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The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.s1: Therapeutics

The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.s1

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English

Therapeutics

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In the Vedic *saṃhitās* therapeutics appears essentially as consisting of incantations, magical practices and prayers. As such, it could have only a slight echo in classical medicine, based on the knowledge of diseases and the determination of their causes.

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The majority of hymns used in curative charms, whether they belong to the *Ṛgveda* or to the *Atharva* are formulae of exorcism of this type, irrespective of the fact whether the disease aimed at is presented as being caused by the action of a demon or not. But it is certain that the recitation of hymns did not suffice. It was accompanied by a ritual, which has not been preserved for us in the oldest texts but by others like the *Kauśikasūtra* attached to the *Atharvaveda*. This Sūtra has probably modified the ceremonies in usage in the epoch of the *Atharvaveda* but it certainly contains ancient traditional data and gives an extremely exact general idea of Vedic therapeutics. This therapeutics is essentially magical. We have, incidentally, picked up some of its traits, which show that it has little to do with the really medical.¹ The numerous plants mentioned in the hymns manifestly assume the rôle of magical ingredients rather than that of veritable drugs. We have already seen the use of *rajanī*, “colouring”, which, because of its dark colour, is used to re-dye the decolourised skin and will absorb the decolorisation, of which it is antagonistic. This is not a truly medical use. One of the chief remedies mentioned (*RV*., I, 43-4, VII, 295; *AV*., II-27-6, VI-57), the remedy *par excellence* of Rudra, *jālāsa* is, according to Bloomfield, only urine, who interprets in this manner the indications of the *Kauśikasūtra*, or rain-water conceived as cosmic urine according to Geldner:¹ in any case it is not a real remedy. But, *á priori* one must think that in the Vedic epoch, one could not have helped observing the medicinal properties of certain plants and of their products, but these are not generally these properties which appear in the hymns. The bdellium (*guggulu* or *gulgulu*), for example, to which classical medicine attributes medicinal properties, figures in the *Atharvaveda* only as an odorous product, suitable for chasing away bad influences; it retains this characteristic in the field of exorcism right up to more recent epochs.² The hymn, XIX, 38, is addressed to the bdellium of Sindh and to that of the ocean, that is to say, brought in by maritime commerce.

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¹ For more details, cf., V. Henry, Magie . . .; Caland, *Altindischen Zauberritual*, Amsterdam, 1900.

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¹ cf., Macdonell-Keith, *Vedic Index*, see *jalāsa-bhesaja*.

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² *Kumāratantra de Rāvaṇa*, pp. 14 ff., 40, n. 1.

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Along with bdellium, the hymn addresses itself to a certain *Arundhatī*. Often this name denotes a certain star, but here a vegetable product is meant, also mentioned in the *Atharvaveda*, which calls it *lākṣā* too (*AV.*, V, 5-7). Now *lākṣā* is the resin known as "lac" which flows out as a result of pricking caused by an insect, called Coccus lacca, in the branches of various types of trees, of whom the chief are Ficus religiosa, Ficus indica, Rhamnus jujuba and Butea frondosa. Hymn V says, in verse 5, to *Arundhatī*: "You come out of the good Ficus infectoria, from Ficus religiosa, from Acacia catechu, from Grislea tomentosa, from the good Ficus indica and from Butea frondosa".⁴ Acacia catechu gives the black

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³ cf., Zimmer, *Altindische Leben*, Berlin, 1879, p. 28.

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⁴ *Bhadrāt plakṣān nis tiṣthasy aśvatthāt khadirād dhavāt|bhadrān nyagródhāt parṇāt. . .*

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The translators have always supposed that *arundhatī* denoted a creeper, which attaches itself to certain types of trees (cf., *Vedic Index*, see the word). It is said that it climbs the trees (*V.*, V, 5-3) but the trails of resin run on the bark as the stalks of creepers, with which they can be compared. The names of trees from which it "comes out" remove all doubt. Moreover *Arundhatī* receives the name of *lomaśa-vakṣaṇā* (*AV.*, V, 5-7) which has been translated by Roth as: "am Leibe behaart" and which is included in the *Vedic Index* as signifying one which has "a hairy stem". But these interpretations are based only on the supposition that it is a plant. The root *vakṣ* denotes "to grow; to shoot up" (Ger. *wachsen*, etc.). The word should therefore be understood to mean "one which has a growth of catechu which is obtained not by incision as the gums, but by boiling the bark; the incision of the bark furnishes a certain gum. Grislea tomentosa produces a variety of honey in its flowers (red in colour and used in dyes like the lac), its wood is succulent and eatable. There is every reason to believe that the resins and gums grouped under the names of arundhatī or lākṣā¹ were not solely those which are produced under the action of the Coccus lacca and which form the red lac but also those which are produced from those very trees by means of incision. In fact, in hymn V, 5 (st. 6 & 7), it is said that arundhatī has the colour of gold (hiraṇya-varṇa) and that of the Sun (sūrya-varṇa) which can be correctly applied to resins but not to the red lac.

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¹ lākṣā is the term from which the word lac is derived by means of the Persian-Arabic lak or lakk and the Latin (mediaeval) lacca. The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea (6) mentions lac as lakkhos. The two forms of Persian-Arabic are the exact transcriptions of Indian forms. In Mid-Indian, lākṣā had to change into lākhā (attested in Pali) or lakkhtā (on the final vowel cf. J. Bloch, Indo-Aryan, Paris, 1934, p. 41).

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Arundhatī is used to obtain the cicatrisation of wounds and heal up that which is broken. V. Henry believed that it owed its virtues solely to the speculation of popular grammar on the etymology of its name, arun . . . might have signified arus, “wound”, and -dhatī might have suggested the idea of the root dhā, “to heal”.² He put aside deliberately the hypothesis that recognised healing properties might have given it its name. The case where the name of a thing commands its use in magic is extremely common and many Indian plants or vegetable products draw their properties from an etymological hypothesis or from a popular etymology.³ But here etymology has had no rôle to play. Once arundhatī is recognised as the resin-gum, the reason of its use as a healer becomes evident; this gum which comes to fill up the incisions in the trunks of trees and stops them by hardening is the

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² Magie . . . , p. 180.

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³ Kumāratantra . . . , pp. 32-3.

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hair”, i.e., which grows from the trunk as hair from limbs, or better still, “one which has a growth of hair”, i.e., which grows in trails comparable to hair if loman, in this compound, can have the rare but proven sense of “hair” (cf., Aufrecht, Lomaśatana, in ZDMG, 1877, Vol. XXXI, p. 768). Lastly verse 2 of hymn V, 5 says: “one who drinks you, lives . . .”, yás tvā píbati jīvati . . . , which cannot be said of a creeper but can very well be explained when understood as referring to a resin as shown by the rite referred to hereafter.

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healing type. In the ritual of the *Kauśikasūtra*, where the translators have, this time, recognised the real nature of the product, appearing one under the name of *lākṣā*, this *lākṣā* is dissolved in boiling water, mixed with milk and given to the patient to drink.¹ In another practice taught by the same text and its commentaries,² the wound is washed with a solution of lac, which is also given to the wounded person to drink. One can easily understand the sense of this curative rite. If the wound is bloody, it is probably a homeopathic rite if the lac used is red as supposed by Caland and Henry,³ but lac is chiefly given for drinking to repair the wound of the patient by the same process as that of the tree. Because the resin which springs in the wound fills it up and closes it, comes from the interior of the tree.

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¹ XXVIII, 14.

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² XXVIII, 5-6.

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³ *Magie* . . . , p. 181, n. 1.

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Despite the mystical character of Vedic therapeutics, one may ask oneself if in certain passages, one should not recognise references to methods of treatment that are really medical. These could have been used in practice but concerning them the hymns, because of their character, can only rarely provide any information. One may ask oneself, for example, if vesical cathterism was not known. Hymn I, 3 of the *Atharvaveda*, used as an exorcism against the retention of urine, actually refers to a reed (*śara*) which could serve as a sound, because verse 7 says: "I break thy urethra as the dyke of a pond . . ."⁴ and it is quite natural to think that an operation for making the urine flow was really performed by means of the reed. Hymn I, 2, on its side, says: "We have recognised as the father of the reed ("or of the arrow" made from the reed) Parjanya (god of rain) who nourishes abundantly; we have recognised for its mother, Earth which has numerous aspects. . . just as the shaft of an arrow stands between the Sky and the Earth, that similarly may this cane stand between the disease and the flux".⁵ The cane in question is a hollow stalk of a plant similar to the sugar-cane, the Saccharum munja. It can, therefore, be said that it relates to a sound made from a similar stalk. This sound, once in place, is well situated between the painful vesical globe and the flux of urine which flows out at its other end. Unfortunately a difficulty renders this interpretation doubtful. First of all, it is not clear if an extremely fine stalk of the Saccharum munja can be hollowed and used as a sound. Only a sufficiently voluminous stalk can be emptied of its internal sap, while keeping its sides sufficiently resistant, but then it is impossible to employ it as an urethral catheter. Possibly this referred only to a symbolic operation. The hollow cane has been used without being introduced in the urethra for mimicking and leading by means of initiative magic the flow, which it was desired to be produced by the urethral canal.

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⁴ *prá te bhinadmi méhanam vártram vecantyā iva*|

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⁵ *vidmā śarásya pitáram parjányam bhūridhāyasam*| *vidmó ṣvasya mātáram pṛthivīm bhūrivarpasam*|| *yáthā dyām ca pṛthivīm cāntás tiṣṭhati téjanam*| *evā rógam cāsrávām cāntás tiṣṭhatu múñja it*||

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We cannot pursue the examination of innumerable magical practices, which constitute Vedic therapeutics as they have no rôle in the formation of the scientific medicine of the classical epoch. Of course, it is admitted that magic prepares the appearance of science and furnishes it within its first elements. But it seems to be an illusion. Certainly medical magic starts to treat all sorts of ailments, thus providing the magician with an occasion to observe them. Besides, the curative charms comprise the use of a large number of plants and of products which, leaving aside their supposed magical virtue, can have a real physiological action. From there it is readily concluded that the magician ends up by acquiring, more or less in spite of himself, exact notions of pathology and of therapeutics. But this is too vulgar a manner of conceiving the formation of scientific notions. A notion can be called scientific only if it comprises a rational element, the rudiments of the natural explanation of a phenomenon or of the justification of an observed property. When the healer observes a disease, if he contents himself with only observing the symptoms of the disease, he makes neither science nor magic; he does not get out of pure empiricism. If he tries to explain the observed disease, two things can happen. Either he joins it immediately to a system of phenomena with which the disorder shows some analogy, allowing its participation in this system of phenomena without trying to find out any reason thereof; in that case he poses a magical relationship. Or, by means of reasoning he relates it to a group of understood facts. It is only then that he establishes or sketches out a scientific explanation. It is possible that the same man, who has, at first, posed a magical relation, later on conceives a scientific explanation, but the latter does not result from the former. On the contrary, the latter could only have been delayed by the former. The right path does not lie in the prolongation of the wrong route. A person, who after losing his way, finds it, does not owe his success to his former mistake; he owes it to his research. Similarly, if the healer finds a truly medical explanation of pathological facts, it is not because he has at first tried a magical speculation, he has continued the research from which the former would have led him away.

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Historically, the magical interpretations are tried before scientific explanations because they are simpler to elaborate, but to believe that the former have prepared the second is to allow oneself to be duped by the sophism, *post hoc ergo propter hoc*.¹

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¹ cf., J. Filliozat, *Magie et médecine*, specially pp. 129 ff; pp. 140 ff.

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In the domain of therapeutics, the magical use of drugs is still less conducive to their rational utilisation. To enable a magician to recognise the natural efficacy of a magically used drug, two conditions need to be fulfilled. Firstly, the magical use should take place under those special conditions which may enable the manifestation of efficacy. Secondly the magician, observing the success, should stop linking it with his magical rite, that is to say, should precisely stop thinking as a magician.

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Only this much can be easily admitted that in the case where the magician sees his rite succeeds, when an accident interrupts its normal cause, he can be put on the way of recognising that the efficacy did not depend on that rite but was the result of the virtue inherent in the element employed. Experience can, then, confirm to him the existence of this virtue in that element. Thus, by an accident of the magical operation, a real property can, certainly, be discovered. But still, this is not the scientifically recognised property; it is merely an empirical datum, accidentally acquired. It is true that this datum can be precious and that it is essentially medical but it is not even then scientific because practical medicine contains a large part of empiricism. Science comes in only from the moment when the efficacy of the remedy is systematically explained and where its properties are rationally applied.

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Once again magic, which in spite of itself serves empiricism and nothing but that, does not always furnish it with valid data. If, perchance, the magician can cease to attribute a curative action to magic and can relate it to drugs, it is certain that he cannot always, if he employs several drugs, discern the one which is really efficacious. In such a case he runs the risk of introducing false notions in empiricism, of as much overburdening it as of enriching it by others.

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Classical Indian medicine claims to explain by means of a coherent system the pathogeny and applies its therapeutics as a function of its theories; its design is entirely scientific, even though many of its doctrines are, in fact, erroneous. It cannot, therefore, have its bases in the pathology and the therapeutics of the Veda. It does not, however, follow that the classical medical texts are not rich in Vedic souvenirs. We have seen that a number of Vedic names of diseases are explained by naturally climbing back from their meaning in classical medicine to the sense possessed by them in the Veda. But in the Veda, we have not found the prefiguration of ulterior pathological doctrines. Moreover, we will take up this problem in connection with physiological notions of the Veda.

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As regards therapeutics, Vedic souvenirs do exist in classical medicine, but they are extremely limited. A number of the names of plants already attested in the Vedic saṃhitās reappear in classical texts. But they are mostly employed for dogmatic reasons or because their efficacy has been empirically recognised and not because they formed part of the magical arsenal of the Veda. One may, however, pick out in the medical saṃhitās prayers of the same type as those of the Vedic magicians. The Suśruta-saṃhitā notably contains a prayer destined to reinforce the effectiveness of emetics. First of all, the text declares that "among the emetic substances, fruits and others, the fruits of madana (Randia dumetorum Lam) are the best”.¹ It indicates, thereafter, with precision the preparation of potions, prepared from these fruits, whose emetic properties are, moreover, perfectly real.² But their use must be along ritual lines.

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¹ vamanadravyāṇām phalādyānām madanaphalāni śreṣṭhatamāni bhavanti (Sūtr., XLIII, 1).

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² cf., A.Dj. Achart, Quinze cents plantes dans l'Inde, Pondichéry, 1905, p. 373; K.N. Nadkarni, The Indian Materia Medica, Bombay, no date, (towards 1925), p. 737; Dr. Parmanand Mariadassou, Le Jardin des simples de l'Inde, Pondichéry, 1913, p 89.

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“Facing the North, accompanied by the chanting of incantations, the patient should be made to drink it with his face turned to the East after he has recited this mantra: “that Brahman, Dakṣa, the Aśvins, Rudra, Indra, the Earth, the Moon, the Sun, Agni and the Wind, the ṛṣis, the groups of those who have the medicinal plants and the mass of spirits, guard you! That this remedy be unto you like the elixir of the ṛṣis, like the divine ambrosia, like the nectar of superior dragons”.³

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³ Brahmadakṣaśviruḍrenndrabhūcandrārkānalānilāḥ| ṛṣayaḥ sauṣadhigrāmā bhūtasamghāśca pāntu te|2| rasāyanam ivārṣiṇām devānām amṛtam yathā| sudhevottamanāgānām bhaiṣajyam idam astu te|3| Suśr., sūtr., XLIII, 2-3.

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The mantra does not belong to Vedic poetry; it is in Sanskrit verse of the most common type. But by the purpose behind it, it constitutes the survival of the spirit of Vedic therapeutics. But this is only an indirect survival because formulae of this type have been perpetuated in those of later Hindu religion, particularly in the abundant literature of the kavacas, the “armour”, which have been extremely popular right up to now and which itself prolongs the Vedic prayers only because of the general purpose which inspires it. It is, undoubtedly, rather by the pressure of beliefs current in non-medical circles than by a direct souvenir of the religious therapeutics of the Veda that this mantra has been introduced in the Āyurveda. There also it constitutes an exceptional case. As a general rule, the therapeutics of the Āyurveda does not comprise the use of any invocation.⁴ Holy prescriptions are found there, but they do not habitually constitute a part of medicine properly so called. They concern, for example, the ritual of birth, occasionally mentioned with reference to birth, but, evidently, they do not constitute an integral part of the obstetrical teaching.¹ At the most, one may find cases where the use of certain plants in therapeutics does not seem to be justified by their real properties and seems to be a survival of their utilisation in Vedic magic.²

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⁴ In the preparation of emetics, it has been, however, a traditional practice to use this mantra, corresponding to that of Suśruta Kalpasthāna; I, 16) and Vāgbhaṭa reproduces it (Aṣṭ. S., Sūtr., XXVII, Vol. I, p. 139; Aṣṭ hṛ, sūtr., XVIII, 16-17) following it by a Buddhist mantra addressed to the Bhaiṣajya-guru Buddha (cf., JA. April-June, 1934, p. 303, n. 1).

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¹ cf. Le Kumāratantra . . . , pp. 28 ff.

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² ibid., pp. 32-33.

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