The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c6.56

c6.56

Happily we have elsewhere some indices of calculating the date when the text of the *Suśruta-saṃhitā* was finally fixed. The medical manuscript found by Bower in Central Asia, at Koutcha, and published by Hoernle¹, mentions Suśruta, as also Ātreya, Bhela and other authors. Hoernlé has determined the date of this manuscript with a somewhat illusory precision, but which, from the point of view of palaeography, belongs to the period of the IV to the VIth centuries; its script is clearly older than that of the script of Koutcha, of which we have examples dating from approximately A.D. 640.² Therefore, the *Suśruta-saṃhitā*, in its totality, goes back at least to the first centuries of our era. Elsewhere, the texts attributed to Vāgbhaṭa, the *Aṣṭāṅgasaṅgraha* and the *Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā* follow and eventually reproduce the *Suśruta-saṃhitā* as it has reached us. They also reproduce the verses of the *Yogaśataka*, slightly anterior to Yi-tsing (VIIth century). The *Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya* is quoted in the *Kitab al Fihrist* in Arabic, in 988, under the name of *Asankar* or *Astankar*. These two texts, therefore, belong to the period between VII to Xth centuries. The *Yogaśataka* itself supposes the existence of the *Uttaratantra*, the last section of the *Suśruta-saṃhitā*, as it terminates with a similarly named section and, to all appearances, is conceived as the pendant of the whole work. One can, therefore, admit that in the VIIth century at the latest, the *Suśruta-saṃhitā* had been fixed in its present form, having already been re-adapted by the "reconstructor". Only interpolations of detail or variations have crept into the body of the text from that time up to the period of the commentaries which have reached us. The first constitution of the *Suśruta-saṃhitā* goes back much higher. Although it appears to have adopted the same legend concerning the origin of the Āyurveda as the *Caraka-saṃhitā*, as both of them designate the same legendary masters by other names and although it teaches the same doctrine, the *Suśruta-saṃhitā* is not a plagiarism of the *Caraka-saṃhitā*. The school of Suśruta has specialised in surgical treatment or in the application of cautery and the *Caraka-saṃhitā* in such cases refers back to the specialists called “Dhānvantarīyas”, that is to say, to the school of Suśruta¹, which was already constituted along with its original teaching at the time of the *Caraka-saṃhitā*. The language of the *Caraka-saṃhitā* is classical and does not correspond to a definite epoch. Certain parts of the text are in prose combined with mnemonic verses or in alternating verse and prose; other parts are entirely in verse. This manner of presentation brings this text near certain parts, in prose and verse, of the *Mahābhārata* and also of the *Arthaśāstra* assigned to Kauṭilya and which would belong to approximately 300 B.C. if the attribution were correct. Provisionally we can consider the *Suśruta-saṃhitā* as a work of the last centuries before our era, which has reached us during the first centuries of the Christian Era in an already well-defined form.