The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.62

c8.62

Besides, the disease denoted by the most general terms like *ámīvā* and *yákṣma*, is formally put in relation with the sin. The *Atharvaveda*, taking up the hemistitches of the *Ṛgveda*, groups them in two verses, which illustrates very well the close relationship between physical trouble and sin, ritual or moral shortcoming, intentional or involuntary: “O Soma and Rudra, chase out the one who spreads herself everywhere, the disease (*ámīvā*) has penetrated into our house. Remove far away the “Perdition”, far far away. All sins committed, remove them from us. Soma and Rudra, you, in us, in our bodies, deposit all the remedies. Untie, remove from us, whichever it might have been, the sin committed (by us) and attached to our bodies.”¹ Elsewhere, he has said that the medicinal plants chase, from each limb of the body, the “evil of sin”, that is to say, coming from sin or attached to it (*yákṣmam enasyám*).² Similarly all sorts of anomalies which engender physical troubles are rather associated with sin or *Nirṛti*. The *grāhi* which, we have already seen, taking hold of the man, on whom *Tṛta* has wiped off the sin of gods (*supra*, p. 43), is the type of seizing demons who can possess human beings. Among these are the *rákṣas* to whom are applied such epithets as “devourers” (*astrin*), who particularly cause miscarriages and whose co-relation with the *grāhi* is attested by the fact that the *Atharva-* veda asks for the delivery of a man simultaneously from the one and the other (II, 9, 1). These rákṣas are themselves, in co-relation with the sorcerer-demons, the yātudhānas (cf., supra, p. 46). The nightmare (duśvápnya) is also, along with Nirṛti and the rákṣas, a cause of disorders because it is said: “that the stone for pressing (the soma), by talking may push back the rákṣas, the nightmare, Nirṛti, all that devours. . .”¹ Lastly, bad luck, materialised in the form of the black-bird, of bad omen, śakuna or śakuni, brings down, in association with Nirṛti, the sin on the human being or “wipes” it on him with the mouth of Nirṛti (AV., VII, 64, 1-2). All the causes of disorders are, therefore, related or allied; they belong to the domain of the sin, to the violation of the Norm and they affect, for most of the time, the healthy being like an impurity wiped off on him. That is why efforts are often made to treat them by the ritual of wiping off or of effacement as also by means of prayers.