The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c9.88

c9.88

The Ayurvedic texts have an extremely detailed catalogue of the *marmans* and they are, in general, quite easily identifiable, thanks to the precisions that are furnished. They are most often the big vasculo-nervous packets or the tendons and the important nervous trunks. Because of haemorrhages which they determine or the paralyses or functional impotences they bring in, the wounds thereof are extremely serious. From its point of view, the *Suśruta-saṃhitā* sets out the reasons of this gravity: “The vessels of four types² which are in the body are ordinarily found to be contained in the *marmans*. Refreshing the tendons, the bones and the flesh as also the articulations, they protect the body. Also, when a *marman* is injured, the wind which is spread, diffuses itself all around. Now, the wind, spreading itself, propagates extremely serious ailments in the body” (*Śār.*, VI).³ There is nothing to prove that right from the epoch of the *Rgveda*, the danger of the wounding of the *marmans* was thus conceived, nor even that they had been catalogued. But the notion of *marman*, like that of the *sirās*, had already been individualised. Medicine has not created this element of its anatomical representation; it has received the same from the Vedic tradition in a ready-made form and has only developed it.