The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.146

c8.146

is due to an excess of *kapha*. The *Mādhava-nidāna* defines the same fever as follows: "A patient having a slow fever permanently (a continuous fever), who is dried up, swollen (who suffers because of this, has his limbs stiffened, has lots of *śleṣman*, suffers from *vāta-balāsaka*".¹ This definition enables us to understand the reason why this disease has the name of *vāta-balāsaka*, literally, "one pertaining to wind and to *balāsa* (*śleṣman*)"; the epithet *rūkṣa*, "dried up", which figures among the symptoms, is characteristic of the action of wind², the swelling comes from *balāsa*, the aqueous element of the organism. In the designation of this fever, *balāsa* is, therefore, a reminder of its pathogeny. One may conclude, therefore, that right from the *Atharvaveda*, *balāsa* had the sense of the aqueous element of the organism and was applied to a febrile ailment only to call attention to the pathogeny already conceived in the same manner in classical medicine. Nothing is farther from probability. The *balāsas* are a type of oedematic ailments; it is, therefore, quite possible that *balāsa* started with denoting the symptom of swelling and it is only secondarily that, after the theory of the classical medicine had been constituted, it became the synonym of *śleṣman*, the swelling being the essential manifestations of *śleṣman*, those in which can be seen directly in action the aqueous element of the organism.