The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.129

c8.129

The association made by the *Kāśikāvṛtti* with leprosy enables us to understand easily the idea it had of this word. *Kuṣṭha* translated here by "leprosy", denotes in classical medicine all sorts of dermatoses, leprosy being one of the severe forms of the same. There is a decisive passage on it in Suśruta: "When a woman and a man have (respectively) the blood and the sperm vitiated by the impurity of leprosy, the child born of them, is itself—it should be known—affected by leprosy. Leprosy in one, who has control over oneself, is curable, when it spreads to the skin, the blood or the flesh. When it has reached the fat, it is possible that it may be cured, but when it has reached beyond it, it becomes incurable. It is said that leprosy, a disease of sin, comes from acts such as the assassination of a Brahmin, of a woman, or of good persons or because of the appropriation of the goods belonging to another. If death takes place because of leprosy, it accompanies (the victim) even in his next birth and as there is no worse disease (*kaṣṭatara*), it is called *kuṣṭha*. When a patient takes a vow to observe the rules of life prescribed in regard to food and conduct, he may obtain release from this disease by means of best medicine and of austerities and can obtain a more favourable station (in the next life).² Evidently it is with notions contained in this passage that the author of the *Kāśikāvṛtti* wrote his explanation and since for Pāṇini ksetriya designates a disease, this word should be understood in the sense which results from these notions. Particularly, one must understand not that the disease in question will be cured in a new body, but that it must be treated as much by recourse to religion as to medicine so that the new body (of the next birth) may be free therefrom.