The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c14.16

c14.16

The Greeks had put in many products of their genius and had been easily able to draw therefrom many new suggestions or precious knowledge. The King of Lydia, Cresus, had conquered the Greek establishments of Asia Minor² towards 560 and Lydia fell to Cyrus in 546. Ionia did not remain a peaceful subject of the Persians for long. It revolted from 499 to 494. The Persians sacked the Ionian towns and the bloody battles were not conducive to activating intellectual exchanges. Those which could take place with the Greece of Europe were also undoubtedly compromised by wars. But a large number of Greeks did, at that time, espouse the cause of the Persians and the conflicts between peoples did not hinder the activity of scientific and philosophical speculation. Moreover, the war was not continual. Miletus having taken the oath to Cyrus, stayed for some time, in perfect peace with the Achaemenians (Herodotus, I, 169) and some of the most notable of its children, like Hekateus were the partisans of an *entente* with the Persians. Moreover, the war itself was sometimes the occasion of deporting captives who, humanely treated in exile, could take the ideas of their country far. After the occupation of revolted Miletus in 496, a contingent of Milesian prisoners was first led to Susa, and then settled on the Erythrean sea at the mouth of the Tigris (Herodotos, VI, 20). The epoch of these wars is precisely that of the philosophers of Ionia. Thales and Anaximander flourished at the time when Cresus subjected Ionia. Anaximenes died in 525; Heraclitus wrote a little after 478; Anaxagoras, born in Asia Minor, at Clazomenes, lived chiefly at Athens but came back to end his days in Asia Minor, at Lampascus, towards 428. At the boundary of the Persian empire or incorporated therein, Ionia in its essential period of intellectual activity, has remained a part both of the Asian world and the Hellenic world. Its radiance reached both of them. It is difficult for us to believe that the Ionian thinkers have had no influence from the side of orient and that they remained blind and deaf to all that came from that side. India was not unknown to Miletus. One of its illustrious citizens, Hekateus, towards 500 B.C., possessed information concerning the geography and the peoples of India; the little fragments of his work that have been preserved for us show it to us directly. Unceasing relations, chiefly maritime, had put Ionia in contact with all the insular and the riverain people of the Mediterranean, especially with Egypt. Thales whose ancestors, according to Herodotos, were of Phoenician origin¹ and Heraclitus are often considered as having acquired important knowledge in Egypt.² As regards Thales, Tannery even thought that he had acquired the means of forecasting eclipses in Egypt and that, as this means was rather Chaldean, possibly the Egyptians had borrowed it from the Chaldeans, before the time of Thales.³ But Tannery forgot that Lydia, to which the motherland of Thales was then subject, was of Mesopotamian culture. This fact renders useless the hypothesis of an intervention of the Egyptians, at least for a loan of the Chaldean astronomy. The exchanges take place not only in particularly suitable countries; the political state of the Mediterranean Orient made them possible everywhere and in all directions.