The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.123

c8.123

¹ *Hymns*... p. 561, where *jāyā*, whose correct sense is "wife, one who gives birth to children", is rendered by "woman" in this case. Besides there is nothing to prove formally that venereal diseases were known as such from the *AV*. The *Kauśikasūtra* (27, 32) does specify the recitation of the hymn III, 11, along with the ingestion of boiled rice with rotten fish in case of the "disease of coitus" (*grāmya* explained by Dārila: *grāmyo vyādhir mithuna-saṃyogāt*, "the *grāmya* disease results from coitus"). Now Hymn III, 11, begins with an invocation against *rājayakṣmā* and *ajñātayakṣmā* (cf., supra, p. 98) and Keśava also, in his commentary on the *Kauś.-s.*, declares that all this is the remedy in case of "consumption by coitus", *maithuna-rāja-yakṣman* (Bloomfield, *Hymns*..., 341). Most probably, this remedy is meant for cases of exhaustion due to sexual excesses (as interpreted by V. Henry, *Magie*..., p. 20) and not for diseases, which are probably speaking, venereal diseases.