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The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c12.s2: Bhela, Sutrasthana, XVI

The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c12.s2

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Bhela, Sutrasthana, XVI

c12.s2.1

¹ This text is known through an unique manuscript (Tanjore, No. 10773 of Burnell, become No. 11085 of the catalogue of P.P.L. Sastri, Srirangam, 1933, p. 7410). The transcription of this manuscript has been edited by Asutosh Mukerjee, University of Calcutta, *Journal of the Department of Letters*, Vol. VI, Calcutta, 1921, pp. 26-8 (for this passage). This edition is called E, it gives within brackets the conjectural readings to restore the text, proposed by Ananta Krishna Shastri. They are reproduced here with the sign, *conj.* or *E. conj.* A certain number among them accords with the readings of N. (below) but are less suitable. Three other transcriptions of the same are found in the Cordier collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale: Sanskrit 1183, copy in Nāgarī of Pt. C. Krishnayya, p. 19., l. 1. to 20, l. 1, 6 (N.) *Sanskrit* 1183, copy Telinga; p. 43, l. 5 to 46, l. 8 (T); *Sanskrit*, 1184, Latin transcription in the hand of Cordier not used here because copied from the preceding two.

c12.s2.2

[1] “We will now explain all that relates to the functions and the disorders of the wind,” says the blessed Ātreya.² [2] “Which is the chief element of trouble, and the least important one?³”, one asks. Having saluted Ātreya the black, the great ṛṣis gave a discourse. [3] *Physiological Functions of the Wind*: Someone has said concerning the same, the main effect: As long as the wind subsists which decomposes⁴ nourishment, man lives. [4] It is the wind which, in sooth, causes the semen to fall in the woman. The wind decomposes the menstrual blood of the woman. Because of the wind woman becomes sterile. [5] Neither men nor women are sterile (by nature): either, in the receptacle, the wind is cold and has dried the sperm, [6] or the wind has diminished the sperm and the sperm is suppressed by the wind. All that is seen, blinked and moved, [7] and the diseases of the black (?), in women, it is assuredly thus that they occur. It is because of the wind that the hunchbacked, the crippled, the lame and persons suffering from lumbago, [8] as also those having atrophied limbs or having limbs in excess exist, along with others of the same type. *Cosmic Functions of the Wind*: The inertia of animated beings and the silences of the rivers⁵, [9] the quaking of the earth also, is due to the wind. Steam is produced under the influence of the wind, from steam is born the cloud, [10] from the cloud escapes water from where are born the germs; or the thunder issues therefrom(?). One must know that the force of the group of stars and that of lightning comes from the wind. Thanks to wind, the fire, the husband of the holy oblations, burns. [12] Because of the wind the rivers flow and reach the earth. *Divine Nature of the Wind:* The semen spread in the matrix is affected by the wind of properties. It can destroy bile¹ and phlegm. With² one of them, the wind, excited, disperses itself in the body. *Varieties of Organic Breath:* Thus are distinguished the diffused breath, the breath on high, the concentrated breath, [15] the breath below and the breath of the front, according to its multiple specialisations in corporeal beings. The diffused breath, which ensures its own horizontal extension, regularises the breath on high, [16] the breath of the front ensures the placement of the breath below but starts, among corporeal beings³, the raising of the concentrated breath. It holds also under its dependence, [17] the faculties, the spirit and the soul of the beings, of the corporeal beings. Considered as special, another wind is called "breath below".⁴ [18] Drying and marching, and also thought to be without feet, the wind is said to be the principal element among the five elements. [19] These four are linked with the wind; the wind is everywhere, always. From the wind results the emission of the wind, of the sperm and of the excrements, [20] and it is from the cooking of that which

c12.s2.3

² Reproduces 1 and 2 of Caraka.

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³ E.: this is an element of trouble which [in its] least [state] surpasses a hundred.

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⁴ Literally, “destroyed”, that is to say, decomposed, which is a way of representing digestion.

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⁵ E.: “The inertia of animated beings, sudden and fixed”, The conjuncture causing to disappear the mention of rivers is not necessary, because

c12.s2.7

¹ E.: empoisoned bile.

c12.s2.8

² *ādāya* of the following verse, replaced in E. according to an unlikely conjecture, by *āhāra*, "nourishment", which will oblige us to understand that the wind is excited by nourishment. This interpretation is possible but it will oblige us to make *anyataram* as a complement of *hanyād* and to supply "or" after "bile and phlegm". The case envisaged by the text as it is presented here is the one where the wind is associated with bile or phlegm, a frequent case according to the classical doctrine.

c12.s2.9

³ According to the reading in E.; "puts the corporeal being into action".

c12.s2.10

⁴ Following another theory one should, undoubtedly, understand that *apāna* (moreover often opposed alone to *prāṇa* in Vedic texts) is considered as a type of wind distinct from *prāṇa* and possessing an autonomy equal to that of *prāṇa*.

c12.s2.11

the action of the wind on the rivers is mentioned a little farther (12) and in Caraka, 8d. The silent rivers are a sort of pendant to inert beings. The wind, the force producing noise and movement, stops them when it suspends its action.

c12.s2.12

is eaten that results the function of the breath below¹; this is what is taught. The breath of the front comforts the elements; it is considered that the breath of the front is life. [21] The diffused breath is, in the body², the movement and the closing and opening of eyelids. That which, besides, in a creature, goes on high is that which is moved by the breath on high [22] [which produces³] sneezing, hiccough, cough, sigh and speech.⁴ That which swells the rectum and the body in all the ways, [23] the wind which is held therein is called “breath below”. For such reasons and for others which make us see the reality, we will characterize in the corporeal being the wind to be the main element.” Thus spake the blessed Ātreya.

c12.s2.13

¹ According to the graphically plausible correction of E. conj.: “it is the cooking of that which is eaten, that is the function of the breath below”. This sense, in any case, will not be in accord with the ordinary doctrine according to which it is samāna which kindles the digestive fire cooking the aliments, whereas apāna ensures the expulsion of the excreta as has exactly been said here. It will, therefore, be better to translate the text without correcting it and to understand that it is the cooking of the aliments which gives rise to excretary function of the apāna, because it is the cooking which produces the excreta, thus furnishing the matter on which apāna exerts itself.

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² E.: the movement of the body.

c12.s2.15

³ A verb is supposed by the accusatives, or they should be corrected as nominatives.

c12.s2.16

⁴ E. conj.: the syncope.

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COLOPHON:—In Bhela, sixteenth chapter.

c12.s2.18

This passage of Bhela differs externally, in so far as length and presentation are concerned, from the corresponding chapter of Caraka as the latter is in the form of a dialogue in prose and the former a much briefer enunciation in verse. These differences, however, cannot suffice to weaken the tradition which says that both Bhela and Agniveśa have preserved in their texts the teachings received from Ātreya. These differences could be due to the intervention of Caraka who revised the book of Agniveśa. Moreover two versions of the same course by different listeners can considerably differ from each other. The fact that the names of the traditional masters of Āyurveda, such as Ātreya, Agniveśa and Caraka are suspected of being more legendary than historical, does not prevent the two texts from agreeing as regards the basic part of the pneumatic doctrine presented by them as having been taught or approved by Ātreya. If it is not at all sure but only possible that the inventor of this doctrine should have been really called Ātreya, is it not at least doubtful that it had existed at a time before the composition of the Saṃhitās of Bhela and Caraka? The considerable differences in editing which appear when the two texts are compared prove precisely that neither of them can be considered as an imitation of the other and that the general concordance between their teachings must be due to a common source of inspiration. We find definitely in both Bhela and Caraka, the notion of the identity of the atmospheric wind as also of the organic breath which, whether in nature or in the body, is the cause of all the activities, the divine cause, but whose divinity consists in its material power of being the element of nature.

c12.s2.19

The text of Suśruta which follows, again develops and with more details, the same theory although according to tradition, it does not belong to the same school. This pertains to the origin, according to the common appearance, of the two great schools of Āyurveda and guarantees thereby the antiquity of the theory which necessarily pre-existed in its diverse but concordant expressions.

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