Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c5.s1.8

c5.s1.8

5. *Charaka and Nāgārjuna.* According to a Buddhist tradition² Charaka was the trusted physician of the celebrated ‘Indo-scythian’ King Kanishka. Unfortunately the date of Kanishka himself is still in dispute, opinions varying from the first century B. C. to the third century A. D.³ The preponderance of evidence appears to me in favour of Kanishka’s reigning in the middle of the second century, *circa* 125-150 A. D. There exists an Indian medical tradition which assigns the revised and supplemented edition of Suśruta’s original work to Nāgārjuna.⁴ If he should be the well-known Buddhist patriarch of that name who is said to have been a contemporary of King Kanishka, his date would practically coincide with that of Charaka. Accordingly the original Compendia of Agniveśa and Suśruta would have been revised and re-edited at much the same time.