Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s17.33

v1.c3.s17.33

The disease is said to arise when Agni enters the waters.²² From this Weber²³ deduced that it was considered to be the result of a chill supervening on heat, or the influence of heat on marshy land. Grohmann²⁴ preferred to see in this connexion of the origin of the disease with Agni’s entering the waters²⁵ an allusion to the fact that fever arises in the rainy season, the time when Agni, as lightning, descends to earth with the rain. Zimmer,²⁶ who accepts this view, further refers to the prevalence of fever in the Terai, and interprets *vanya*, an epithet of fever found in the Atharvaveda,²⁷ as meaning ‘sprung from the forest,’ pointing out that fever is mentioned as prevalent among the Mūjavants and Mahāvṛṣas, two mountain tribes of the western Himālaya.²⁸ There is no trace of fever having been observed to be caused by the bite of the *anopheles* mosquito, which breeds in stagnant water : this theory has without reason been held to be known to classical Indian medicine.²⁹