History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c21.4

v1.c21.4

It is especially important from the surgical point of view and to him to be contributed the glory of first changing the art of surgery into a practical science, during the Vedic Period. It seems that from time to time many hands were in operation or what passes on as the *Suśruta Saṃhitā* today and the available evidence points out that the original treatise of Vṛddha Suśruta, the *Suśruta Tantra*, was a different work and formed the basis of the Saṃhitā, which was probably entirely revised, at a later date, by another author, also called ‘Suśruta’ by name, and again enlarged and supplemented by Nāgārjuna in the second century B.C. The original Tantra, according to A.F.R. Hoernle (1907), indeed admittedly belongs to a much earlier period, possibly as early as about 1000 B.C. Hessler (1844) who edited Suśruta Saṃhitā in Latin language, also places Suśruta during the heroic age of India, though the beginning is not known but the end of which is marked by the 1,000 years B.C. The other European scholars like Lietard (1863), Dymock (1870), and Max Neuberger (1901) have mentioned various dates to Suśruta, ranging from the first century A.D. to the tenth century A.D. Considering all the evidence available today, one comes to the conclusion that, the “lower limit of Suśruta’s death is fixed” as the sixth and seventh century B.C. This being the date of Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, while practically nothing can be said about the upper limit (Das Gupta, 1932).