Panchamahabhuta -- The Five Great Elements

Indian thought, like early Greek thought, explained the material world through a small set of elements. Its list has five: akasha (space, or ether), vayu (air), agni or tejas (fire), ap or jala (water) and prithvi (earth). These are the panchamahabhuta, the "five great elements", and everything made of matter -- mountains, rivers, food, the human body -- is said to be some combination of them.

The Upanishads already describe them arising one from another. The Taittiriya Upanishad says that from the Self came space; from space, air; from air, fire; from fire, water; and from water, earth -- and from earth, plants, food and the human person. The order is not random: each element is denser than the one before and contains its qualities.

The Sankhya school worked this into a precise system. Before the gross elements come their subtle forms, the tanmatras -- the pure potentials of sound, touch, form, taste and smell -- and the gross elements arise from these. Each element is matched to a sense organ, so that the structure of the world and the structure of perception mirror each other: we can hear because there is space, see because there is fire and light.

The Gita lists the five elements together with mind, intellect and ego as the eightfold "lower nature" of the Lord -- his material nature, distinct from the higher nature that is the life of all beings. The body, made of the elements, returns to them at death, which is why the cremation rites speak of the body's parts going back to earth, water, fire, air and space.

The five elements are the foundation of Ayurveda. Its three doshas, the functional energies of the body, are each made of two elements: vata of air and space, pitta of fire and water, kapha of water and earth. Food, herbs and the body's own tissues are all described by their elemental make-up, and treatment means restoring their balance.

They appear in worship too. In south India, five great Shiva temples are each identified with one element -- the Panchabhuta Sthalams: Ekambareswarar at Kanchipuram for earth, Jambukeswarar at Thiruvanaikaval for water, Arunachaleswarar at Tiruvannamalai for fire, Srikalahasti for air, and the Nataraja temple at Chidambaram for space. And every puja, in its offerings, quietly honours all five: the flower or sandal paste for earth, water for water, the lamp for fire, incense for air, and the bell's sound for space.