The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.181

c8.181

The disease *apvā* is chased away from the interior of the abdomen (*AV.*, IX, 8-9), and in an incantation of the black-magic found in the *Ṛgveda* (X, 103-12), an *apvā* is called upon to trouble the spirit of the enemies, seize their limbs and burn their hearts. This does not enable us to identify it.¹ The disease *viklindu* (*AV.*, XII, 4-5) attacks the man guilty of keeping a cow instead of giving it to Brahmins. *Gláu* and *galuntá* (*AV.*, VI, 83-3), *Udyugá* (*AV.*, V, 22-11), *Nirāla* (*AV.*, VI, 16-3) cannot be as yet seriously identified even if they were diseases. *Vilohitá* (*AV.*, IX, 8-1; XII, 4-4) according to the manner of the formation of the word, probably denotes a flux of the blood (of the nose?—Bloomfield), the decomposition of blood (V. Henry) or anaemia (Whitney). *Pramóta* probably denotes the dumb (*AV.*, IX, 8-4), *Viśará* (*AV.*, II, 4-2), *Viśarīka* and *āśarīka* (*AV.*, XIX, 34-10) are evidently derived from the root *śṛ*, "to break"; probably they denote various forms of contusive pains, but *visara* appears in a list of names having the chance of being applied to provocative demons of diseases rather than to the diseases themselves. These names are (*AV.*, II, 4-2), *jambha*, from the root *jabh* "to pound", which signifies "tooth" in the *Ṛgveda* and later "jaws",² *vískandha* and *abhiśócana*. Other names of the same type are found elsewhere: *sámskandha* (with the new *vískandha*, *AV.*, XIX, 34-5), *Sipada*³ (in *aśipadá*, with a privative particle, *RV.*, VII, 51-4), *Śīmidā* (*AV.*, IV, 25-4 and in *aśīmidá*, *RV.*, VII, 51-4). For all these words one can only resort to etymological conjectures which, though linguistically sure, are of no value, in the absence of decisive context, for fixing the sense in which they are used.