The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.88

c8.88

It thus appears that the medical text narrates the legend of Soma and Rohiṇī mainly to provide an etymology of the term rājayakṣman that it makes of the disease thus specified, a general consumptive ailment and it recognises for the same certain causes which are essentially natural ones. But in its version of the Vedic legend, it makes the yakṣman a seizing (graha, verse 8) demon, born of the anger of Prajāpati and it is by the power of the thought of Prajāpati’s anger that this graha has been created because Prajāpati is a guru, a spiritual master. The Vedic forms of the legend did not contain these particular details which, on the contrary, are quite commonplace in the epics and in the Purāṇas and this can lead us to think that the Vedic legend has come to medical tradition through a Puranic intermediary. The verse which introduces the account in the Caraka-saṃhitā seems to confirm it: “The ṛṣis have heard a story from the inhabitants of the sky, while it was being told, a story of amorous passion, an old one and concerning the Moon”.¹ Paurāṇī, “old”, can also denote “Puranic”. It is true that the principal Purāṇas only refer to the legend in question and that besides, they are much more recent than the Caraka-saṃhitā which could not have been inspired by them. But it is well known that old Purāṇas have been lost or that at least a mass of legends grouped under the name of Purāṇas existed in the Brahmanic period.² It is from these Purāṇas or from the body of the “Puranic” legends that the Caraka-saṃhitā has drawn inspiration.