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338 Speculations in the Medical Schools (CH. the voices of such people are rough, weak, grating, slow and broken, and they cannot sleep well (jāgarūka); again, on account of the quality of lightness of vāyu, the movements of a man with congenital vāta tendency would be light and quick, and so would be all his efforts, eating, speech, and so forth. It is easy to see that the resemblance of the qualities of vāyu to the qualities of the body is remote;yet, since the special features and characteristics of one's body were considered as being due to one or the other of the body-building agents, these characteristics of the body were through remote similarity referred to them.
There is another point to be noted in connection with the enumeration of the qualities of the dosas. The disturbance of a dosa does not necessarily mean that all its qualities have been exhibited in full strength; it is possible that one or more of the qualities of a dosa may run to excess, leaving others intact. Thus vāyu is said to possess the qualities of rūkșa, laghu, cala, bahu, śīghra, śīta, etc., and it is possible that in any particular case the śīta quality may run to excess, leaving others undisturbed, or so may śīta and rūkșa, or rīta, rūkșa and laghu, and so forth. Hence it is the business of the physician not only to discover which doşa has run to excess, but also to examine which qualities of which dosa have run to excess. The qualities of doșas are variable, i.e. it is possible that a dosa in its state of disturbance will remain a dosa, and yet have some of its qualities increased and others decreased. The nature of the disturbance of a doşa is determined by the nature of the disturbance of the qualities involved (amsāmía-vikalpa)". The natural inference from such a theory is that, since the entities having this or that quality are but component parts of a doșa, a doșa cannot be regarded as a whole homogeneous in all its parts. On this view a dosa appears to be a particular kind of secretion which is a mixture of a number of different secretions having different qualities, but which operate together on the same lines. When a particular doșa is in a healthy order, its component entities are in certain definite proportions both with regard to themselves and to
i Caraka-samhitā, 11. I. 10.4. Cakrapāņi, in commenting on this, says:"tatra dosānām amśāmsa-vikalpo yutha-vāte prakūpite 'pi kadäcid vātasya sītāmsobalavān bhavati, kadăcil laghv-amsah, kadācid rūkşamsah kadácil laghu-rūksāmsah.” The doşa or doșas which become prominently disturbed in a system are called anubandhya, and the doșa or doșas which at the time of diseases are not primarily disturbed are called anubandha. When three of the dosas are jointly disturbed, it is called sannipāta, and when two are so disturbed it is called samsarga (ibid. 11. 6. 11).
