The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c15.5

c15.5

The collection edited and translated by Mr. Labat had a large circulation in Mesopotamia; this is proved by the variety of the sources of fragments constituting the same. This fact alone shows that the work represents a tradition which was recognised everywhere and which was, consequently, quite old. The analogy with other technical collections has enabled Mr. Labat to accept as probable the fact that the composition of the work could possibly go back to the Hamurabbian period and more probably to the end of the Kassite era. But the majority of the tablets, which acquaint us with the manual, were written on the orders of Assurbanipal (668-627 B.C.), an older one going back to the reign of Mardukapaliddin of Babylonia (721-710 B.C.) and a more recent one being dated in the eleventh year of Artaxerxes, that is, in 453 (pages xiv, 212-213, tablet 35). Regardless, therefore, of the original antiquity of the manual, we have to deal with teachings which were in vigour in Mesopotamia from the VIIIth to Vth centuries B.C. This is the period of the beginning of Greek medicine and it is contemporary with that of the Vedic and Brahmanic elaboration of Indian doctrinal medicine. One could, therefore, ask oneself if there is any analogy between such Mesopotamian teaching and the two great medical traditions of antiquity, of which one was born in the East in India and the other in the West, in the basin of Eastern Mediterranean. Mr. Labat has himself looked for the analogies of the manual in Greek medicine and we are here going to look for the same in Indian medicine.