The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c6.47

c6.47

² Hoernle accepts him as historical (Osteology, p. 8). From the fact that the tradition presents him as a pupil of the king of Kāśī and makes him teach specially surgery, he has inferred that he belonged to the "University of Kāśī" (Kāśī is mentioned as a centre of sciences in the Jātakas). In comparing the nomenclatures of bones in the Suśruta-saṃhitā, the Caraka-saṃhitā and the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa, he had convinced himself that Suśruta had known Ātreya, an author who was a contemporary of the Buddha (VI-V Century B.C.), and that the Śatapatha, whose composition he dated in the VI Century B.C., had followed the Osteological teaching of Suśruta. Ātreya and Suśruta had, therefore, both of them, belonged to the VI century B.C., the former holding school at Taxila, the latter, somewhat younger, teaching at Benares. But where Hoernle sees a reference of Suśruta to Ātreya, the latter is not mentioned in the text; nor is Suśruta mentioned in the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa. The tradition of the Suśruta-saṃhitā has possibly followed the Brāhmaṇa as much as it has been followed by the latter. Both of them may have borrowed from a common source. A. B. Keith has already made a number of reservations on the inferences drawn by Hoernle on this subject (Z.D.M.G., 1908, p. 136). In fact these inferences arbitrarily introduced certain fallacious precisions in the history of the Āyurveda.