The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c6.17

Language: English

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The introduction of the personage of Dhanvantari seems to constitute the real divergence of the tradition of the Suśruta- *saṃhitā* from that of the *Caraka-saṃhitā*. In India every eminent being can be presented as a god become man. Although he is only a fictive personage, Divodāsa has not escaped this rule. The god whom he incarnates is more recent than himself. Dhanvantari is not mentioned in the Vedic literature, except in its latest stratum, that of the *Sūtras*; generally speaking, though not always, he is a god in the epic and in the Purāṇas and quite often he is a *parvenu* among the gods. At the time of the churning of the ocean by the devas and the asuras, he emerged out of the waves carrying amṛta or the liquid of immortality. (*Mahābh.*, Ādip. 1140; *Rāmāyaṇa*, Bombay, I, XLV, 32; Gorresio, I, XLVI, 30). The *Bhāgavatapurāṇa* sees in him “a part of Viṣṇu” (*Viṣṇor amśa*, VIII, VIII, 34) or, what amounts to the same thing, “part of Vāsudeva” (*Vāsudevāṃśa*, IX, XVII, 4).¹ In the first passage, he is called the “observer of the Āyurveda” (*āyurvedadṛś*) and in both of them it is specified that he has a share in the sacrifice (*ijyābhāj*, *yajñabhuj*). It is also said that Dhanvantari “has obtained as his part in the sacrifice the immortal life to which a stop had been put.”² This insistence of the Purāṇa can be easily explained if it is considered that the participation of Dhanvantari in the sacrifice could not be secured on its own.

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The *Gṛhya-sūtras* had admitted this participation (*Āśvalayanagṛ*, I, 3, 6; 12, 7), but it has been contested for a long time. This is evident from texts such as the *Viṣṇupurāṇa* and the *Harivaṃśa*. According to the former, Dhanvantari was a prince, born as a grandson of Kāśirāja, in the family of Āyus. In an earlier life, he had been born at the churning of the ocean and had obtained the right of being reborn in the family of Kāśirāja to be able to divide the Āyurveda in eight branches and become a participant in the sacrifice (*yajñabhāj*, IV, VIII, 4). The *Harivaṃśa* describes how after his birth from the ocean, he immediately demanded from Viṣṇu his part and place in the sacrifice; this request was not granted as the shares in the sacrifice had been fixed a long time earlier. As a compensation, he was promised divine status and cult in a second birth. He was, then, born as the son of a king of Kāśī (Kāśirāja) who had honoured him and he received the Āyurveda from Bharadvāja.¹ The texts further agree in making Divodāsa the great-grandson of Dhanvantari.² Under this form, the tradition offers us three personages where the Suśruta-saṃhitā knows of only one. Moreover, the fact that the oldest ancestor of the master of Āyurveda, Dhanvantari is known as Āyus, can lead us to think that the legend of Dhanvantari has been forged at leisure.

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It is, in any case, probable that some king of Kāśī had, in antiquity, acquired a reputation in medicine and that the legends, now preserved, might have been the result of the efforts to reconstitute from the Indian point of view, the life and the genealogy of that prince who was accepted as a divine incarnation. If one were to view things from this angle, it will have, at least, to be accepted that extremely ancient mythical personages such as Divodāsa and Bharadvāja have, in various ways, been introduced into these legends. We have already seen that these two last-mentioned ones, sometimes seem to mingle into one. In the Harivaṃśa, a distinction is made between the two, as one of the two is the master of Dhanvantari and the other his great-grandson. But even here at least the notion of a relationship between Dhanvantari and Bharadvāja is present and this relationship goes back at least to the Śāṅkhāyana-gṛhyasūtra (ii, 14) which unites the two names of Bharadvāja and Dhanvantari, just as the Ṛg-veda had made a rapprochement between those of Bharadvāja and Divodāsa. Therefore, it does not go as far away from the tradition as one would have thought at first view, keeping in view the tradition adopted by the Caraka-saṃhitā.