The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.153

c8.153

We will discuss a little later, the word *pāmán* in connection with skin diseases. The fever *takmán* along with the related ailments called *balāsa*, *pāmán* and *kāśikā* is sent, by the exorcisms of the same hymn, which names them together (*AV*, V-22) to the barbarian woman (*dāsī*, st. 6-7) and to the various stranger people having names which are mostly identifiable: the Bāhlikas (Bactrians), the Aṅgas (Bengal), the Magadhas (Bihar), the Gandhāris (Peshawar District). Others are less easy to situate, they are the Mujavants and the Mahāvṛṣas. The Mujavant is the mountain, par excellence, from where comes the soma, destined for sacrifice.³ The *Mahābhārata* (X, 785) makes it (in all possibility it is the same mountain) the place where Bhava (Śiva) practises austerities and it is known that the ascetic Śiva stays chiefly in the Himalayas, in the North. The *Mahāvṛṣas*, “those who have big bulls”, seem to belong to lower Panjab.¹ This hymn against fever has been, most probably, composed in Central India, the *Madhyadeśa*, say between Delhi and Allahabad, because all the stranger people named therein surround precisely this region.