ATI, rant vs cant

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Fri, 3 Sep 1999, Bharat Gupt wrote:

> Ayurveda in its conceptual form is much older than Hypokratos or his
> tradition.

This is not the case.  The "conceptual form" of ayurveda is hard to date,
but it is apparently tied up with early developments in nyaya, samkhya,
and vaisesika.  These are certainly not "much older than Hippocrates".

> As the humour and dosha theories are so specific and nearly identical
> in both the sytems

The likeness between them gets weaker the closer one looks.  The Greek
humoral system is much more fluid than is usually realized.  In the
Hippocratic corpus there are some discussions which assume two, not four
humours, and in general we see a system in formation, rather than a
finished product.  It is really Galen who promotes the Aristotelian
version of the humoral system (hot/cold wet/dry) into the fixed form which
it adopted for the rest of history.  The ayurvedic humoral system too is
not quite as clear as is often thought.  Meulenbeld long ago established
that a four- not three-humour arrangement is used in Sanskrit veterinary
texts, and it is also well known that Susruta and some commentators are
tempted to consider blood as a humour.  Then there is the question of what
these humoral substances actually are, and the Greeks and Indians have
different ideas about this too.  The Indians have "yellow bile" (pitta
<piita), but not the Greek black bile, or melancholia.  The Greeks talk a
great deal about pneuma, which might be paralleled with prana/vata, but
pneuma is not considered a humour by the Greeks.  Nor is the Greek humour
blood considered a humour in the classical tri-dosa system.

Etc. etc.  I'm afraid that it really isn't possible yet to make firm
general statements about the historical relations between Greek and Indian
medicine.

> exchange is only the explanation.

Exchange is not the only explanation.

All the best,
Dominik Wujastyk