The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c6.51

c6.51

³ cf., P. C. Ray, History of Hindu Chemistry, 2nd edn., 1911, Vol. II; S. Lévi, Kaniṣka et Sātavāhana, in J.A., Jan.-March, 1936, p. 104, and ff. Hiuen-tsang (S. Julien, Mémoires sur les contrées occidentales, Vol. II, p. 98) says that Nāgārjuna was well-versed in the science of medicinal herbs, used to take big tablets for maintaining his life and had attained the age of several centuries. This is to make of him a master of the rasāyana, the science of elixirs of youth, which is one of the eight articles of the Āyurveda and is related simultaneously to medicine and alchemy and, in the Suśruta-samhitā, more to medicine because the preparations described therein have chiefly plants for their base.