The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c11.10

c11.10

It is true that one may ask oneself, whether their data, artificially combined, do not prove that a solution of continuity has been produced in this tradition. In fact, one may suppose that if medical ideas had been regularly transmitted since the Veda, the memory of the actual transmission could have been as well preserved as that of the teachings and could not have been replaced by legends. One may put forward the hypothesis that at first the medical ideas of Veda got fixed without giving rise to evolutionary developments and that the authors of medical systems that arose later, for example, under the Greek medicine, desiring to refer their new science to its antique traditions, have covered this science with Vedic reminiscences and have cooked up the history of a tradition fictive in reality. But such an hypothesis cannot be maintained and we will see that it is essential to look for other explanations because legends have replaced the real history of tradition.