A History of Sanskrit Literature c34.s2.1

c34.s2.1

The oldest of the extant Saṃhitās is generally held to be that ascribed to Caraka, who according to tradition was the physician of Kaniṣka, whose wife he helped in a critical case. Unhappily we cannot tell the value of such stories when they come to us at a late date. Further, we know from the text itself³ that it is not, as we have it, Caraka’s work, for it was revised by one Dṛḍhabala, who admits to having added the last two chapters and to having written 17 out of 28 or 30 chapters of book vi. Dṛḍhabala, who was a Kashmirian, son of Kapilabala, is ascribed to the eighth or ninth century, and in addition to his more substantial work he revised and altered the text, which, moreover, has come down to us in a very unsatisfactory form. The work does not claim to be original; it appears to have been a revision of a number of Tantras on special topics written by Agniveça, pupil of Punarvasu Ātreya and fellow student of Bheḍa or Bhela, whose Saṃhitā is on that ground asserted by some to be older than that of Caraka. As we have it, part i, Sūtrasthāna, deals with remedies, diet, the duties of a doctor; ii, Nidānasthāna, is concerned with the eight chief diseases; iii, Vimānasthāna, with general pathology and medical studies; it contains a statement of the regulations laid down for the conduct of the newly fledged student: he is to give his whole energies to his work, even if his own life is at stake, never to do harm to a patient, never to entertain evil thoughts as to his wife or goods, to be grave and restrained in demeanour, to devote himself in word, thought, and deed to the healing of his charge, not to report outside affairs of the house, and to be careful to say nothing to a patient likely to retard recovery. The Çārīrasthāna (iv) deals with anatomy and embryology; Indriyasthāna (v) with diagnosis and prognosis; Cikitsāsthāna (vi) with special therapy; and the Kalpa- and Siddhi-sthānas (vii and viii) with general therapy. Caraka, however, as we have him is more than an author on medicine; he gives us information of a considerable number of points of philosophy and develops a form of Sāṁkhya which has erroneously been regarded as old, whereas there is nothing to show that it is not a comparatively late addition to the text. He is familiar also with Nyāya and Vaiçeṣika views, which suggests no early date.¹ The form of the work is prose interspersed with verses, and it has no very ancient appearance, perhaps owing to the work of Dṛḍhabala. We know that it was rendered at a fairly early date into Persian, and that an Arabic translation was made *c.* 800.