The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.180

c8.180

Vedic pathology gives a large place to wounds, to poisons and to parasitic worms but we are given information only regarding the magical exorcisms used to oppose them. It should also be recognised that the *Ṛgveda* and the *Atharvaveda*, being collections of hymns, are not books of medicine and did not have to explain the contemporary pathology. Useful indications are only accidental; the data of classical medicine, when it relates to diseases, whose names were already in use in the Veda and when this data are in accord with Vedic indications, enables us to have some idea of the diseases known to the Veda. But where the indications are too vague and where the medical tradition is silent, we are left only with etymological conjectures, which, by themselves, are not plausible. Moreover, whether possible or not, they do not have any interest for the history of medicine. Even when the older sense of the word, supposed by its etymology, is clear, it is not sure if it applies to the passage where it is found to be employed. The Veda, though ancient, is not an ancient book in which only forged words have been inserted intentionally. Sufficient time must have passed between the formation of medical terms (those alone interest us here) and their insertion in the Veda to enable all sorts of deviations of sense and the specialisations of usage. Moreover, the medical names are quite often deflected from their sense right from the time of their formation itself. These terms are habitually drawn from banal ones denoting objects with which is compared the disease or one of its salient characteristics. The name of the lancinating pain, *śūla*, is, for example, the same word which denotes "lance", slightly deflected from its original meaning. Here the deviation is insignificant, but sometimes the deviation is so great that the secondary meaning retains only an extremely vague relation with the original meaning and the latter does not enable one to comprehend the former. It is in this manner that one of the last words examined by us, *kumbhīkā*, has as its older meaning, "small vase or small jar". According to this meaning it could be supposed that a plant of this name is a gourd and all sorts of hypotheses could be made regarding a disease, called *kumbhīkā*, imagining it to dig petty holes under the skin as it really does. But one could rather imagine it in the form of fistulised liquid-containing pockets or even as cysts looking like small jars. Thus one would run the risk of completely misleading oneself. We will, therefore, leave aside a series of morbid phenomena till we obtain more information regarding them, as we can have some idea of their nature only by means of etymological considerations of doubtful value.