How Ancient India Sliced Air Variously
From the time of the earliest surviving texts of India, a fascination with air, especially in the form of wind and breath, is noticed. Air has been treated as one of the four or five elements. Moving air, that the wind is, has been personified and deified. It has, over the centuries, been classified variously for different purposes in a sophisticated way. It plays an important role in poetry and receives much attention in scientific and philosophical literature. As breath, wind. figures prominently in theories of language developed by the grammarians and in the process of spiritual cultivation laid out by Yoga.