The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.149

c8.149

A hymn of the *Atharvaveda* could, in any case, lead one to think that *balāsa*, far from being in this text, a "swelling", denotes a mutilating and necrotizing disease. The hymn IV, 14 begins, in fact, as if seeming to qualify the *balāsa* of "the fixed trouble in the heart (or internal trouble) which breaks the bones (*asthi-sraṃsá*), which breaks the joints (*paruḥ-sraṃsá*)".³ In the light of this definition, one is tempted to put aside the identification of *balāsa* with swelling but, on the contrary, this identification is confirmed by a deeper examination of the adjectives *asthi-sraṃsá* and *paruḥ-sraṃsá*. The root *sraṃs* does possess the sense of "falling to pieces, of being detached" but in classical Sanskrit, when limbs are referred to, its general sense is "to release, to fall down because of heaviness." *Srastāṅga* denotes "(one whose) limbs are disjointed".¹ The *Atharvaveda* itself makes use of this root in this very sense, in a slightly modified form, in *udaram śraṃśayitvā*, "by making the stomach hang down", (IV, 16-7) and this concerns justly the stomach of the sinner, which hangs down because it is swollen, because of the bonds of Varuṇa. It is, therefore, quite natural to admit that the root *sraṃs* in *asthi-sraṃsá* and *paruḥ-sraṃsá* evokes the heaviness of the limbs and the disjunction of the articulations, as a result of the synovial swelling and discharge. Moreover, tradition has preserved the idea that the hymn IV, 14 did refer to swelling, because Keśava, commenting upon the *Kauśikasūtra* (XXXIX, 30), which teaches the ritual use of this hymn, has this to say regarding the use in question: "It is said to be the remedy for *śleṣman*".² He, thus, understood *balāsa* as the aqueous element of the organism precisely in connection with the hymn where *balāsa* is called *asthi* and *paruḥ-sraṃsá*.