The Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus c9.s4.7

c9.s4.7

But if this is so, why are not congenital deformities of the parent, or constitutional diseases contracted in later life, invariably inherited? Congenital blindness, deafness, dumbness, stammering, lameness, or deformity of the spinal column or of the bony framework, or dwarfish stature, or constitutional diseases like madness, leprosy, or skin diseases in the parent, do not necessarily produce corresponding deformities or infirmities in the offspring. It cannot therefore be that the fertilised ovum represents in miniature every organ and tissue of the parental organisms. The solution of this difficulty Charaka ascribes to Âtreya. The fertilised ovum, it is true, is composed of elements which arise from the whole parental organism (समुदायात्मक, समुदायप्रभव), but it is not the developed organs of the parents, with their idiosyncracies or acquired characters, that determine or contribute the elements of the sperm-cell (or seed). The parental Vîja (seed, germ-plasm) contains the whole parental organism in miniature (or *in potentia*), but it is independent of the parents' developed organs, and is not necessarily affected by their idiosyncracies or deformities. In fact, the parental Vîja (seed, germ-plasm) is an organic whole independent of the developed parental body and its organs. In the parental Vîja an element representing a particular organ or tissue may happen (for this is accidental, दैव) to be defective or undeveloped, or otherwise abnormally characterised, and in this case the corresponding organ or tissue of the offspring will be similarly characterised. When constitutional diseases, acquired in later life, are found to be inherited, Âtreya would suppose that the Vîja of the parent has been affected, and this would explain the fact of the inheritance. In the case of leprosy, for example, it is transmitted to the offspring only when the germ-plasm (the Vîja or the fertilised ovum) is infected with the virus of the disease by reason of the leprosy of the parent (*vide* Charaka's report of Âtreya's theory, *Sârîrasthâna*).