In Hinduism's sacred literature, the "great" elements (mahābhūta) are fivefold: aether, air, fire, water and earth.
For instance, the Taittirīya Upaniṣad describes the five "sheaths" of a person (Sanskrit: puruṣa), starting with the grossest level of the five evolving great elements: In the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, the deities is identified as the source of the great elements: The same Upanishad also mentions, "When earth, water, fire, air and aether arise, when the five attributes of the elements, mentioned in the books on yoga, become manifest then the yogi's body becomes purified by the fire of yoga and they are free from illness, old age and death."
[6] In Buddhism, the four Great Elements (Pali: cattāro mahābhūtāni) are earth, water, fire and air.
"[7] In this, the Four Elements are a basis for understanding that leads one through unbinding of 'Rupa' or materiality to the supreme state of pure 'Emptiness' or Nirvana.
The result of these qualities are the inputs to our five senses, color (varna) to the eyes, smell (gandha) to the nose, taste (rasa) to the tongue, sound (shabda) to the ears, and touch (sparsha) to the body.
The earliest Buddhist texts explain that the four primary material elements are the sensory qualities solidity, fluidity, temperature, and mobility; their characterisation as earth, water, fire, and air, respectively, is declared an abstraction – instead of concentrating on the fact of material existence, one observes how a physical thing is sensed, felt, perceived.