The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.45

c8.45

Oldenberg has carefully studied the *ṛta* and has very well observed that the origin of this concept lay in the spectacle of the regular movements of the sky, but he has not recognised that the generality of its application automatically brought in its extension to morals. In the simultaneous relationship of *ṛta* with the astronomical phenomena and moral behaviour he has only seen the double trace of an Indo-Iranian borrowing from the Semitics. Maintaining that Mitra, the habitual associate of Varuṇa, was the Sun and that Varuṇa was the Moon, he has supposed that the group of seven Ādityas, which is the culminating point of the two associates, was originally that of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets. Not finding among other Indo-European people the equivalent of a similar group, observing that the Indo-Iranians had another solar god and another lunar god and finding that they did not evince much interest for the planets, he thought that the group of Ādityas was by its origin a stranger to the Indo-Iranian mythology. He has supposed it to have been borrowed from the peoples who were more advanced in astronomy, that is, the Semitics. In the relationship of *ṛta* with the moral idea, he has seen a confirmation of his thesis because, he says, the Semitics seem to have raised themselves to a more mature concept of moral life earlier than the Indo-Europeans.¹ Such a building up of hypotheses without documentary support is astonishing when it comes from such a philologist as Oldenberg. Of course, it is plausible and one could look for new arguments to support it. One could observe, for example, that the name of Āditya signifying "son of Aditi", of the "Absence of link", would have fitted with the mobile heavenly bodies such as the planets (from the Indian point of view the Sun and the Moon are planets) in opposition to the stars, heavenly bodies which seem to be permanently linked among themselves. But this only seems to reinforce the first hypothesis, which identifies the Ādityas with the planets, without rendering others less gratuitous, and all that one can learn of the Indo-European pre-history of Varuṇa by confrontation with Ouranos¹ is not favourable to the suppositions of Oldenberg. The essential characteristic of this god is that of being king and not Moon. In India, the god-Moon is a king surrounded by a group of constellations but Varuṇa is king in a larger sense and right from Indo-European pre-history itself; one cannot support its purely astral origin.