The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c5.1

c5.1

THE HISTORY of Indian science is ordinarily not considered important either by the Indologist or by the historian of sciences. For the former, it is only of secondary importance as India has been great more because of her various schools of philosophy than because of her learning. For the latter, it is an aberration because it does not put itself on the continuous line of scientific evolution which starting from Greek science continues right into modern science. Both of them suspect her to be lacking in originality, to be based in a number of its branches on borrowings firstly from Greek science, then from the Arab world and even from that of China. But it is a fact that it has been studied, with prodigious activity in India, where it has given rise, not to one, but to many immense literatures and also throughout the Indianised parts of Asia and Insulindia.