Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

A History of Sanskrit Literature c34.s5: 5. Greece and Indian Medicine

A History of Sanskrit Literature c34.s5

Language
English

5. Greece and Indian Medicine

c34.s5.1

The striking similarity in many points between the Greek and the Indian medical systems¹ has long been well known. We find in both such things as the doctrine of humours, whose derangement explains disease, the three stages of fever and other disorders which correspond to the Greek triad of ἀπεψία, πέψις, and κρίσις; the division of means of healing into hot and cold, or dry and oily; the healing of diseases by remedies of opposing character; the insistence in the manner of Hippokrates on prognosis; the oath exacted from doctors and the rules of etiquette and professional conduct declared to be incumbent on healers. There are also many detailed correspondences; both systems emphasize the influence of the seasons on health, and contrary to Indian feeling we have in some cases insistence on the use of strong drink as a remedy. Quotidian, tertian, and quartan fevers are noted, consumption is prominently dealt with, while little account comparatively is taken of affections of the heart. There are also similarities in regard to embryology; the doctrine of the simultaneous development of the members is held, the connexion of the male sex with the right side is noted, and a like cause is given for the production of twins; the viability of an eighth-month foetus is asserted, that of a seventh-month is denied; there is similarity in regard to the removal of a dead foetus. In surgery there is similarity in the operation for stone, in modes of dealing with haemorrhoids, in blood-letting, in the use of leeches, including according to Suçruta² those from Greece, cauteries, many surgical instruments, and the use of the left hand to deal with the right eye in ophthalmology. It must, however, be confessed that it is very difficult to determine how much is due to Greek influence and how much is merely parallel development. The doctrine of the three humours, which at first sight might be held to be definitely Greek, is in close connexion with the Sāṁkhya system of the three Guṇas or constituents; moreover, one of the humours, wind, is already known in the *Atharvaveda*, and the *Kauçika Sūtra*¹ is alleged by the comment, perhaps with justification, to have recognized the doctrine of three, wind, bile, and phlegm.

c34.s5.2

¹ See Jolly, *Medicin*, pp. 17 f. with references. He deals also with Indian relations to Persia, China, &c. Cf. G. N. Banerjee, *Hellenism in Ancient India*, pp. 220 ff. For parallels in beliefs as to birth see Printz, ZDMG. lxxix. 119 ff.

c34.s5.3

² i. 13. The oath of the doctor in Caraka (ZDMG. xxvi. 448 f.) has often been compared with that in Hippokrates (iv. 629 ff.); Jones, *The Doctor's Oath* (1924).

c34.s5.4

¹ Bloomfield, SBE. xlii. 246, 483, 516 f.

c34.s5.5

On the other hand,² we must recognize that we have certain information that both Ktesias (*c.* 400 B. C.) and Megasthenes (*c.* 300 B. C.) visited or lived in northern India, and other facts can be adduced to suggest derivation, especially of surgical doctrine, from Greece. Whatever was the case with Hippokrates, there is no doubt of the prevalence of dissection of the human body in the Alexandrian schools of Herophilos and Erasistratos in the third century B. C., while in India we have no original passage in Caraka which admits of this, though Suçruta has two chapters on surgical instruments and one on the mode of operation. But there is difficulty in postulating Indian borrowing, because the Alexandrians developed such accurate knowledge, comparatively speaking, of the muscular and vascular systems that it is difficult to suppose that India, if it had borrowed its anatomy from Greece, would have been content to remain indifferent to the other advances made in Greece. The definite evidence of relation is rendered almost impracticable of attainment by the absence of any early Greek lists of the bones of the human body as reckoned in Greek surgery. Celsus, it has been noted, giving the Greek osteology of the first century B. C. speaks of the carpus and tarsus as consisting of many minute bones, the number of which is uncertain, but says that they present the appearance of a single, interiorly concave, bone, and in Suçruta and Caraka respectively we have the opposed views of a number of small bones and a single bone. Again, the Greek and the Indian views correspond in regarding the fingers and the toes as consisting each of three joints springing from the metacarpals. Against these facts Hoernle points out that, if a Talmudic summary can be regarded as representing Greek views, which is possible, there must have been a profound difference between the Greek and the Indian enumeration of bones in the body. Greece, of course, borrowed from India the use of several medicinal plants, but there is clearly no ground for the assumption of Indian influence in early days on Greek medicine. The disrepute of anatomy¹ acted as a fatal barrier to the progress of India in the field of surgery and hampered its success in the field of medicine.²

c34.s5.6

² Cf. Hoernle, *Osteology*, pp. iii ff.

c34.s5.7

¹ In Vāgbhaṭa this is already clearly evident.

c34.s5.8

² On Greek medicine cf. R. O. Moon, *Hippocrates and his Successors* (1923); T. C. Albutt, *Greek Medicine in Rome* (1921); C. Singer, *Greek Biology and Greek Medicine* (1924). See also H. Fichner, *Die Medizin im Avesta* (1925); D. Campbell, *Arabian Medicine* (1926); E. G. Browne, *Arabian Medicine* (1921); Neuburger, *History of Medicine*, i. (1910).

Linked texts (4)