Hindu Medicine c8.180

c8.180

The fact that, like the invading Greek and Nordic tribes of ancient Europe, the Aryan immigrants of the second and first millennium B. C. came to India from a cooler climate, where other conditions prevailed, should have given rise to an adequate knowledge of anatomy as time progressed. Cattle-breeders, and therefore beef-eaters, they butchered cattle with a fair knowledge of the organism. Their priests sacrificed cows and other animals. The horse-sacrifice, a relic of their former nomadic life in the plains of Middle and Northern Asia, with its elaborate ritual was practised along with the human sacrifice. The latter, though it became obsolete, is proved to have formed part of the ancient Aryan religion. Besides, the Aryans liked hunting. In properly dissecting and eviscerating cadavers, in determining the organs and in knowing their exact positions, priests, butchers and hunters should have been the best pace-makers of future anatomy and surgery. Unfortunately, however, their practices gradually fell into disrepute, since through a slow but relentless process the recent immigrants were merged in the complex system of pre-Aryan civilization.