The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c7.s2.176

c7.s2.176

As regards the problem of the Iranian Vayu, the researches of Nyberg have led him to suppose the existence of a veritable religion of Vayu, of a ‘vayism’, forming the counterpart of a ‘zervanism’, the religion of the Time and heterodox in comparison to the Avestan Mazdeism, although only traces of its existence be recognisable in the Avesta. A passage of the neo-platonist Damaskios ascribes to Eudemos of Rhodes, an author of the IVth century B.C. and a friend of Aristotle, a piece of information according to which ‘the Magis and the entire Aryan race’ hold either Topos or Chronos as the World-principle.¹ Nyberg recognises in the Topos the ‘thwāsa’, the atmospere, in chronos, Zrvan, the Time which two are often mentioned side by side in the Avesta and he proposes the identity of thwāsa with Vayu.² In this case this passage will attest the existence of zervanism, of a vayism whose traces he finds precisely in the Rām Yast³ and which could have been more particular in the East of Iran and in the warrior caste. This last hypothesis is based on the fact that in the Rām Yast (and generally in the Yasts) Vayu has the characteristic of a victorious god and is based on two other facts, namely the presence of the grammatical forms of the East in his adjectives and the frequency of the name of Vāta on the Indoscythian coins, which are also oriental. It may be objected that there is nothing signifcant in it, because the Indo-Scythian coins belong to the commencement of the Christian era and the redaction of the Rām Yast is also not very old; now if it be necessary to recognise the trace of a vayism in the information ascribed to Eudemos, then this vayism must have been known in the Occident from the IVth century B.C. The coins and the grammatical forms of the East, posterior by many centuries, cannot indicate that the East has been the first home of vayism. It is still more difficult to believe that the Parthians whose domination stated about a century after Eudemos, could have, according to a hypothesis proposed again by Mr.