The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c5.9

c5.9

In his great series of works on science in Antiquity, interrupted too soon, the late Abel Rey, centring his research on the originality and the genius of Hellenic science, has objectively tried to give due share to foreign science which had surrounded the same.² The method, which for this purpose had appeared to him to be the surest, consisted in making a list of documents which introduce these sciences to us, in dating them to the best of ability and in comparing their dates with those of the corresponding Greek documents. This was a strict application of the historical and comparative method. When a foreign scientific work was surely anterior to the Greek texts containing analogous teaching, he made a comparative analysis of the tenor of teaching given on both sides. When, on the contrary, it was found to be posterior, he did not think it necessary to take note of the same. In this way he had come to the conclusion that, in the present state of our documentation,—in sooth extremely fragmentary in so far as the ancient sciences of Egypt and classical Orient are concerned—the Orient, before the Greeks had merely furnished a proto-science, chiefly of a practical nature and that it was only after the growth of Greek science that the later Oriental peoples had known a more developed science. But in certain cases, particularly while examining the data of Indian science, Abel Rey has much too exclusively considered the chronology of works, whereas the full application of the historical method would demand the determination of a chronology of ideas.