Hindu Medicine c7.1

c7.1

THE earliest documents of Indian medicine are found in the metrical parts of the ancient tradition of the Vedas, mostly in Atharva-Veda.¹ There they appear among seven hundred and thirty-one hymns, charms, and incantations which belong to the first centuries of the first millennium B. C. Some, presumably, go back to the second millennium and, at least in part of their substance, to an even earlier period. The Vedic term for medicinal charms, “bheṣaja,” also occurs in the Avesta language of the ancient Persian texts of the Zarathustrian religion (baeṣaza, baeṣazya), and points back to a primitive tradition in which both groups of Aryan tribes shared at a period prior to their separation, that is, before one of them filtered into India, conquering it, while the other laid the foundations of the ancient Persian empire and civilization.