The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c13.42

c13.42

The interpretation of all these concordances between the doctrines of *Timaeus* and those of the physiologists, indeed the mystics, of India is delicate. It seems difficult to relate all of them, at the same time, to the coincidences of hazard. The similarity of subjects studied and the rudimentary means then available, both in India as in Greece, to the human mind for solving the problems of Physiology and of Pathology can explain all of them only with difficulty. Noted at a time when it was readily believed that Plato had reproduced the ideas of the so-called Pythagorean *Timaeus* and that Pythagoras had known the ideas of India, these concordances could have been easily considered as the witnesses of the dependence of Pythagorism and Plato on India. But today, and although the question of the eventual relationship of Pythagoras with India has never been seriously settled, this question cannot be settled with equal ease. The romance of the Pythagorean *Timaeus* is considered as based, for a large part, on the dialogue of Plato⁴ himself and the value of the ancient tradition which says that Plato had probably borrowed the clearer part of his Physics and Biology from the Pythagoreans, is contested.⁵ From another side, the possible influence of the Orient on Plato has been postulated by several authors⁶, without anybody having been able to point out any precise data as our sources of information, concerning the Iranian or ‘Chaldean’ doctrines, which have been almost exclusively considered, are quite precarious. All that we can say today is this: that the concordances of *Timaeus* with Indian doctrines appear to us to be more striking because these Indian doctrines are much more accessible to us.