The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.8

c8.8

There is another means of dating these texts, which, without being infallible, have at least the advantage of being based on passably credible historical data, namely the data of the Purāṇas which have been neglected and often discredited. The Purāṇas contain long genealogical lists which have greatly deceived those who have utilised them. These lists deserve all the criticism that has been made of them. They are not of a very old date and are full of disagreements and incoherent statements which completely condemn them. But before rejecting them, one must remind oneself that it is these very lists which have furnished the key to Indian history. It is in the genealogical lists of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, read in the translation made by Maridas Pullé of a Tamil version, that de guignes had recognised in 1771¹, under the name of Sandragutten (Candragupta), the Indian king Sandrokottos mentioned by the Greek and Latin historians as a contemporary of Seleukos. These very lists, once again, in agreement with the Simhalese chronicles, describe the succession of the Mauryas, revealing that Aśoka was the grandson of Candragupta and permit us to utilise for the general chronology of India (before the IInd century B. C.) the synchronism of Aśoka and the Greek king mentioned in the inscriptions of the former. Hence everything is not false in the Purāṇas. They furnish us the means to calculate the probable epoch of king Parīkṣit, legendary but only half so, whose praise is sung in the Atharvaveda (XX, 127) as of a living prince. One could, therefore, determine the probable period of the Atharvaveda.