A History of Indian Medical Literature v1.c20.s2.16

v1.c20.s2.16

The claim of many Indian authors that the Agniveśatantra remained accessible for many centuries, up to the times of Cakrapāṇidatta, Vijayarakṣita, Śrīkaṇṭhadatta and Śivadāsasena, 228 is not supported by solid evidence; 229 it rests on the shaky basis of the uncritical acceptance of the genuineness of the quotations and on the conviction that the occurrence of these quotations means that MSS containing the complete text were still extant. Acknowledgment of the additional quotations found in Ṭoḍara’s Āyurvedasaukhya and Anantakumāra’s Yogaratnasamuccaya, neglected by the majority of Indian authors or unknown to them, would oblige them to raise the limit of the period in which the Agniveśatantra could be consulted. It would, moreover, be hard to explain that in the period of compilation of Ṭoḍara’s Āyurvedasaukhya a large body of material from the Agniveśatantra could be collected that was overlooked by the commentators on the classical medical treatises.