A History of Indian Medical Literature v1.c6: Introduction
A History of Indian Medical Literature v1.c6
- Language
- English
Introduction
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The scientific literature of India, to a large extent written in Sanskrit, usually has not been a subject to which indologists felt attracted and has repeatedly been described as a neglected area of research.
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The medical literature shared this fate, which may explain the paucity of critical editions and translations by Western scholars.
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This situation has probably contributed to the fact that Indian medicine is a relatively neglected area in works on the history of medicine. Seen from a wider perspective, encompassing the great civilizations of the world, the medical art that originated in the Indian subcontinent deserves more attention than it has received. Like Greek medicine, it spread over a large area, comprising Central Asia and a large part of Southeast Asia; Buddhist circles in China and Japan were interested in and influenced by it.
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While Greek medicine lost its dominant position in the West, and lives on, restrictedly, within Islamic medicine, as a transformed offshoot, Indian medicine can boast a continuous history, spanning more than two millennia, a living and still developing practice, and an ongoing literary activity.
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European interest in the medical art and achievements of the Indians was keen in the period of colonial expansion. The rich and varied flora of the country and the actions attributed to a large number of medicinal plants were intensively studied. The *Coloquios* of Garcia da Orta and the monumental *Hortus Indicus Malabaricus* of Henricus Adrianus van Rheede van Draakenstein are outstanding examples of Portuguese and Dutch activities in this field respectively.
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Some early representatives of Indology gave evidence of a considerable measure of curiosity towards Indian medicine and its materia medica in their writings. Several articles by no less a celebrity than Sir William Jones can be referred to as testimonies. Another famous scholar, Horace Hayman Wilson, also evinced the importance he attached to the subject in a number of publications.
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It is not within the scope of this introduction to review and discuss the early contributions to the study of Indian medicine, which largely date from the nineteenth century. Those interested can find much suitable material in a publication by A. Roşu (1989: Introduction XLIII–LI), devoted to the pioneering work of G. Liétard and P. Cordier. The earlier interactions between Western and Indian physicians have been dealt with in an article by T.J.S. Patterson (1987).
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Recent times show an undeniable surge of interest in non-Western systems of medicine, that of India included. The mere quantity of books on āyurveda in general and on the Indian medicinal flora in particular bear witness to this development. Unfortunately, their quality lags far behind their quantity. The majority of the authors present a biased, historically unfaithful picture, obscuring some of the facts and thus distorting the truth.
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A factual history of Indian medicine and its literature ought to show respect for both basic agreements and divergences of opinion expressed in the sources. Continuity in thought and practice and processes of change over the centuries should be described with an equal degree of attention and accuracy.
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Actually, this is hardly ever to be seen.
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The renaissance of āyurveda since about the middle of the nineteenth century - historically a fascinating phenomenon - made its protagonists and their epigones feel called upon to sketch a profile of this science that would be serviceable in the competitive struggle with Western medicine. The revival thus led to the construction of a unitary and coherent model of Indian medicine, weaned from inconsistencies and untenable concepts, and, particularly, as free from magical and religious elements as possible. The ancient terms for physiological and pathophysiological processes, nosological entities, etc., were diligently re-interpreted to bring them into line with terms derived from Western medicine. These procedures resulted in the appearance of a type of āyurveda that can best de designated as navyāyurveda or neo-āyurveda.
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I have tried to find examples of the methods resorted to in this system and to illustrate the inappropriateness of the attempts to make āyurveda into for worldwide use.
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In my view, Indian medicine is thoroughly embedded in the culture of the subcontinent and cannot adequately be studied and understood without acquaintance with its history and ways of thought. Conversely, knowledge of medical concepts will certainly illuminate problems that would otherwise remain obscure.
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Medical treatises abound in material relevant to cultural history, and many non-medical texts contain data pertaining to medicine, which demonstrates that medical science constitutes an integral part of the Indian civilization.
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A reliable and up-to-date history of Indian medicine and its literature is therefore unquestionably desirable. For a very long time, such a work has been a desideratum. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, no Western author has written a monograph on the subject.
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J. Jolly's Medicin, written in German and published in 1901, surveys the medical literature concisely, in nineteen pages, and gives a still valuable summary of medical theory and practice. C.G. Kashikar, who translated J. Jolly's work into English (1951; second, revised edition 1977), provided it with supplementary notes, but after him no other author incorporated newly acquired knowledge in the existing survey or in a new publication.
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In contrast with indologists of Western origin, Indian scholars produced a large number of books on the history of Indian medicine and its literature. Many of these are uncritical, but some are interesting and valuable. A few became relatively well known, whereas other publications, undeservedly, received almost no attention, being in Sanskrit, or, more often, in Hindī. The most important among these are frequently referred to in my annotations.
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Girindranath Mukhopadhyaya's History of Indian medicine in three volumes (1922–1929; second edition 1974) presents much useful information, as does the recent *History of medicine in India (from antiquity to 1000 A.D.)*, edited by P.V. Sharma (1992). Gurupada Hāldār’s *Vṛddhatrayī* (1963), composed in Sanskrit and dealing mainly with the classical treatises and the authorities associated with them, has to be consulted with caution, due to the idiosyncratic views of the author.
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Noteworthy publications in Hindī are Atrideva Vidyālaṅkāra’s *Āyurved kā bṛhat itihās* (1960; second edition 1976), Kavirāj Vāgīśvar Śukla’s *Sacitra āyurved kā itihās* (1952; second edition 1978) and Kavirāj Sūramcandra’s *Āyurved kā itihās* (1952; second edition 1978). The books by Atrideva and V. Śukla are comprehensive and discuss a large proportion of medical literature, rasaśāstra included, while that by Sūramcandra is concerned with ancient authorities.
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Some more books in Hindī to be read with profit are Ratnākar Śāstrī’s *Bhārat ke prāṇācārya* (1977), dealing extensively with a number of ancient authorities and their works, and *Prācīn bhārat meṇ rasāyan kā vikās* (1960) by Satyaprakāś, which is about a number of basic medical texts and a long series of works on rasaśāstra.
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Among the works in Hindī mentioned so far, the most useful book is that by Atrideva.
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Outstanding and of the first rank among the publications in Hindī is Priyavrat Śarmā’s *Āyurved kā vaijñānik itihās* (1975). As indicated in its title, this comprehensive survey of medical literature gives evidence of a scientific attitude. For that reason, it is the one I most frequently refer to. The numerous books and articles by its industrious and prolific author have been a constant source of inspiration to me. In spite of my disagreement with opinions expressed by P.V. Sharma, he remains the Indian scholar I most esteem and admire.
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The present work comprises the entire corpus of Sanskrit medical texts, from the earliest times to the present, thus covering about two millennia. Vedic medicine is not one of its subjects, since no exclusively medical treatises are known belonging to that branch of Indian literature. Those interested in this early stage may turn to the recent study of K.G. Zysk (1985) and the numerous earlier contributions. References to Vedic texts will be found in my annotations, whenever relevant. The same applies to texts forming part of the Buddhist Pali canon.
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Treatises on medicine written in Prakrit or Pali have been included, as well as a few in Hindī.
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Apart from the strictly medical texts, I incorporated a number of encyclopaedias with sections relating to medicine, some Purāṇas with medical chapters, and some Tantric works containing interesting material.
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Siddha medical literature, mostly written in Tamil, has been left undiscussed, although a not inconsiderable number of the large body of texts is available in editions. My very limited competence in Tamil is the main reason for this omission.
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The medical literature in Sanskrit that has been preserved in manuscripts is vast. Many important texts have been edited, some even very often, but a large mass remains unstudied. Many editions of lesser known treatises are rare and not easily accessible, because libraries possessing a sizable collection are few.
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For the purpose of writing my survey I chiefly relied on my own collection of texts.
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The secondary literature, extensive too, has been brought together during many years and derives for the most part from many Dutch libraries.
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The texts described and analysed are therefore those that were available to me in editions. Manuscripts were not studied, except in a few cases, and manuscript catalogues have mostly been gone through unsystematically, depending on their degree of accessibility.
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Text editions are provided with an asterisk in all cases where I did not set eyes on them. Editions present in the British Library and the India Office are recorded with their numbers as given in published catalogues, without an asterisk, because I consider the information to be trustworthy.
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With the restrictions mentioned, the texts analysed in my survey constitute a large part of those thought to be of importance. Depending on the available data, the remaining ones are more concisely described or simply mentioned, with reference to my source or sources.
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Besides the works on human āyurveda, those on veterinary medicine have been put in, since they form part of the same system of thought and practice.
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Rasaśāstra (alchemy and iatrochemistry) and āyurveda are overlapping areas and became intimately connected with each other in the course of time. Many texts can only be classified as intermediate between the two or as belonging to both at the same time. For this reason my survey embraces the literature on rasaśāstra. The close alliance between rasaśāstra and ratnaśāstra (the science dealing with precious and semi-precious stones) made me accept works on this subject too.
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The treatises on vṛkṣāyurveda (the cultivation of trees, shrubs, etc., and the treatment of plant diseases) have been left out. The literature on this subject has been studied in a recent book by R.P. Das (1988).
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My work is neither a continuous history of Indian medical literature, nor a history of Indian medicine that, in a chronological order, sketches progressive and regressive lines of development, losses and growth regarding theory and practice, changes in the materia medica and the types of preparations employed, etc., although a great deal of scattered information can be found in it.
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The conviction that an ongoing story requires a preceding systematic review of the sources prompted me to begin this enterprise and kept me going. Now that this task has finally been accomplished, someone else may take upon himself the duty of composing a readable, yet accurate and detached, history of Indian medicine and its literature.
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The coming into being of this survey has taken so many years that multiple traces of this long process of gestation will clearly show in the final product. A thorough harmonization of all the component parts proved to be impracticable.
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One of my aims, however, made in an early stage and adhered to until the very end has been to adopt, as far as possible (mainly in volume II), one and the same basic scheme in my description of texts: contents first, special features next, and information on author and date at the end. The majority of the chapters have an alphabetical arrangement based on the names of authors. This principle has been given up in the chapters on nineteenth- and twentieth-century works, ordered according to their titles, on account of the difficulties presented by the names of Indian authors. It has also been abandoned in the chapters on nāḍīśāstra (pulse-lore), pākaśāstra (cookery and the preparation of pākas) and rasaśāstra, where holding on to it appeared to have more disadvantages than merits. The successive order of the chapters is chronological whenever possible.
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I am fully aware of the inconveniences resulting from my scheme, which will only be remedied by the publication of an index volume.
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As far as my linguistic competence permits, the secondary literature has been digested or referred to, in particular in the annotations.
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This history of Indian medical literature is, self-evidently, one of many of the histories that could have been written. The fact that it is by one single author, who constantly had the same point of departure in mind, explains a leading feature. The unremitting emphasis is on nosology, with the Mādhavanidāna, the most authoritative textbook in this field, as the fixed point of orientation. My training in both medicine and Indology has contributed to the decision to choose this perspective, and has, in general, greatly facilitated the realization of the aims of my project.
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Some of the principles of my method and of the structure of this survey may be in need of clarification.
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The two parts of volume I are devoted to four basic texts, their commentaries, and the authorities associated with these texts. The central position of these elaborate treatises and their influence on the later literature, which can therefore be designated as post-classical, made it not only unavoidable, but desirable, even necessary, to allot much space to their description, which, moreover, gave me the opportunity to refer to a large part of the secondary literature on many basic terms and concepts, and to provide cross-references. The four classical works are presented in the form of summaries, rather dissimilar from the synopses available for the Carakasaṃhitā and Suśrutasaṃhitā.
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The annotations give references to the Indological, medical-historical and recent āyurvedic literature in order to supply readers from diverse backgrounds with information. I recognize the drawbacks of this laborious procedure, but, after weighing up the pros and cons, the advantages for readers seemed to outweigh the snags. In general, I aimed at placing Indian medicine within a broader cultural and historical context.
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The post-classical literature covers the two parts of volume II. Although prominence has been given to well-known treatises, I sincerely attempted to maintain impartiality by faithfully describing a large number of texts regardless of their impact or age, in the firm conviction that too many have been disregarded or taken no notice of, and with the objective of furthering the study of historical developments, which are, whether large or small scale, influential or marginal, always of interest and worthy to be given fair treatment.
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Some of my conclusions regarding authorship and date of classical works will be seen to conflict with cherished Indian traditions. I acknowledge this disrespect for tradition, born out of respect for the independence of scientific inquiry.
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Finally, a few technical points have to be made.
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Sanskrit words have been hyphenated according to the akṣaras (syllables) of the Nāgarī script.
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The source of botanical names, if left unmentioned, is the Wealth of India: Raw materials, volumes I–XI (1948–1976) and its revised edition, volumes I–III (1985–1992).
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The frontispieces are taken from the *Hortus Indicus Malabaricus* (1678–1693) of Henricus Adrianus van Rheede van Draakenstein, as a tribute and mark of honour to this illustrious countryman, who deserves to be remembered by the author of a Dutch work on Indian medicine.
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The responsibility for the errors and deficiencies of this work will be entirely mine. I am aware of some of its shortcomings. Reviewers, colleagues and friends are invited to identify weaknesses and blind spots outside the field of my consciousness. Their remarks will be appreciated by an author, who, as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, sets great store by the salutariness of constructive criticism.
Linked texts (1)
- Mādhavanidāna (Rugviniścaya) — Mādhavakara, Sanskrit