in a healing relationship with consequences that are mutually benefi-
cial.”^85 Åyurveda thus diverges from the position of classical S ̄amkhya andÓ
Yoga that consciousness should transcend materiality. This is a central ex-
ample of how Åyurveda, because it is concerned with concrete physical
problems, embodies and reveals meanings about human nature that devi-
ate from traditional Indian religious and textual interpretations.
Although Åyurveda does not draw the same soteriological conclu-
sions from S ̄amkhya cosmology that Yoga does, the SÓ ̄amkhya philosophyÓ
of cosmic evolution is part of the foundation of Åyurveda’s conception of
the human being as a microcosm within the macrocosm of the natural
world. Crawford articulates the point that the “parallelism between
human nature and nature at large suggests that humans are in a systemic
relationship with the creative forces of the universe.”^86 This point is illu-
minated by Zimmermann’s analysis of Åyurveda’s doctrine of humors
and the medical formulation of a cosmic physiology dominated by the
themes of the circulation of fluids and the chain of successive ‘cookings’
of nutriment by the sun, the cooking fire, and the digestion. The
Åyurvedic version of the great chain of Being is a chain of foods, where
essences transmitted from the soils, through plants, herbivores, carni-
vores, and man are finally rendered to the gods in the aroma of sacrificial
fires. The burning transformative power of the sun, the cooking fire, the
digestive fire, metabolism, and the flames of sacrifice are links in a uni-
verse of biospiritual metamorphosis, where the meal is a metaphoric ritu-
alization of sacrificing foods in the internal fire.^87
Caraka’s text Analysis of the Human Body reveals Åyurveda’s con-
ception of the body in a more fundamental way than the accounts given
in the Caraka-samhitÓ ̄a.The text does not address anatomy and physiol-
ogy conceived in terms of the structure and function of the body’s organs
and systems. According to Zimmermann, Caraka’s Analysis of the
Human Bodyis “a speculative pathogenesis, a reflection of balance and
imbalance between the humors from which results either growth or wast-
ing of the tissues.”^88 Caraka’s text begins with a definition of the body as
samyogavahin,translated by Zimmermann as “a vehicle for congruous
junctions.” The physician’s work is to orchestrate proper conjunctions of
foods and medicinal substances with the patient’s particular constitution
and circumstances—environmental and temporal as well as pathological.
The next chapter, “Meanings of Health in Åyurveda,” presents a set of
determinants of health based on Hindu medicine’s holistic conception of
person and world.
44 religious therapeutics