 
would be equally uncertain to apply Greek philosophical terms, of later origin, to 
Indian philosophers). In a section of Metaphysics (983b 6-10), Aristotle suggests 
an interesting explanation about the role of the principles of being, which is anal-
ogous to the passage of Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.2:10 “[…] that of which all things 
that are consist, and from which they first come to be, and into which they are 
finally resolved […]” (Barnes 1995, 1556f ). But can we say that Thales, too, un-
derstood the principles of being in this same way? Guthrie associates the term 
arché (which was also used by Aristotle) with its use in the meaning of “beginning” 
and “cause”, which was already known during the period of the Ionian philoso-
phers and, even before that, by Homer, remarking that the first to use the term 
arché was most probably Anaximander. If we apply this meaning now to water, 
we can say that “all things were once water […], and to the philosopher all things 
are still water, […] in spite of the changes” (Guthrie 1992, 57). Whereas the Ve-
dic philosophers might have chosen water because of its biologically discernible 
role in the emergence and sustenance of all that is—acknowledging it through, 
as it were, a proto-rational-experimental analysis as the first principle or cause of 
being—what led Thales to it appears more difficult to determine. The idea that 
Thales might have been persuaded by the descriptions of the flooding of the Nile 
in Egypt and the related annual emergence of life—as Aristotle’s report stating 
that for Thales the Earth floats on water (On the Heavens, 294a 28) seems to con-
firm—can also be found in Middle Eastern mythology (Guthrie 1992, 58–61). 
Even a rational explanation offers parallels with the Indian search for an explana-
tion on this point, and according to Aristotle’s conjecture the moisture-containing 
seed in Thales could refer to a connection with the origin of all life, and water is 
9 Thales of Miletus (fl. 585 BCE) may have been a Greek contemporary of Pravāhaṇa Jaivali.
10 Together with the Aitareya Upaniṣad and the Kauṣitaki Upaniṣad, the Taittirīya Upaniṣad forms 
the group of early prose Upaniṣads, which were probably created around the 6th/5th century BCE, 
while the creation of the two most ancient Upaniṣads—the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya—
can be dated as far back as the 7th/6th century BCE (Olivelle 1996, xxxvii).
312 Lenart ŠKOF: The Food, Water, Air and Fire Doctrines in Ancient Indian...
also associated with the vital heat that disappears at death when the body dries up 
(Metaphysics, 983a 20-28). Water or moisture (hygrós) is thus the original matter 
that might, in the early days of philosophy, have been considered the beginning 
of all life as “the continuing, hidden constituent of all things” (Guthrie 1992, 94). 
These doctrines from both pre-Buddhist India and Presocratic Greece indicate a 
new way of thinking and rationalizing the emergence, existence, and passing of 
living things, which culminate in the wind-breath and fire doctrines. 
Ancient Indian Wind-Breath Doctrine and Comparison with 
Anaximenes’s Philosophy
The former two doctrines bring us to the breath, or the so called wind-breath 
doctrine, which, as we shall see, opens up interesting comparative possibilities. 
The special importance of breathing can be traced back to the Vedic Saṃhitās. 
In the Ṛksaṃhita, breath (prāṇa; from the root of the verb *an- in the sense of 
“to breathe”), which is associated with life, also represents a link with the cosmic 
wind or god of wind (vāyu) (Brereton and Jamison 2020, 94). In one of the ma-
jor hymns of the Ṛksaṃhita (10.90.13), we can identify a link between the cosmic 
wind (vāyu) and the breath of the first cosmic person (puruṣa): 
The Moon was born from his mind. From his eye the Sun was born. 
From his mouth Indra and Agni, from his breath Vāyu was born. 
(The Rigveda 2014, 154011) 
This connection and interdependence of microcosm and macrocosm already re-
veals one of the most characteristic traits of later Brahmanic and Upaniṣadic 
thought—the interpretation of reality through an analogy between a description 
according to the world of gods and according to the world of the self (i.e., adhide-
vatam and adhyātmam). Further, the same hymn also contains four of the later 
vital powers or “breaths” (prāṇāḥ, and thus in plural) as they will be then num-
bered in the earliest Upaniṣads. For example, in the Aitareya Upaniṣad 3.2-8 the 
group of five basic vital functions consists of breathing, sight, hearing, speech, 
and thinking (they are referred to in the idiosyncratic Vedic plural after the first 
of them—i.e., the breath). Moreover, in Ṛksaṃhita 10.189.2 we can also find the 
rudiments of a third type of reading of prāṇa or breath—namely, a fundamental 
connection with the process of breathing (this is the first and only example of 
11 Sskt.: “candramā manaso jātaś cakṣoḥ sṛryo ajāyata | mukhād indraś cāgniś ca prāṇād vāyur ajāyata ||” 
313Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 303–320
inhaling/exhaling, apāna/prāṇa that appears in the Ṛksaṃhita), which later, as we 
shall see, manifests in the discussion about the five types of breath, particularly 
important in yoga and traditional Indian medicine (Zysk 1993, 198ff.). The verses 
of this Vedic hymn read as follows:
This dappled cow has stridden here and sat in front of its mother
and its father, as it goes forth toward the Sun.
She moves within the realms of light, breathing in from his
breathing-out.
The buffalo has looked out across heaven. 
(The Rigveda 2014, 1660). 
Crucial to comparative philosophy are passages of the Upaniṣads associating 
breath with life and the self (ātman). The earliest Upaniṣadic testimony of the 
wind-breath doctrine, originating from the Saṃhitā period, can be traced back 
to Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa 3.1–2 (which corresponds to the passage from 
Chāndogya Upaniṣad 4.1–3 in which we encounter the Upaniṣadic philosopher 
Raikva).12 In relation to the gods (adhidevatam), the Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāh-
maṇa 3.1.1–13 first describes how the wind is the only complete divinity, as all 
other divinities (devatāḥ), which here could be understood as “natural forces”—
these are the Sun, Moon, stars, fire, day, night, cardinal points, Parjanya, waters, 
herbs, and trees—revert back to it, while the wind is the only complete sāman. It 
is important to highlight that wind holds such divine status due to its constant 
movement. And in relation to the self (adhyātmam; see Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāh-
maṇa 3.1.14–19), breath is the only sāman into which the remaining four of the 
five vital powers, namely speech, thinking, sight and hearing—which are oth-
erwise active in man together with breath—revert to during sleep. In the con-
clusion of Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa 3.2.1–4 we eventually witness kṣatriya 
Abhipratārin Kākṣaseni calling ātman the one who eats without being eaten (cf. 
the food doctrine!): this ātman—here in the sense of breath—now refers both to 
gods and humans. Thus the macrocosmic wind is here linked to the breath in man. 
Since wind stood cosmically above breath already in the Ṛksaṃhita (as vertically 
macrocosm is above the microcosm) and is also the one into which breath reverts 
at death, this doctrine is called by Boland (1997) the wind-breath doctrine. Relat-
ed to these two passages is also a somewhat later teaching from the Bṛhadāraṇya-
ka Upaniṣad 1.5.21–23 about the competition among the five types of breath 
12 Ruben (1947) classifies Raikva among the first generation philosophers of the Upaniṣads (700–670 BCE).
314 Lenart ŠKOF: The Food, Water, Air and Fire Doctrines in Ancient Indian...
(prāṇāḥ)13 or vital/spiritual powers transferred to the wind and corresponding nat-
ural phenomena or divinities. Although the Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa text as 
part of the Sāmaveda is primarily still in the service of mythological thinking, it 
already provides occasional “natural philosophical reflections” (Boland 1997, 39) 
as well. 
The five breaths doctrine defines the next stage in the development of the doctrine 
of breath, which was in its rudimentary state present already in the Saṃhitās and 
Brāhmaṇas and started to appear in the Upaniṣads concurrently with the men-
tioned teachings of breath as vital power; but now we are not talking about the 
vital and cognitive powers, but rather the five types and processes of breathing or 
breath within humans. These now include prāṇa, apāna, udāna, vyāna and samāna 
(Zysk 1993, 201). In relation to the role of each breath we should mention the 
treatment by Bodewitz (1986, 344), who proposes the following principal mean-
ings for the mentioned breaths: exhalation (prāṇa) and inhalation (apāna; also 
digestive/abdominal breath, downward-moving and governing excretion) as the 
two most important parts of the breathing process; upward-moving breath (udā-
na; also inhalation), breath between inhalation and exhalation (vyāna; air diffused 
throughout the body), and, finally linking breath (samāna; breath between prāṇa 
and apāna, which is, in contrast to vyāna, congested in the lower part of the body). 
Moving now to the Greek parallels of this doctrine, it should be noted that in 
Greek philosophy prior to Plato no such development of the concept of breath as 
a life-giving principle that would lead towards a theory of breaths in the body can 
be observed. Still, Anaximenes provides some interesting parallels to the doctrine. 
Anaximenes’s air (aér) as the first principle represents the pinnacle of wind-breath 
in the monistic philosophy of the Ionians. Guthrie (1992) points out that Anax-
imenes’s choice of air for arché is more appropriate than Anaximander’s apeíron. 
Anaximenes proceeds from the fundamental characteristic of the air, which sub-
sists through rarefaction and condensing as the substratum of all being, where-
as apeíron as the Boundless that enters the various things, thus is then in a way 
13 Prāṇa in the sense of breath is in the plural (prāṇāḥ) a generic term denoting human bodily/vital 
faculties, the number of which ranges between five and twelve. The five “breaths” consist of the fol-
lowing five faculties: the breath (prāṇā), the speech (vāc), the sight (cakṣus), the hearing (śrotram), 
and the mind (manas) (see Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad 1.7; the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa already knows from 
two to the thirteen prāṇas, as well as three types of breath; cf. Deussen 1915, 296ff.). These faculties 
can additionally include the senses of smell and taste, the body, the arms, the legs, the genital or-
gans, and discernment (vijñāna). This latter, besides breath, represents the most important aspect of 
the whole vital and cognitive essence of man (cf. Ježić 1999, 76ff.). In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 
4.1 the five “breaths” are equalled to bráhman and their base is in the heart. Typical of the develop-
ment of the Upaniṣadic thought is that the breath doctrine gradually gives way to the doctrine of 
self (ātman), which also dwells in the heart.
315Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 303–320
“no longer the Boundless”, and the “differences of kind or quality are for the first 
time reduced to a common origin in differences of quantity” (Guthrie 1992, 116, 
126). An even more important aspect of Anaximenes’s philosophy—particularly 
in comparison with Indian teachings—provides the second reason for choosing 
air as the arché, namely its function as the carrier of life. Even in ancient Greece 
it is possible to encounter ancient images that connect breath, life, air and soul. 
Already in Homer man is invested with two forces or vehicles of life—thymós and 
psyché. Thymós or life force, comes into man out of cosmic energies and governs 
the emotional and mental processes in him/her. Its action is concentrated in the 
area of the chest (phrén) and heart (kér, kradíe), which maintain these activities by 
constant movement. The principle that expresses man’s thymós, and thereby their 
vitality, through breathing is psyche. With death, the link between the life force 
and the body is severed, and thymós joins again the flow of cosmic energies (Dietz 
2000, 71–74). It is thus possible, even in periods preceding Anaximenes, to jux-
tapose the ancient Indian (already Ṛgvedic) conception of prāṇa as vital breath 
which at death re-enters cosmic wind, with the Greek (Homeric) thymós in the 
sense of a vital force which at death reunites with its cosmic origin. 
This brings us to the well-known passage in which Aetius in his work Peri archon 
from the 1st/2nd century AD reports the following from Anaximenes: “As our 
soul, he says, being air holds us together and controls us, so does wind [or, breath] 
and air enclose the whole world” (Kirk, Raven and Schofield 1999, 158).14 In this 
sentence or, better, report about the teachings of Anaximenes, the cosmic aér is 
likened to pneûma in man. In comparison to Indian teaching—while the wind-
breath doctrine was included in the doctrine of the two “gatherers” (prāṇa and 
vāyu) into which all other vital faculties and cosmic phenomena revert—Anax-
imenes’s teaching about the link between the human breath and the cosmic air 
can be interpreted as a typologically analogous expression of a universally present 
knowledge about the nature of human life and, more strictly, our soul (in the sense 
of the five Indian “breaths” or vital powers—as one whole of physical-spiritual 
faculties—and Anaximenes’s teaching, which originates from an ancient Greek 
connection between breathing and the soul). Boland and Wessel (1993, 106f.), 
however, point out the asymmetry in terminology: in Anaximenes, aér is a joint 
term for the micro- and macrocosmic reality, while the Indian wind-breath doc-
trine does not understand the terms prāṇa and vāyu as synonyms. Further, the In-
dian doctrine does not speak about the rarefaction/condensing of air. But recalling 
that in the more ancient layers of the Indian wind-breath doctrine the transfer 
14 Gr.: “hoîon he psyché, fesín, he hemetéra aér oûsa synkrateî hemâs, kaì hólon tén kósmon pneûma 
kaì aér periéchei” (Diels and Kranz 1934, 95 [fr. 13 B 2]). For more about the contextual meaning 
of this sentence see Alt 1973.
316 Lenart ŠKOF: The Food, Water, Air and Fire Doctrines in Ancient Indian...
to the macrocosm must have followed reflections about human beings, we should 
presume the same for Anaximenes. Or, as Barnes states: 
We men contain an airy soul; and that air keeps us together, i.e., keeps us 
alive; the universe as a whole contains air: hence it is air that keeps the 
universe together, i.e., supplies its underlying stuff. (Barnes 1996, 55) 
Although a “fully developed and clear-cut use of the inference from the known 
microcosm, man, to the unknown macrocosm, the world as a whole […]” (Kirk, 
Raven and Schofield 1999, 161) likely did not occur in Greece before the 5th cen-
tury BCE, we may still allow the possibility that the link, in one form or another, 
was drawn by Anaximenes, which is why its parallelism with the Indian doctrine 
is also comparatively interesting. 
Ancient Indian Fire Doctrine and Comparison with Heraclitus 
For Frauwallner, the fire doctrine is the most important of the three doctrines he 
examines (water, air and fire; see Frauwallner 1953, 45–49). It is based on the an-
cient observations of bodily warmth, in which the first Indian philosophers rec-
ognized the fire that dwells in all beings (agni vaiśvānara). This divinity, which 
can already be found in the Ṛksaṃhita, and whose very name bespeaks its role—
of a fire belonging to all humanity—represents both the celestial and terrestrial 
fire (Macdonell 1995, 99). However, the fire dwelling in man, and of which the 
Upaniṣads speak (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 5.9 and Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.13.7 
respectively), differs from its personified divine and mythological image as en-
countered in earlier texts. Its significance for the early Indian philosophy of nature 
lies in that its existence—and thereby the role of the physical substratum in the 
human body—can be demonstrated empirically as well: we can hear the fire roar/
hum when we cover our ears, and its power is revealed in that it digests the food 
we have consumed, thus giving us warmth, which can be felt by touching our skin 
(Frauwallner 1953, 45). The doctrine of fire is otherwise associated with the no-
tions of connectedness between the micro- and macrocosm, which can be found 
already in the wind-breath doctrine. If water in the water doctrine comes from 
the Moon, then fire originates in the Sun, which at the same time represents the 
heavenly door through which this world receives heavenly light (jyotiṣ). The light 
that shines in the Sun is the same light that dwells in the human being (Chānd-
ogya Upaniṣad 3.13.7). The Sun is thus connected through its rays with the man 
into whom it flows and in whom the inner fire, by analogy, concentrates in the 
heart, from where it is then conveyed to the various parts of the body by the blood 
317Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 303–320
vessels. This circle (cf. the cycle of water and micro-macrocosmic analogies in the 
wind-breath doctrine) closes again at death, when the fire from man returns to 
his/her heavenly abode (Frauwallner 1953, 46). Already in the Ṛksaṃhita Agni is 
the terrestrial fire that can consume everything else (Macdonell 1995, 89). The 
doctrine of the fire residing in man is also related to the notion of an eater who 
digests the food consumed by man and distributes the energy extracted from it 
throughout the body (Geib 1976, 229). Another important parallel between the 
wind-breath and fire doctrines can also be found in the sense of the Upaniṣadic 
doctrine of “gatherers” (saṃvargaḥ)—for the roles of breath and wind in the cos-
mos have their counterpart roles in the fire in the body, on the one side, and the 
Sun in the cosmos, on the other (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 4.3.4).15 
Finally, can the Indian doctrine of fire be compared to the role of fire in Heraclitus? 
In Heraclitus, fire is the original archetypal and eternal form of matter (cf. fr. B 30), 
which is the origin of thoughts (lógoi) about change and emergence of everything 
from antitheses (fire, sea/water and earth, and flame/lightning/prestér). The quantity 
of fire in this continual exchange or flow of change always remains the same: fire is, 
through this constant movement (starting and dying down according to métron and 
lógos), perpetually turning into non-fire, sea through evaporation into non-sea, earth 
through spillovers into non-earth. This movement, this constancy of change, testi-
fies to a different substratum of thought than that encountered in Anaximenes, for 
change does not occur through some physical transformation (like condensing and 
rarefaction) of fire: “All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire for all things, 
as goods are for gold and gold for goods” (Kirk, Raven and Schofield 1999, 198). 
These words are evidence that Heraclitus deliberately did not choose an analogy to, 
say, Anaximenes’s doctrine; instead, he emphasized with a merchant-like (original-
ly non-philosophical and non-physical) comparison the meaning of the “parity of 
value: a certain quantity of gold will buy a certain quantity of goods” (Guthrie 1992, 
461). Thus, rather than being the substratum or, as it were, a substance of all things, 
fire instead performs a special role from the viewpoint of passing into opposites; i.e., 
a process taking place in the world.
Regarding the question of comparative possibilities, West relies on an excerpt from 
Chāndogya Upaniṣad 4.3. in which the doctrine of “gatherers” (saṃvargaḥ) is de-
scribed, specifically in the context of the wind-breath doctrine, which he himself 
associates with the exchange of elements in Heraclitus (fr. B 31), where, within 
the framework of the Upaniṣadic doctrine, fire is thus “consumed” by a cosmologi-
cal “gatherer” or wind (West 1971, 173f.). Although we may speak of two formally 
15 “These, then, are the two gatherers—the wind among the deities and the breath among the vital 
functions (prāṇa)” (Upaniṣads 1996, 129). 
318 Lenart ŠKOF: The Food, Water, Air and Fire Doctrines in Ancient Indian...
analogous methods, in the context of this doctrine fire does not play the same role 
as in Heraclitus. Therefore, it would appear more appropriate to compare fire in the 
perspective of its role as carrier of life: fire—which, as we have seen, is for Heracli-
tus an essential state of the soul—also “plays some part in the great cycle of natural 
change” (Kirk, Raven and Schofield 1999, 204). If we add that the dry (and there-
fore warm; i.e., dried as opposed to moist or wet) soul in Heraclitus is also associat-
ed with the heat of the Sun as the primary source of life (in fr. B 67a, the soul runs 
through the body like a spider across its web, while vital heat proceeding from the 
Sun gives life to all things that live) it is possible to draw a comparison with Indian 
thought or the doctrine of fire (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.13.7), where the light or heat 
connect the Sun and the human being, or the macrocosm and microcosm. Another 
interesting parallel between the Indian thought and that of Heraclitus is related to 
the role of breathing: in fr. A 16 it is conveyed through the words of Sextus Empiri-
cus that in sleep “breathing is the only point of attachment to be preserved” (Kirk, 
Raven and Schofield 1999, 205). This introduces an interesting analogy with the 
doctrine of breath in the context of the five “breaths” or vital powers (prāṇāḥ), where, 
as we already know, prāṇa in the narrower sense is the only one among the vital/
spiritual powers to remain present even during sleep (Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa 
3.1.14–19). This parallel demonstrates how significant the phenomenon of breath/
ing and its constant active presence in the process of life is for the early Greek and 
Indian philosophies, despite its different role in both. 
Conclusion
In his work about the comparative history of philosophy, Scharfstein sets Hera-
clitus within the social and philosophical frame of the beginnings of metaphysical 
philosophy—together with the Upaniṣadic thinkers Uddālaka Āruṇi and Yājñav-
alkya on one side, and Parmenides on the other (Scharfstein 1998). But we have 
seen that it may be more appropriate to place Heraclitus in the context of the be-
ginnings of Indian and Greek philosophy of nature and the doctrines of the first 
(material) principles. For intercultural philosophy the vital-cosmic breath, or air, 
appears to be one of the crucial phenomena for understanding the position of the 
human being in the world. Indian pre-Buddhist and Greek Presocratic philoso-
phies throw a comparative and intercultural light on how the very idea of human 
embeddedness in the macrocosm has been present in the consciousness and early 
philosophical observation and analyses of these traditions from the very begin-
ning: this early thought starts with the human body, making the latter the first 
phenomenon and object of understanding of an individual’s involvement in and 
engagement with the surrounding world.
319Asian Studies IX (XXV ), 3 (2021), pp. 303–320
Acknowledgement
This paper is a result of the ARRS research grant Surviving the Anthropocene through 
Inventing New Ecological Justice and Biosocial Philosophical Literacy ( J7-1824).
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