The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c7.s2.38

c7.s2.38

According to the Atharvaveda (VI. 113, 1): “On Tṛtá (-Tritá) the gods have wiped off their sins. Tṛtá has wiped them off on men; if, later, the seizer (grāhi) has taken hold of you, that the gods destroy it for you by means of the incantation”.⁴ The ritual usage of the hymn, one found at a sufficiently late date,⁵ without the possibility of affirming or denying its ancient origin, is that of exorcising the sin due to the marriage of the younger brother before that of the elder one and one could be led to think that the “seizing one” is the seizure of moral guilt having no relation with the disease. Yet the hymn, X. 161 of the Ṛg-veda makes a close rapprochement between the grāhis of the two afflictions, whose relations with the sin we will precisely see and which are nevertheless diseases: “I deliver you by means of the oblation so that you may live free from the unknown evil and from the royal evil; if the seizing one has taken hold thereof, of it, O Indra and Agni, deliver it.”¹