The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c5.3

c5.3

the model for a clear comprehension of the resources of their own language. They also taught them their logic, the totality of their reflections on the criteria of truth and on the legitimacy of reasoning. Indian science has thus spread itself giving at the same time, both its methods and its results. Therefore it is not merely because of the extent of the geographical area wherein it spread itself, but more because of its learned mode of transmission, that it is comparable to Hellenic science. This parallelism ceases to be valid only during the recent epochs, when suddenly in Europe starts, among the inheritors of Hellenism, the modern scientific growth, because ancient Indian science has produced nothing comparable to the same. But this growth is definitely not the exclusive result of and the natural consequence of the scientific Greek tradition. Upto this exceptional growth, on the one hand Greek science and its derivatives in Christianity and Islam and on the other Indian science and its derivatives in the form of exported Brahmanism and Buddhism have, between themselves, shared the world. Outside these, only the Chinese science kept a domain for itself, extended in sooth, but without distant expansion and often mixed with Indian influence.