Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s1.t10: § 14. Non-medical Version of Ātreya's System

Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c6.s1.t10

Language
English

§ 14. Non-medical Version of Ātreya's System

c6.s1.t10.1

1. The existence of a Version of the theory of Ātreya on the skeleton in some works of a non-medical character has been referred to in § 1. This Non-medical Version is found in two legal and two religious text-books. The former are the Law-book of Yājnavalkya (Yājñavalkya Dharma-śāstra) and the Institutes of Vishnu (Viṣṇu Smṛti). The latter are the Vishnu Dharmottara (*Viṣṇu-dharmottara*) and the Agni Purāṇa (*Agni Purāṇa*).

c6.s1.t10.2

2. The Law-book of Yājñavalkya is a versified treatise of Hindu law, the approximate date of which is about the middle of the fourth century A. D.¹

c6.s1.t10.3

3. The Institutes of Vishnu, on account of its being partly written in prose, is supposed to belong, at least in its original form, to a considerably earlier date; but in its final redaction, it is placed (by Professor Macdonell) ‘not earlier than 200 A. D.’, or (by Professor Jolly) ‘in the third or fourth century A. D.’² But it is probable that isolated portions have been interpolated into the work at much later dates. In any case, in respect of the passage containing the Non-medical Version of the skeleton, there is sufficient evidence (§ 22) proving that it cannot have existed in the Institutes of Vishnu before the twelfth century A. D. Indeed, the very fact that the passage is in no way required by its context, suggests its being a much later otiose amplification, interpolated into the text from some other work. The surmise is confirmed by the fact that the passage in question is not found in all MSS. of the Institutes. On this point I have been able to test the following seventeen MSS. :³

c6.s1.t10.4

1. India Office, No. 915 (Cat. 1342 = Jolly V¹).⁴
2. ,, ,, No. 1545 (Cat. 1345 = Jolly V²).⁴
3. ,, ,, No. 1247 (Cat. 1347 = Jolly V³).
4. ,, ,, No. 540 (Cat. 1341 = Jolly V).
5. ,, ,, No. 200 (Coll. Bühler = Jolly V⁴).⁴ 6. India Office, No. 913 (Cat. 1340).
7. Government Oriental Library, Madras, No. 87.
8. Elphinstone College, Bombay, No. 162 (Coll. Bühler).
9. ,, ,, ,, No. 174 (Coll. Bühler).¹
10. Deccan College, No. 19 (Bhandarkar's Report, 1880).
11. ,, ,, No. 20 (Bhandarkar's Report, 1882).
12. ,, ,, No. 155 (Peterson's Report, III).
13. Calcutta, Sanskrit College, No. 5.
14. ,, ,, ,, No. 62.¹
15. Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. II A. 10.
16. ,, ,, ,, No. II A. 11.
17. ,, ,, ,, No. II B. 25.¹

c6.s1.t10.5

¹ See Professor Jolly’s *Recht und Sitte*, p. 21, in the Cyclopaedia of Indo-Aryan Research; and Professor Macdonell’s *Sanskrit Literature*, p. 429.

c6.s1.t10.6

² Professor Macdonell, *ibid.*, p. 428; Professor Jolly, *ibid.*, p. 7; also in *Sacred Books of the East*, vol. vii, Introduction, p. xxxii.

c6.s1.t10.7

³ The first five MSS. were used by Professor Jolly in his edition in the Bibliotheca Indica. The first six MSS. have been examined by myself; so also extracts from Nos. 13–17, kindly supplied to me by Mahāmahopadhyāya Hara Prasāda Shastri. For the examination of No. 7 I am indebted to the kindness of Rao Bahadur M. Rangacharya; of Nos. 8 and 9 to that of Professor S. K. Bhandarkar; of Nos. 10–12 to that of Professor K. B. Pathak.

c6.s1.t10.8

⁴ Nos. 1, 2 and 5 are provided with Nanda Paṇḍita’s Commentary.

c6.s1.t10.9

¹ Nos. 9, 14 and 17 are provided with Nanda Paṇḍita's Commentary.

c6.s1.t10.10

From among these MSS., twelve (Nos. 1, 2, 4–9, 13–15, 17) contain the passage in question, while five (Nos. 3, 10–12, 16) do not contain it. It appears to be generally assumed, on the authority of Max Müller,² that the Law-book of Yājnavalkya borrowed the passage from the Institutes of Vishnu. The evidence which will be adduced in § 22, goes to show that the truth is rather the reverse. The passage, most probably, was inserted into the Institutes by some one who was familiar with the Mitaksharā commentary on the Law-book. This must have happened at a comparatively late date, though at least some time before 1622 A. D. For Nanda Paṇḍita, who wrote his Vaijayantī commentary on the Institutes in that year,³ comments on the passage.

c6.s1.t10.11

² Sacred Books of the East, vol. vii, Introduction, p. xx.

c6.s1.t10.12

³ Professor Jolly's edition, Pref., p. 1, and his translation, Introd., p. xxxiii.

c6.s1.t10.13

4. The Vishnu Dharmottara is held to be a part of the Garuḍa Purāṇa. Its existence as early as about 1100 A. D. is guaranteed by a quotation in the Dānasāgara, a work ascribed to King Ballāla Sena of Bengal, who reigned about that time. Numerous detached portions of the work are known to exist. Among these there is one called ‘the Chapter on Anatomy’ (Śārīrādhyāya), of which the Tübingen University Library possesses a unique MS., M. a. I. 483 (Cat. No. 167).⁴ The treatise, thus called, professes to be a versified compilation from the Compendia of Charaka and Suśruta. Its statement on the skeleton, however, is a literal extract from the Law book of Yājñavalkya.

c6.s1.t10.14

⁴ Through the liberality of the authorities of the Library who loaned it to me, I was enabled carefully to examine it.

c6.s1.t10.15

5. The date of the Agni Purāṇa is not known, but the point is of small interest; for there can be no doubt that the 369th chapter, entitled ‘the Parts of the Human Body’ (*Śārīrāvayavaḥ*), in which the statement on the skeleton occurs, is not a portion of the original work. A comparison of it with the ‘Chapter on Anatomy’ in the Vishnu Dharmottara Purāṇa shows that about two-thirds of its contents (i. e. twenty-nine out of a total of forty-three verses) are literally plagiarized from it. Moreover, it betrays itself as a later interpolation by its very position in the book, occurring as it does after chapters 367 and 368 which treat of the Dissolution of the World (*pralaya*), and before chapter 370 which treats of the various hells (*naraka*), while its proper place would have been with chapters 278–85 which treat of Medicine.¹ A further corroborative evidence is the fact that it is wanting in many MSS. The Bibliotheca Indica edition (as stated in its Preface, p. ii, and Introd., p. xxxvii) is based on ten MSS.² Out of these, eight MSS. appear to have contained the chapter in question, while it was wanting in two. To these two must be added the India Office MS., No. xxv (W. 4), and the Bodleian Library MS., No. 42, which I have examined myself, and neither of which contains the chapter. Neither is it contained in the two MSS. of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. III H. 38 and No. III G. 31, which have been collated for me in Calcutta. This gives eight MSS. for, and six against the originality of the chapter. As one of those eight MSS. is dated in śaka 1595, i.e. A. D. 1673 (Ed., pref., p. ii), it follows that the interpolation of the chapter goes back, at least, to the middle of the seventeenth century.

c6.s1.t10.16

¹ These chapters profess to give Suśruta’s system of medicine. But there is very little distinctly Suśrutiyan to be found in them; nor, for that matter, anything more distinctly Charakiyan. A good test case is the half-verse 8, on p. 29, in chapter 278, which agrees with neither Charaka (ed. 1896, p. 479) nor Suśruta (p. 824) nor Vāgbhaṭa. On the other hand, two verses (13 and 14 on p. 35 in chapter 279) of an incantation are found also in Suśruta (*Sūtra Sthāna*, 44th *adhyāya*, p. 160).

c6.s1.t10.17

² The editor had eleven MSS., but he discarded one at an early stage. One of his MSS. is now in the India Office, No. 5 (7) of the Saurendra Mohun Tagore Collection. The statement on the skeleton is found on fol. 115 *b*, ll. 2 ff.

Cites (7)