The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c11.11

c11.11

It should be observed first of all that it is not only in the domain of medicine and of other sciences that India has legends in place of history. The desire for perpetuating lists of masters and disciples is attested frequently and in quite ancient times in Indian literatures. Sometimes even the circumstances of the transmission are indicated with a wealth of detail but not in a systematic manner. Evidently more constant attention has been paid to basic things than to the manner in which the ancestors had learnt them and every time it has been desired to establish the continuity of tradition it has been found necessary to reconstitute, with the aid of probability, the chain, all of whose links had not been preserved. This can be undoubtedly explained by the facts that the notions concerning the instruction received, being considered as accessory, were not put to heart with as much of care as the tenor of this instruction. Orally transmitted without the rigour observed in the study of fundamental texts which were, however, exactly learnt by rote, the traditions concerning instruction have got altered and sometimes got lost so as to be later restored by conjectures or by imitation of the parallel traditions claimed by other schools.