The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c10.6

c10.6

The question has been raised again *á propos* the *Atharvaveda* by Dasgupta.² In an article in the *Hastings Encyclopaedia*,³ Bolling had quite rightly said that the theory of the *tri-doṣas* or *tri-dhātus* did not appear in the early Vedic texts and was found for the first time only in the *Atharvaveda-pariśiṣṭa* (68), a later appendix of the Veda itself. He had also maintained that the expression *vātīkṛtanāśanī* (*AV*, VI, 44-3) does not prove that the wind was already conceived as a bodily element and a cause of diseases; this expression signified "which destroys what is transformed into wind" and not "which destroys that which is made by the wind". Moreover this compound qualifies a remedy which in the preceding verse is called "remedy of the flux (diarrhical, probably)" *āsrāvabheṣajam*, and the wind in question is undoubtedly that of the intestines.⁴ But Dasgupta thinks that another passage shows clearly that diseases were divided into three categories caused by the wind, the water and the fire. In the *AV*., I, 12, 3 the words, *yó abhrajā vātajā yáś ca śuṣmo . . .*, seem to signify "(the disease) which is born of the cloud (of the humid), one that is born of the wind and the one which is dry . . ." At least this is the type of translation which results from the explanations of Dasgupta who derives *śuṣma* from the root *śuṣ*, "to dry". But Reinhold Müller⁵ has justly remarked that the words *abhrajā* and *vātajā* merely qualify *śuṣma*. One must understand these words to mean, as translators have done so far: ". . . the *śuṣma* which is born of the cloud and the one that is born of the wind . . . ” Besides the sense of śuṣma in this passage is uncertain. The root śuṣ in Vedic can also denote “to whistle”; in the AV. this word has even the sense of “vigour”. In any case Bloomfield translates it here¹ by “lightning” and Whitney as “blast” (with doubt). One should, therefore, renounce all attempts at finding the formal proof of the existence of the theory of the tridhātu or tridoṣa in the Atharvaveda. Dasgupta also gives another argument; he observes that in AV., VI, 109, pippalī, the long pepper, is at the same time called “the remedy of the vātīkṛta” and “the remedy of the kṣipta”. He interprets vātīkṛta as denoting “that which is produced by the wind” and kṣipta as madness. The classical literature does consider madness as being due to the wind of the organism. But we have just now seen that vātīkṛta denotes “that which is transformed into wind” (grammatically no other interpretation is possible), and kṣipta cannot denote madness. The root kṣip denotes “to throw”. In classical Sanskrit it also frequently signifies “to destroy, to wound”. In the passage referred to above, kṣipta denotes, as in the classical, “wounded” or, what comes to mean the same thing by a roundabout interpretation, “that which is produced by an arrow that is shot” (Roth : Schuss-oder Wurfwunde). In kṣiptacitta, kṣipta applies to the spirit to signify that the spirit is troubled or distracted and it is least probable that one has to suppose here, in place of the most natural one, some other sense.