A History of Sanskrit Literature c27.s1.3

c27.s1.3

In another field of learning we can clearly see the development of expertise. The Vedic sacrifice demanded a rudimentary knowledge of the calendar and elementary conceptions of mensuration. Definite ideas of these subjects were slow of development, and were at first handed down merely in close connexion with each Veda; we still have different recensions of the Jyotiṣa on astronomy and the Çulbasūtras on the making of altars and kindred matters. But inevitably from these beginnings developed a wider geometrical, astronomical, and astrological science, which we find under the comprehensive title of Jyotiṣa and which is studied in distinct schools. Medicine, again, appears first in the spells of the *Atharvaveda*, and was fostered by the schools of magic practices which produced such a work as the *Kauçika Sūtra* of that Veda; but its Vedic connexion is less close than in the case of most of the sciences we have mentioned, and it is dubious conjecture that what surgery and anatomical knowledge it possessed was furthered by the practice of dissecting animals for the sacrifice and less often even man in the human sacrifice.