The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c14.51

c14.51

We will not let ourself be led into examining this last problem here, but this example shows that Greek assertions concerning India, even on the most fictitious stage like that of the *Life of Apollonios* are not necessarily pure fantasy and the opinion ascribed to the Indian interlocutor of Socrates in the anecdote of Aristoxenes is an authentic Indian opinion. One cannot therefore *a priori* reject this anecdote of the Indian and Socrates, as one would have had to do if Aristoxenes had credited his Indian with impossible views. It is, besides, quite natural that Aristoxenes, writing towards the epoch of the expedition of Alexander, was able to have a correct notion of the words that could be ascribed to an Indian philosopher. But the fact remains that he wrote precisely at a time when attention had been drawn towards India and when the conditions, under which knowledge about it was obtained, were well-known. He could not have, at such a time, evoked the presence of an Indian philosopher at Athens a century earlier, if it had been thought that such a presence was impossible before the great events of the conquest which then took place. It is, therefore, not very important whether the anecdote of Socrates and the Indian sage is true or false; even if false, it guarantees that towards the end of the IVth century B.C., it was known in the Hellenic world that Indians knowing the doctrines of their country had been able to visit Greece for a long time, just as the Greeks had been going to India. It is, therefore, in no way impossible that Plato had knowledge of the Indian medical theory before he explained the one which is near it and which he does not seem to have borrowed from the known schools of Greek medicine.