Hindu Medicine c7.174

c7.174

Among later authors on medicine, the Brahmin Mādhavācārya achieved an outstanding reputation, dealing exclusively and exhaustively with the diagnosis of diseases. He was a brother of the famous Brahmin scholar Sāyaṇa who wrote the classic commentaries on the stanzas of the Ṛgveda and Atharva-Veda; through his interpretation were laid the foundations for the scholarly understanding of the oldest documents of Hindū-Aryan civilization. Mādhavācārya himself acted as Prime Minister to King Vīra Bukka of Vijayanagara, South India, in the 12th century A. D. A popular stanza assigns to him a rank equal to that of the “Triad of the Ancients.” Mādhavācārya is considered the foremost authority on diagnosis (nidāna); while Vāgbhaṭa is unrivalled in the principles of medicine (sūtra), Suśruta and Caraka are given first rank in the knowledge of surgery and anatomy (śarīra), and of therapeutics (cikitsaka), respectively.¹²