Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Indian medicine, as a systematic and scholarly tradition, begins historically with the appearance of the great medical encyclopedias of Caraka, Suśruta and Bhela about two thousand years ago. These are the oldest Indian medical texts we have, and also the most influential. Just as Pāṇini's famous linguistic study of Sanskrit leaps into the historical record fully formed, like the Buddha from Queen Maya's side, so the medical encyclopedias too emerge with a learned medical tradition in an almost fully articulated form. In the case of Pāṇini, we do have some preceding literature, which shows us traditional Indian linguistics in its childhood, so to speak, notably the Nirukta of Yāska, as well as the various śikṣā and prātiśākhya texts. But in the case of medicine far less precursory material has survived. Early medical texts which are now known only by name include the Jatūkarṇatantm , the Hārītasaṇhitā , the Parāśarasaṃhitā , and the Khamnādasaṃhitā , all of which apparently existed at the time of Śivadāsa who commented on the Carakasaṃhitā in the fifteenth century. Other lost works include the Viśvāmitrasaṃhitā , the Atrisaṇhitā , the Kapilatantra , and the Gautamatantra ( Roy 1986 : 157–9 and Meulenbeld 1999–2002 : Ia.145–79, 369–71, 689–99). But even before these specialist treatises on medicine, there is a certain amount of material on the history ... log in or subscribe to read full text