Indian and Chinese Cosmic Elements
Crop production depends on three factors: heat, water and soil (earth). These became cosmic elements and are mentioned in the Chandgoya Upanishad of about 800 B.C. It reflects plant life. Later came a cosmology with five elements: Akasha (Ether, Creative Energy), Wind, Heat, Water and Earth (Food). It mirrors human life and can be dated 700 B.C. Lokayata philosophers, as materialists, discarded Aksha as non-tangible, reducing the cosmology to four elements. Its impact on Indian medicine reduced human physiology to three factors: (Breathing) Wind, (Body) Heat, and (Body Fluid) Water, whence arose the three humours: Vata (Wind), Pitta (Heat) and Kapha (Water). The humours were individually known before but Panini compiled them as the Tridosha doctrine about 500 B.C. The Chinese cosmological system has five elements which are comparable with those of Indian cosmology. Indian: Akasha, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth; Chinese: Metal, Wood, Fire, Water, Earth. Now metal = Akasha and Wood = Wind. Thus, both the Indian and Chinese cosmologies mirror human life. Like the Lokayata philosophy the Chinese approach is materialistic. Akasha (or Ether) and Wind are entities which cannot be handled, whereas Metal and Wood both are solid substances. Thus a materialistic version of Indian cosmology would give the Chinese elements. If we consider the Indian cosmic elements independently they begin with Akasha and end with Earth, so that we have Heaven/Earth with 3 elements in between. Such a series would fully justify a system of cosmology. But the Chinese elements are explained in a system of divination. For this the elements must constitute pairs of opposites, thereby representing Heaven/Earth. Here Metal/Wood = Compass/Carpenter's Square = Heaven/Earth. Metal/Water is another pair of opposites with Metal as the heaviest when related to Water, then Water/Wood, with Wood as the lightest, floating on Water. Assigning such properties we get a chain of opposites: Wood/Fire, Fire/Earth (ore), Earth/Metal, Metal/Water and Water/Wood. Something similar is not seen in the Indian arrangement as resulting from the impact of divination upon cosmology.