Hindu Medicine c5.s2: II
Hindu Medicine c5.s2
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II
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Zimmer’s interpretation of Hindu culture had two aims: to understand its meaning in its own terms, and to ascertain its value for men of today.
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This attitude, historical and non-historical at the same time, was innate in him. When in his fifth term he turned away from Western studies and chose Sanskrit as his main subject—he had first studied
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German philology and taken Sanskrit only as the usual auxiliary language—he was instigated also by the conviction that in his new field the major victories were still to be won, while in the one relinquished the decisive research had already been done. But above all he was attracted by India herself, yet unknown, perhaps unknowable; he was in quest of the India of Schopenhauer.¹ The routine of editing texts, or of establishing the meaning of every single word did not satisfy Zimmer. He did not only ask, what do they say; he added a profession of faith: "This is what they state and mean—and it is true. It is the truth, though I do not understand it as yet, and feel not any too confident that I shall ever grasp its point."² Or as he formulated it at the height of his life: "The time has passed when one could hope to grasp the scope of the message of the Hindu spirit by way of a merely historical analysis and a philologically correct interpretation of words, when one could hope to penetrate into the essence of the manifestations of Hindu life through
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¹ *Two Papers*, pp. 8 ff.; 20; and *Schopenhauer und Indien* in *Corona*, VIII, 1937, Heft 1.
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² *Two Papers*, p. 8.
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a study in the comparative psychology of its conditions.” And he was willing to recognize that India could provide us with a “direction for our own ordering search, our own groping divination, where our knowledge has to admit its failure.”³
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³ *Ewiges Indien*, pp. 43 f.
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Taking such a stand, Zimmer at first felt rather isolated and was conscious of his being different from his fellow students and from his teachers, among them the eminent Sanskritist, H. Lüders. For Sanskrit studies were then in their positivistic phase; the validity of the content of Hindu teaching was hardly debated. Later he came to realize that at least in his basic approach he was not as lonely as he had thought. Arthur Avalon and J. J. M. de Groot were on his side. These names were given as examples in his *Autobiographical Remarks* which he jotted down shortly before he died.⁴ Of the older generation, men like P. Deussen and K. E. Neumann could probably be added; among his contemporaries there was J. H. Woods, and there was A. W. Ryder, for whom the Sankhya came “nearer to the truth than any philosophy Western or Eastern.”⁵
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⁴ *Two Papers*, p. 17.
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⁵ H. Cherniss, *Arthur W. Ryder*, p. 9 (privately printed). David
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At any rate, one thing is certain, that Zimmer gave an original answer to those questions in which he was primarily interested. He defined anew the meaning of the various segments of Hindu culture as well as their eternal value. Of this re-interpretation which forms the background of his analysis of Hindu medicine, I shall try to give a short outline.
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Zimmer’s first book *Karman* clearly reveals in which direction he was seeking his goal.⁶ The novels here translated—products typical of the tradition current among Buddhist monks—are understood as didactic prose in the strict sense of the term. Addressed to those whose horizon is narrow, whose intellectual ability is limited, they illustrate and rationalize in simple narrative the Hindu concept of fate and freedom—a “ vegetative ” concept as compared to that of the West. They are not the outgrowth of the principle of art for art’s
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⁶ Zimmer’s doctoral dissertation (*Studien zur Geschichte der Gotras*, Berlin, 1914) in his own opinion showed little of the approach characteristic of his later work; cf. *Two Papers*, p. 9.
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Friedman (*The Review of Religion*, 1943, p. 15) compares Zimmer with Otto Strauss and Stanislas Schayer, and he points out that this group took up and carried on the research initiated by the German Romanticists of the early 19th century.
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sake; they are a means by which to impart and clarify an attitude of life.⁷ From India, where it originated, this type of psychagogic narrative was brought to other countries, as Zimmer added later on. It has become world-famous through the stories of *The Thousand and One Nights*, told as a charm that was to cure a blood-thirsty tyrant’s soul of the passions which haunted it.⁸
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⁷ Karman, pp. 199-205.
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⁸ *Umrisse indischer Seelen-Führung* in *Reich der Seele* (Arbeiten aus dem Münchener psychologischen Arbeitskreis), 1937, pp. 64 f.
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It is, then, the functional importance of the creations of the spirit that is here re-discovered. In his later research, Zimmer applied this concept to other fields and brought it to full fruition. Hindu fine arts, like Hindu literature, must not be judged by aesthetic standards alone. The temples and their statues reflect religious experience and teachings. Nirvana or emptiness finds its material expression in the image of Buddha. The representation of Śiva and Śakti as lovers symbolizes the antagonistic principles of the Absolute, a cooperative pair of opposites.⁹ If it is true of all
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⁹ *Kunstform und Yoga*; esp. pp. 7-19: 188-191; *Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization* (*The Bollingen Series*, VI), 1946, pp. 137 ff. For the Hindu temple and its architectural outline
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“ static ” pictures that they are to be understood in the light of the sacred texts and their doctrines, this is especially characteristic of the “ dynamic ” representations, that is, of the geometrical cult pictures which are nothing but instruments through which to realize religious contents. “ We may say,” thus Zimmer summarized his theory in his last lecture course at Columbia University, “ that a yantra is an instrument designed to curb the psychic forces by concentrating them on a pattern, and in such a way that this pattern becomes reproduced by the worshiper’s visualizing power. It is a machine to stimulate inner visualizations, meditations, and experiences. The given pattern may suggest a static vision of the divinity to be worshiped, the superhuman presence to be realized, or it may develop a series of visualizations growing and unfolding from each other as the links or steps of a process.” ¹⁰
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¹⁰ *Myths and Symbols*, pp. 141 f.
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Mythology, too, is a means of guiding the soul. To be sure, the myth also reflects the integration of old Hindu traditions into those of the Aryan
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that is determined by religious ideas, cf. also *Journal of the Indian Society of Oriental Art*, 1937, pp. 111 ff.
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immigrants. In this respect, it gives a symbolic representation of the history of India, expressing ancient thought in a new language.¹¹ But the greatest significance of the myth is this, that it is not merely an irresponsible play of fantasy, but teaches in pictorial script an attitude toward life. As “Nietzsche says: ‘It is not true that there is some hidden thought or idea at the bottom of the myth, as some in a period of civilization which has become artifical have put it, but the myth itself is a kind or style of thinking. It imparts an idea of the universe, but it does it in the sequence of events, actions and sufferings.’” That is the reason why for us it is a mirror “telling us what we are and how we should behave”¹² In the same way, it is spiritual guidance that is provided by all the sacraments, or rites, or initiations, or steps, or however one may choose to call the multiple practices and customs that in India take hold of the human being and carry him throughout life.¹³
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¹¹ Indische Sphären, pp. 19 ff.
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¹² The Involuntary Creation, p. 10 (Spring [The Analytical Psychology Club of New York City] 1941).
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¹³ Prabuddha Bharata, 1936, p. 178. Cf. Emil Abegg, Neue Züricher Zeitung, March 25, 1943.
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This, then, is the first result that one has to
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bear in mind when in the representation of Hindu medicine one reads of the old saga, of the gods and demons, of initiations, when one reads of religious practices; for the Hindu, these stories are not dead matter, these concepts are not meaningless fictions; they are indicative of a living power that has always shaped and is still shaping his existence. Far from being an adornment, they express the essence of his thought.¹⁴
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¹⁴ The principles laid down for the interpretation of Hindu art would have to be applied also to the representation of medical deities. The book rarely mentions the relation of medicine to art.
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But so far I have spoken only of the way in which the documents of Hindu culture ought to be understood. What value does such an understanding have for the Western interpreter? The answer to this question depends on a clearer definition of the specific character of Hindu wisdom, and in this connection mythology assumes central importance. In India, the myth was neither destroyed nor replaced by philosophy; it remained at all times the teacher of man.¹⁵ As the highest embodiment of knowledge it clarifies the paradox of human existence, namely that man transcends
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¹⁵ *Indische Sphären*, p. 13.
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existence, that he embraces thisworldliness and otherworldliness. In consequence of this truth, the goal of life is not visualized as a moral attitude, although the fulfillment of the supreme task involves moral values. Rather is the goal extinction of self, complete abandonment to life. Like God, unaffected by the course of events, man must live within the world and without it.¹⁶ The myth, in opposition to intellect, leads into spheres that lie beyond personality and intellect; myth is the brother of dreams reflecting the depths of the human soul, it expresses the realm of the collective subconscious. India, to put it differently, even to this day has remained the prototype of archaic wisdom, of the non-intellectual vision of the world.¹⁷
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¹⁶ *Ibid.*, pp. 33; 37 f.; 40.
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¹⁷ *Maya, Der indische Mythos*, 1936, pp. 34; 36. The Greek myth is but the creation of individuals and therefore, in Zimmer's opinion, it seems inferior to the Hindu myth and less typical.
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European culture is based on quite a different dream—the dream of the Greeks—on the Greek hybris which, through the hypothesis that the interrelation of things can be grasped by reason, created a world which reason understands. European life is determined by the Greek discovery that
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man is unlike nature, an “animal endowed with humanity.” To one who thinks of the abyss of the soul as it is revealed in the Hindu myth, the European world may seem shallow, just as the laughter of the Greck gods—these eternal symbols of rationalism--is shallow as compared to the ambiguous smile of the Hindu deities.¹⁸ But Zimmer was not romantically longing for the wisdom of the East as the truer or higher form of knowledge. Conscious of the inescapability of the situation in which the European mind finds itself, he did not uphold India as a model. He only wished to understand its truth, and by so doing to contribute to the understanding of our own truth: “The real treasure, to end our misery and trials, is never far away; it is not to be sought in any distant region; it lies buried in the innermost recess of our own home, that is to say, in our own being. . . . But there is the odd and persistent fact that it is only after a faithful journey to a distant region, a foreign country, a strange land, that the meaning of the inner voice that is to guide our quest can be
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¹⁸ *Spiel um den Elefanten, Ein Buch von indischer Natur*, 1929, p. 148; *Indische Sphären*, p. 35. For a different point of view, cf. P. Friedländer's spirited answer, *Die Antike*, X, 1934, pp. 209 ff.
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revealed to us. And together with this odd and persistent fact there goes another, namely, that the one who reveals to us the meaning of our cryptic inner message, must be a stranger, of another creed and a foreign race.” ¹⁹
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¹⁹ *Myths and Symbols*, p. 221.
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Both, myth and rational thought that develops later, spring from the unfathomable depths of life. Both have their limitations and prejudices, yet each one gives an interpretation of the world consistent in itself. Contact with the myth of another civilization, and such contact alone, can liberate modern man from his captivity, at least for a few moments of illumination. The myth lays upon him the invisible net of its presuppositions, thus reminding him of the hidden core of his own nature. For only the spear that inflicted the wound is capable of healing it, as Parsifal says; he who wounded will also heal, as even the Greek myth teaches.²⁰ Or to quote the concluding words of Zimmer’s last lecture at Columbia: “Hindu myths and symbols, and other signs of wisdom from afar . . . will speak to us of the treasure which is our own. And we then must dig it up from the forgotten recesses of our own being. And at last it will end for us our troubles and permit us to erect for the benefit of all around us a temple of the living spirit.” ²¹
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²⁰ *Maya*, pp. 26; 18 f.
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²¹ *Myths and Symbols*, p. 221.
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This, in rough outlines, was Zimmer’s interpretation of the mystery of India and of its message to men who live in the Western world. With such a belief he undertook to analyze Hindu medicine for those who are interested in it from the point of view of the historian and the scientist.