The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c6.82

c6.82

On the other hand, even if the doctor of Kaniṣka was effectively called Caraka, we are not certain that he was the same Caraka, who has revised the *Agniveśa-tantra*. Several doctors have possibly had the name of Caraka. The name of Nāgārjuna was that of an alchemist of the Xth century, mentioned by al-Beroni, while in the VIth century it was, for Hiuen-tsang, the name of a great master of alchemy and medicine. It is therefore not excluded *a priori* that our medical author might have been anterior to the epoch of Kaniṣka. The name of Caraka is an old one. It is that of a school of the *Black Yajurveda*, the *Caraka-śākhā*, which consists of, besides other sub-divisions, those whose *saṃhitās* have reached us in a more or less complete form under the names of *Kāṭhaka*, *Kapiṣṭhala-kaṭhasaṃhitā* and *Maitrāyaṇī-saṃhitā*.¹ This school is opposed to that of the *Taittirīyas*, which has given us the *Taittirīya-saṃhitā* and for stronger reasons to the schools of the *White Yajurveda*, represented by the *Vājasaneyī-saṃhitās*. The scholars of the *White Yajurveda* and the *Taittirīyas* often blame the Carakas. A passage of the *Taittirīya-saṃhitā* (VI, 4, 9) could be interpreted as covering under the same reprobation the Carakas and the doctors: