The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c10.19

c10.19

Ewing has been led here by the method adopted rightly by him but which he has blindly applied. He has studied the mention of the breaths successively in the diverse strata of the Vedic literature and this was necessary. But, when in an earlier stratum, the context would not yield a definite sense, he has seldom tried to enlighten himself about the definite meaning found in a more recent stratum. He does not seem to have envisaged that the sense given in the more recent texts could have been anything but a novelty in these texts; he had believed that it was the result of an attempt at interpreting a more ancient text. In fact, lightly inserting a value guaranteed only by a Brāhmaṇa or an Upaniṣad into a Vedic Saṃhitā could lead to anachronism. But the lack of seriousness is reflected in the belief, without proofs, that a value clearly expressed only from a certain date did not exist earlier. If an obscure or apparently absurd ancient text gets clarified when such a value is brought in there, one may believe that it was in its place there although it had been found there in so explicit a manner only in a text of later date, from where it had been drawn.