The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c7.s2.50

c7.s2.50

The equivocal character of gods and demons becomes a commonplace thing in India from the time of the Veda. This can be linked with the general and very important fact that in the Veda many notions have two opposite values, one favourable and the other unfavourable, as it is well attested by the Vedic vocabulary, which is extremely ambivalent.² This causes astonishment to our minds, used, by a long Christian tradition, to the classification of beings and of notions as good and bad ones. In reality, the mixing of contrary tendencies is quite constant. It is by means of an idealistic systemisation to which we are accustomed, that we separate them and then divide them among completely conceived superhuman figures. But since such a systemisation was not thought necessary everywhere, it has not been created everywhere. Greek mythology, as that of India, admits, though to a lesser degree, the ambiguity of the character of gods; this permits us to believe that this ambiguity is Indo-European. The Iranian dualism, on the contrary, opposes radically and mechanically, the Good and the Evil. It is not possible to accept that, under this absolute form, it is primitive. It is more likely that the mythical Indo-Iranian personalities, such as Thrita-Trita had been, in their origin, equivocal and have remained the same in the Veda whereas in the Iranian texts they have been secondarily made to specialise into the Good and the Evil ones. Moreover even in the Avesta, there are traces of the ambiguity of action of divine personalities and these traces can be interpreted as the survivals of concepts anterior to the dualist systemisation. This is an important question for the chronology of ideas and we will come to that on the subject of Vāyu.