The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c6.105

c6.105

But the problem is complicated by the fact that still other texts are ascribed to Patañjali. There has been, for a long time, a discussion on the possibility of joining together the Patañjali of the *Mahābhāṣya* and that of the *Yogasūtras*.¹ Moreover, al-Bēroni frequently quotes and summarises *Pātañjala*.² This is a work on mysticism apparently quite close to the *Yogasūtras* but differing from them, notably by the fact that it contains a section on alchemy. Now Śivadāsasena in his commentary on the *Cakradatta-saṅgraha* (a work of the commentator of Caraka)³ also invokes several times as an authority on alchemy Patañjali or his *Pātañjala*. One can admit the existence of several Patañjalis but it is to be feared that we find ourselves once again in the presence of legendary attributions. In effect these attributions remind one of those which are ascribed to Nāgārjuna, which include an ensemble of philosophy, alchemy and medicine; now the name of Nāgārjuna signifies "The White one among the serpents"⁴ and the legend says that Patañjali, the incarnation of the serpent Śeṣa, was born while falling (*pat*) in the shape of a serpent, in the hands of the grammarian Pāṇini at the moment when the latter was making an *añjali*.⁵ Of course this etymology has no linguistic value but it explains all that which the legend has made of the grammarian Patañjali, who was not probably a historic personage. This being so, one may ask if Patañjali, claimed as a doctor and an alchemist like Nāgārjuna, is not a double of the Buddhist Nāgārjuna⁶ as we have seen that Divodāsa and Bharadvāja on the one hand, and Suśruta and Ātreya Punarvasu on the other, were the doubles of the same mythical personages. In that case, Caraka confused with Patañjali by virtue of their being the incarnation of the same serpent, or even simply identified with Patañjali, could have been confused with Nāgārjuna. The reviser of the *Caraka-saṃhitā* and that of the *Suśruta-saṃhitā* will then be one.