The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c14.63

c14.63

However it may be, other ways were also open for the passage from India to the Hellenic world. We know, from the time of Herodotos, that Cinnamon was brought up to there (III, 111), and as it refers, in all probability to cinnamon-bark, it should have been brought from Indian seas. The same text *On Woman's Diseases* which, several times, mentions the Indian pepper also knows the cinnamon (II, 187) and similarly the text *On the Nature of Women* (34, Littré, VII, p. 373). But Herodotos also indicates that it was brought by the Arabs and he did not know from where they drew it. On this point he merely repeats the tales about which Pliny has said that they were fabricated without any basis in order to make the most of the rarity of the commodity. It is therefore improbable that information regarding Indian ideas could have reached Greece by the route of the cinnamon, as this route became really known to the Westerners only towards the beginning of the Christian era.¹ Elsewhere again the voyage from India to Egypt which was accomplished by Skylax, starting from the mouth of the Indus, as a prelude to the Achaemenian conquest of Sindh, has been accomplished again, but on this subject we do not possess precise and sure evidence.