The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.s1.19

c8.s1.19

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.