The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c12.s2.18

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.