A History of Sanskrit Literature c3.93

c3.93

Some light has been thrown by the discoveries of manuscripts in East Turkestan on the *Bheḍa Saṁhitā*.⁴ A paper manuscript with a fragment of the text, which can be assigned to the ninth century A. D., suggests strongly that the text published from a single Telugu MS. presents a version of the Saṁhitā which has suffered alteration, a chapter on *raktapitta* in the Nidānasthāna having been replaced by one on *kāsa*. Another manuscript fragment, written on leather, from South Turkestan or Northern India, dating probably from the end of the second century A. D., say a hundred years before the manuscript of the *Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā* and fifty years after the manuscript of Açvaghoṣa's plays, is of interest, as it preserves a tradition of a doctrine of eight or ten *rasas* as opposed to the six which Caraka and Suçruta recognize, and which are generally accepted in Indian medicine. It is possible that we here have a trace of an older medical system, which was ultimately superseded by the system of Ātreya, on which the work of Caraka is based.