The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c13.s3.t6.7

c13.s3.t6.7

There are altogether 308 *ślokas* in this chapter. It looks like a string of "platitudes, platitudes all the way." But such moralizings belong to the irreducible minimum in the training of the *vijigīṣu*. It is interesting and somewhat curious that the author has introduced 152 *ślokas* in section 19 to give a lecture on diseases and their treatment (*vaidyakam*). Half the chapter is then entirely an extract or digest in verse from a treatise of *Āyurveda*. This is followed by 11 lines in prose on *Auṣadhaparyāya* (medicines). The relevancy of this sudden infliction of a medical lecture is hardly apparent. It comes in because the author has four verses on the *dīna* (poor), *anātha* (orphan), and *ārtta* (distressed and sick). We are perhaps to understand that medical help or relief is an important form of the king's services to these classes of needy persons. *Vaidyas* (medical men) are to be appointed by him and they are to be sent out with diverse medicines on a mission of free medical service (139-140).