Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c5.s1.5

c5.s1.5

4. The Atharva Veda. As bearing on the very early date of both Ātreya and Suśruta, we have a rather significant piece of evidence in the Atharva Veda. That work, in its tenth book, contains a hymn on the creation of man (see § 43), in which the several parts of the skeleton are carefully and orderly enumerated in striking agreement more especially with the system of Ātreya as contained in Charaka’s Compendium.² The date of the Atharva Veda is not exactly known, but it belongs to the most ancient, or primary Vedic, literature of India. It cannot be placed later than the sixth century B. C., because references to it are found in secondary Vedic works, such as the *Satapatha Brāhmaṇa* above referred to. The larger portion of it (Books I-XVIII), indeed, admittedly belongs to a much earlier period, possibly as early as about 1000 B. C.; and the hymn in question is included in this older portion. Moreover, within that portion it belongs to a division (Books VIII-XII) which bears a distinctly hieratic character. It thus takes us back to that prehistoric, or semi-mythical age of the ‘medicine men’ who combined the functions of priest and physician. This period, as already stated (clause 2), Indian tradition represents by the name of Bhāradvāja, and to him it actually ascribes the authorship of one of the hymns (the twelfth of the tenth book) of that hieratic division.¹