The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c7.s2.76

c7.s2.76

The diseases mentioned by the Avesta are probably the demons of diseases.³ Their names are extremely obscure⁴ and were already so under the Sassanians, because some of them have been left without a translation in the Pehlavi version of the Videvdāt.⁵ Moreover, they are very rarely related to the Vedic names of diseases. The Avestan word gada, “ruin, evil”, is currently found in classical Sanskrit under the form gada, “disease”, and appears in the Vedic in agadā, “doing well”. The name of the disease pāman is common to the Avesta and the Vedas (AV., V, 22, 12). Neither in the Avesta nor in the Atharvaveda is its sense made clear by the context. However, in the Atharva, the pāman is said to be the cousin “of the fever”; it is, therefore, probable that it is inflammatory. Moreover, the Chāndogya-upaniṣad brings in a personage, Raikva, who “scratches himself” for a pāman, from which he suffers (pāmānam kaṣamānam, IV, 1, 8); it is also, therefore, a pruriginous affection, generally believed to be itch. But it can also be any type of pruriginous dermatose and it is not wise to admit without any proof that the itch, properly speaking, was clearly distinguished since the Vedic period itself, especially as in the classical Indian medicine, the *pāmā* corresponding to the Vedic *pāman*, corresponds to eczema rather than to itch. Suśruta says: "The diagnosis of the *pāmā* is done according to the tiny vesicles accompanied by discharge, according to the pruritus and the peripheric inflammation" and he continues this time in characterising the veritable itch which he calls *kacchū*: "By the pustules accompanied by a great deal of inflammation, appearing on the buttocks, on the hands and on feet, this is how itch is represented".¹ Moreover, the Avesta has the name of a disease corresponding to *kacchū*: *kasvī(s)*, as has been kindly indicated to me by Mr. Benveniste, who has also informed me that *pām* denotes in Afghan the itch. One may, therefore, admit that *pāman* denotes from the Indo-Iranian epoch an "itch" in the general sense and not in the medical sense properly speaking.²