The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c5.2

c5.2

This fact alone should attract attention. In the absence of all other interest, Indian science, the element of the expansion of one of the greatest world cultures, does have evident historical importance. Its diffusion outside India is exactly parallel to that of Greek science outside the Hellenic world. Mentioning merely the chief facts, it may be observed that Indian science has been adopted in Tibet, in Central Asia, in certain Chinese and Japanese circles, in the entire Indo-China and in Indonesia. The Tibetans communicated it to the Mongols. And it is not only the empirical notions or the techniques of India which have thus spread among so many distant and diverse peoples; have equally spread among these peoples texts teaching the theories, which, like those of the Greeks, attempted to explain the Universe. The Tibetans, chiefly, have translated the Sanskrit texts with extreme care and with full understanding of the teachings. Their translations cannot be surpassed in precision aud faithfulness, because the Indians did not merely give them their learning and the practical knowledge of Sanskrit. They also gave them their precise analysis of this language, which is the means of understanding it better and is.