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Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c26: Chapter XVIII

Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c26

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Chapter XVIII

c26.1

**Industrial Education.** The Vinaya texts are not without some evidence upon this subject. There is a passage [*Mahāv.*, v, 4, 2] in which some erring Bhikkhus are reprimanded as behaving towards their teachers worse than even laymen. "For even the laymen, O Bhikkhus, who are clad in white, for the sake of some handicraft that may procure them a living, will be respectful, affectionate, hospitable to their teachers." This passage refers to technical education and the relationship existing between the laymen, as apprentices, and the master craftsman whom they followed for their training in the handicraft selected. In this connection we may recall the evidence cited above regarding the Bhikkhus being allowed facilities in their very monasteries for training and practice in the handicrafts such as spinning and weaving, tailoring, etc. The Vinaya texts refer to a few other occupations pursued by the laity and the general public as sources of livelihood, e.g. Writing or the occupation of the clerk or scribe (*Lekham*), Accountancy (*Gaṇanā*), and Drawing (*Rūpam*) [see *ante*].

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**Education in Medicine and Surgery: Career of Jīvaka.** Buddhist literature from the Vinaya texts downwards conveys a continuous volume of striking evidence regarding the progress achieved in ancient India in medicine and surgery. We have already cited the interesting evidence of the Vinaya on the subject of the medicines, drugs, and the surgical operations and treatment then in vogue. The most distinguished medical expert of the age was Jīvaka Komārabhachcha, of whose life and career the Vinaya gives several concrete and interesting details [*Mahāv.*, viii, 1]. He was the son of the courtesan, Sālavatī of Rājagṛiha, who was thrown away on a dust heap from which Prince Abhaya rescued him alive. He also brought him up till Jīvaka thought: "In these royal families it is not easy to find one's livelihood without knowing an art. What if I were to learn an art!" Thus thinking he went to Takkasilā to study medicine under a "world-renowned physician" who lived there. He "learnt much and learnt easily, understood well, and did not forget what he had learnt".

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After studying thus for seven years, he asked his teacher when his studies might be regarded as completed, whereupon his teacher prescribed to him the following test: "Take this spade and seek round about Takkasilā a yojana on every side, and whatever plant you see which is not medicinal, bring it to me." Jīvaka examined all the plants of the area specified and reported that he had not come across any plant that had no medicinal properties. The teacher, satisfied with his answer, said: "You have done your learning, my good Jīvaka," and gave him a little money for his passage home. The money was sufficient for his journey only up to Sāketa where he was therefore forced to earn by his art. At that time fortunately a Seṭṭhi's wife had been suffering for seven years from a disease in the head whom many great and world-renowned physicians had failed to cure, though much gold was spent on them as their fees. But young Jīvaka would not either be given a call until he proposed that his fees might be paid only if the patient were cured. Jīvaka had one *pasata* (handful) of ghee boiled up with various drugs and administered the medicine to the patient through her nose. By one dose she was cured and gave the doctor in all 16,000 *Kāhāpaṇas* together with a coach, horses, and two servants. These fees and presents Jīvaka tendered on his return to Rājagaha to the prince who brought him up for the expenses incurred for it.

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Next, Jīvaka cured the Emperor Bimbisāra of his fistula by one anointing and was then appointed as the royal physician and the physician of the Buddha and his Saṁgha. The next important case he treated was that of a Seṭṭhi at Rājagaha who had been suffering for seven years from a head disease. Jīvaka performed a surgical operation to cure him: he "tied him fast to his bed, cut through the skin of the head, drew apart the flesh on each side of the incision, pulled two worms out of the wound, then closed up the sides of the wound, stitched up the skin on the head, and anointed it with salve". The next important call came from Benares to cure a Seṭṭhi's son who, by a gymnastic feat, got an entanglement of his intestines, for which "he could not digest anything, nor could he ease himself in the regular way, and looked discoloured with the veins standing out upon his skin". Jīvaka performed another of his successful and difficult surgical operations. He "cut through the skin of the belly, drew the twisted intestines out, and showed them to his wife". He then "disentangled the twisted intestines, put them back into their right position, stitched the skin together, and anointed it with salve". Before long the patient was cured and his father gave the surgeon 16,000 *Kāhāpaṇas*. The next call came from distant Ujjenī whose King Pajjota, suffering from jaundice, asked the Emperor Bimbisāra for the services of his physician.

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Jīvaka wanted to boil up ghee for his medicine, but as he understood that the patient had a great aversion to ghee, he resorted to an artifice of "so boiling up the ghee with various other drugs that it take the colour, smell, and taste of an astringent decoction". Then anticipating that the king would vomit the medicine and detect it to be ghee, he craftily arranged for his escape by getting from the king his orders that he should be free to move about and ride on any animal he chose "on the pretext of drawing out roots and gathering medical drugs". He thus effected his escape on the fastest she-elephant. Eventually the King of Ujjenī recovered from his illness and sent on to Jīvaka a present of a suit of Siveyyaka cloth [explained by Buddhaghosha to be (1) cloth used in the Uttarakuru country for veiling dead bodies when they are brought to the burying ground (*sīvathikā*), or (2) cloth woven from yarn which skilful women in the Śivi country spin]. Lastly, there are several instances recorded of Jīvaka's treatment of the Buddha and his brethren. Once, when the humours of the Buddha's body were disturbed, Jīvaka asked Ānanda to rub his body with fat for a few days but found that a purgative was necessary for him. Not considering it becoming to give him a strong purgative, he had three handfuls of three lotuses imbued with various drugs to be smelt by the patient. Each handful then produced ten motions.

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After that, the Buddha bathed in warm water and was asked to abstain from liquid food for some time till he was completely restored to health. Once the Bhikkhus, at Vesālī, eating sweet food, of which a regular service was established by the laity co-operating among themselves, became very sick with superfluity of humours in their body when fortunately Jīvaka went to that city on some business or other and attended on them [*Chullav*., v, 14, 1].

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**Features of Medical Education.** The story of Jīvaka, as related above, brings to light the following points: (1) Taxila must have been the most renowned seat of medical education in the country when it attracted students from such a distant part of the country as Rājagṛiha; (2) the course of medical studies there extended to a period of seven years, after which a practical examination was held, putting to the test the student's knowledge of medical botany, or his first-hand acquaintance with the medicinal plants and their properties; (3) the principal cities of India like Sāketa, Benares, or Rājagṛiha were in no want of renowned physicians whose fees for treating dangerous diseases and serious cases amounted to figures which would put to shame the earnings of modern physicians; (4) considerable progress was achieved in surgery when such difficult operations were successfully carried out as those upon the skull, or the belly to set right twisted intestines; (5) the range of practice of successful physicians covered an extensive area, embracing several provinces. Jīvaka of Rājagṛiha had calls from Sāketa, Benares, Vesālī, and Ujjenī, bringing him phenomenal earnings; (6) the success of the surgical operations must have depended upon the use of antiseptic medicines. Jīvaka's ointments must have been of this character.

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**Evidence of Milinda-Pañha.** The progress of Medical Science is further testified to by the *Milinda Pañha*. The old teachers of medical science are named, viz. Nărada, Dhammantarī, Aṅgirasa, Kapila, Kaṇḍaraggisāma, Atula, and Pubba Kachchāyana. Each of these is known for a treatise of his own. The divisions of the subject are given, viz. the rise of disease; its cause, nature, and progress; its cure, treatment, and management [iv, 7, 20]. The course of medical training is described: a medical student must first apprentice himself to a teacher whom he has to procure by the payment of a fee or by the performance of service. Then he is given a training "in holding the lancet, in cutting, marking, or piercing with it, in extracting darts, in cleansing wounds, in causing them to dry up, in the application of ointments" as subjects under surgery, and "in the administration of emetics, purges, and oily enemas" as subjects under Medicine [vi, 11]. The successful surgeon is defined as one who is able the most quickly to perform his operation [iv, 8, 28]. The successful physician is defined as one who is "a true follower of the sages of old, one who carries in his memory the ancient traditions and verses, a practical man [*atakkiko*, 'without the theories (*vitarka*) resorted to by those ignorant of the practice of medicine'], skilled in diagnosis and master of an efficacious and lasting system of treatment, who had collected (from medicinal herbs) a medicine able to cure every disease" [iv, 6, 28]. A treatment is described of "a wound full of matter and blood, stinking of putrid flesh, in whose grievous hollow the weapon which caused it remains"

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The doctor anoints it with "a rough, sharp, bitter, stinging ointment to the end that the inflammation should be allayed". When the inflammation goes down and the wound becomes "sweet", he cuts into it with a lancet and burns it with caustic. When he has thus cauterized it, he is to prescribe "an alkaline wash and anoint it with some drug to the end that the wound might heal up" [iv, 1, 33]. A treatment of a boil is also described: the surgeon is "to have a lancet sharpened, or to have sticks put into the fire to be used as cauterizers or to have something ground on a grindstone to be mixed in a salt lotion", i.e. to apply "a stinging lotion" [iv, 2, 13]. Lastly, there is a reference to doctors administering "medicines by way of draughts or outward applications" [iv, 2, 17].

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**Evidence of the Jātakas.** The *Jātakas* also furnish interesting evidence on the condition of Medicine and Surgery. There is a reference to a family of doctors in Benares who were specialists in the cure of snake-bites. The method of cure was to extract the venom with special antidotes or, catching the snake, to make it suck its own poison out of the wound [i, 311]. There is a reference to a skilled Brahman physician who cured the King of Benares of dysentery when all the great physicians of his court could not cure him. Before treating the patient, he said: "Tell me the symptoms of your disease and how it came about—what you have eaten or drunken to bring it on, or what you have heard or seen" [ii, 213]. There is a reference to Bodhisatta returning to Benares, his home, after mastering all branches of learning including medicine at Takkasīlā [iv, 171]. We may, lastly, refer to a skilled surgeon named Sīvaka who was called to root out the eyes of King Sivi. In the story, instead of piercing the king's eyes with the lancet and taking recourse to a surgical operation, he "pounded a number of simples, rubbed a blue lotus with the powder, and brushed it over the eyes till they came out" [iv, 408].

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We have now considered the concurrent testimony of the Vinaya Texts, the Milinda Pañha, and the Jātakas upon the subject of ancient Indian Medicine and Surgery. We shall now consider the evidence of these works on the system of education as it obtained outside the Buddhist Monastic Schools.

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