Vanaspati: Plants and Plant-Life as in Indian Treatises and Traditions c6.6

c6.6

Now *Charaka* and *Suśruta*¹ following *Dhanvantari* hold that the fœtus, or rather the fertilised ovum, develops by ‘palingenesis’ (instead of epigenesis); in other words, all the organs are potentially present therein at the same time and unfold in a certain order. As the sprouting bamboo seed contains in miniature the entire structure of the bamboo, as the mango-blossom contains the stone, pulp, the fibres, which appear separated and distinct in the ripe fruit, though from their excessive minuteness they are undistinguishable in the blossom, even such is the case with the fertilised ovum.