The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c14.41

c14.41

It is certainly through them rather than through the soldiers, or even the philosophers who accompanied them in their march, that theoretical data on science could have been transported. Even a philosopher cannot always collect useful information only by chance encounters during his passage. Onesikritos gives us an example of the same. Sent by Alexander to talk with the gymnosophists, he was able to have a sufficiently important conversation with them, but it became necessary for him to abandon the idea of knowing their thoughts fully because it was necessary to have recourse to three successive interpreters.¹ Men conversant with the country could have informed him more effectively about the ideas of these gymnosophists than the latter themselves encountered in passing.