The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c9.77

c9.77

As regards *sirās* or *śirās*, they are sometimes, in classical medicine, understood as veins. A chapter of the *Suśruta-samhitā* (*Śār*., VIII), devoted to blood-letting, is entitled *sirāvyādhavidhi*, “the technique of the cutting of the *sirās*”. It follows, therefore, that those vessels, which we call “veins” are the *sirās*, but not that the latter always represent the veins. In fact, the word is, most of the time, a synonym of *dhamáni* and of *nādī*. Like the *dhamánis*, the *sirās* “have the navel for their root and they spread from there upwards, downwards and horizontally”.² Like them, they carry the circulating organic fluids, specially the wind, the bile, the phlegm and the blood.¹ Like them, they can carry everything: "There is no *sirā*, which carries only the wind, the bile or the phlegm. It is, therefore, said that they carry all. Since they are the fixed derivatives of the corrupted elements of trouble which develop and overflow and that is why it is said that they carry everything".² This, however, does not assimilate them completely to the *dhamánis* as it is only on the occasion of the corruption of the elements of trouble that they can transport something else than the four principal liquids.