Hindu Medicine c6: Introduction
Hindu Medicine c6
- Language
- English
Introduction
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Hindu medicine attracted the attention of Western scholars at an early period of Indic studies. Prior to J. F. Royle’s *Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine*, London 1837, which was the first book on Hindu medical wisdom published in Europe,¹ H. H. Wilson, the great pioneer of Sanskrit philology, succeeding W. Jones and H. T. Colebrooke, introduced Hindu medicine to the forum of Western science through an essay “On the Medical and Surgical Sciences of the Hindus” in 1823.² During the intervening century Western and Hindu scholars, in turn, edited and translated the main texts of Hindu medical tradition.
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The earliest specimens of Indian medicine, contained in the hymns of the Atharva-Veda, are available in W. D. Whitney’s translation;³ the three classic encyclopedias of medical wisdom of the era A. D., viz. Caraka, Suśruta and Vāgbhaṭa, have also been translated.⁴ Besides the contributions of A. F. R. Hoernle, P. Cordier, M. Bloomfield and others on the history of Hindu medicine, there is the outstanding monograph by Julius Jolly, *Indische Medizin*,⁵ which treats with equal mastery both the philological and the medical aspects of
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the subject. Anyone approaching the vast field of Hindu medicine will find ample material in a fairly well digested form, if he uses Jolly's comprehensive survey along with the translations of the three classics, and he will appreciate the introduction thus afforded to subsidiary comments and presentations by other scholars.
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The present summary, at once condensing and enlarging the contents of three lectures presented to medical students and a general audience at the Institute of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, cannot pretend to vie in any respect with Jolly's thoroughly detailed description. In presenting characteristic elements of Hindu medical tradition through selections from its classics, the present work offers an approach to the understanding of the aims and ideals of Hindu medicine, its characteristics, and its possible value for stimulating and enlarging the views of today's medicine. Since the latter is, after all, confronted with the same questions as the physicians and sages of ancient and mediaeval India, modern medicine may well gain a fresh impulse and insight through reviewing the venerable history of the Hindu discipline.⁶