Hindu Medicine c7.218

c7.218

The climax of the ceremony is reached when the master takes the pupil by the hand and solemnly leads him thrice around the fire-altar. Thus, at the wedding-ceremony, after Vedic-Aryan tradition, the bridegroom leads the bride, invoking the Fire-god to witness their sacred union. The god, presiding over the household, is summoned to witness the inseparable bond which, like the marriage-tie, will unite master and pupil for their lifetime, the pupil assuming the attitude of utter obedience and faithfulness to which the Hindu wife is pledged.¹⁴ Man, in the Brahmin paternal order, represents the creative principle; woman is the “soil,” the “field” (kṣetra) into which the seed is cast. She is the reproductive principle. She is there to bring forth a copy or a double of the husband, a son to continue the paternal lineage and to secure uninterrupted offerings to the ancestors. In a similar fashion, the pupil is there to reproduce the substance of the teacher as his *alter ego*, keeping alive the tradition handed down through his ancestors in medical lore.