The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c6.121

c6.121

Experience has manifestly played an important role, as is always the case in medicine, in the establishment of therapeutics. But we are still far from the state where we could say that medical practice as taught by the Āyurveda is empirical. The data of experience are organised according to a general theory of physio-pathology. This is a complex theory. In the texts can be found the traces of the different currents of thought which have simultaneously exerted an influence on its formation. The general theory of the Sāṃkhya, which enumerates the formative elements of the universe, is added on to particularly medical conceptions. These latter see in the body a composition of chief elements which forms the material content of all things in the universe: Space or emptiness—(*ākāśa* or *antarikṣa*), wind or air (*vāyu*), fire (*tejas*), water (*ap*) and earth (*pṛthvī*), to which various texts add thought (cetanā) which sits inside this body¹ as is frequently done by the Buddhist texts which call this thought, Vijñāna.