The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.36

c8.36

The mythological reputation of the Aśvins as the doctors of the gods has quite naturally designated them for fulfilling, as we have already seen, a rôle in the teaching of medicine to human beings, a science reputed to be of divine origin. This reputation was also the cause, especially from the epoch of the *Carakasamhitā*, of ascribing to them the revelation of various formulae, and still later, even of the composition of several works. Indra, to whom they are said to have taught medicine, is, on his side, reputed to be the author of various medicinal preparations. We have seen that, in the Indian tradition, he is included in the group of divine instructors and it is because of his relations with the Aśvins that he is specially regarded as a master of medicine, because by himself he does not have the reputation of a healer comparable to that of the Aśvins. Actually it cannot be said that in the Veda he is a doctor-god. Only in some of the passages (Bergaigne, II, p. 495) is he presented as a rescuer like the Aśvins and often he is asosciated with them, they being called Nāsatyas on such occasions. By chance we even know that this association existed at a very early date even outside India. The well-known treaty between the king of the Mitanni and Subiluliuma, the king of the Hittites (dated in approximately 1380 B. C.) enumerates in a list of divinities “the gods Mitras, the gods Uruwana, the god Indara and the gods Nasattiyas”, that is to say, Mitra and Varuṇa, Indra and the Nāsatyas.¹