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Journal of the European Ayurvedic Society 3 (1993)
A. Wezler, On a Prose Passage in the Yuktidipika 285 veda" is used by the author here, and one which is extremely rare, if not even unique, at that.
the grass iwwly)'. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that what Isxarakrsna means to say is that not only the eight "conditions have these three forms just mentioned, but also the various stages of the developnient of living beings, starting from the earliest phase of the growth of an embryo," the difference being that the former refer to (literally have as their abode or substratum") that complex entity which is technically called ling, which moves from one "incarnation to the next until the end of a kalpa, while the latter" refer to the bodies made out of the five gross elements. In the course of explaining and illustrating the three kinds of "ploysical/somatic conditions the author of the YD clarifies that the 'embryos immediately after conception' (ka. lulu), etc. are vaikyta, and then adds the remark (124.27):
yatha Whisagede bhihitam - ksiran pirva garbhini gaura putram janayariti. "As it has been set forth in the "Veda of the Physicians": "Upon drinking milk a pregnant (woman) delivers a white son
(i.e. a son of fair complexion)". The expression bhisagveda - which is not listed in our dictionaries and about which I hence do not know whether it also occurs elsewhere - could, no doubt, refer to the 'science of medicine', but if it did, one would have to wonder why a second term besides the well-known Ayur
2. Now R.C. PANDEY, the editor of the YD, refers in a footnote at this point to Bhadaranyakopanisad (- BÃU) 6.4.14, and indeed it is this part of the famous Upanisad which anyone who has read it and remembers it cannot but recall here. When one looks up the passage mentioned by PANDEY, it becomes however immediately evident that it is not really quoted in the YD, but, if a relation does exist, rather hinted at, for BAU 6.4.14 (in the Kanva recension) reads as follows:
sa ya icchet-putro me suklo jayeta, vedam anubruvita, sarvam dyuriyaditi, ksiraudanair pucayitva sarpişmantam asnlydiam Isvarau janayitavai II. 'If he (i.e. the husband) then wishes, "May a son of fair complexion be born to me, may he learn and recite the Veda, may he live the (full) span of life", (then) both (i.e. he together with his wife) should have rice boiled in milk prepared and eat it together with ghee. The two are (then) in a
position to beget (such a son). If it is now taken into account that the Madhyandina recension reads gauro instead of śuklo, the doubts one might still have regarding the relation of the YD passage to BAU 6.4.14 disappear entirely: essential elements of the Upenisadic statement are retained by the author of the YD - who evidently does not intend a quotation in this case and correctly at that, for what he says does not necessarily imply that the woman is already pregnant when she begins to drink milk. As for the question one cannot help asking oneself next, namely why the author of the YD thought it at all necessary to report the gist of BAU 6.4.14 at this particular point of his explanation, the easiest and most plausible reply for the time being seems to be this because what first came to his mind in connection with the notion of various stages of the embryo' was the
FRAUWALINER (op.cit. in n.5, p.365) renders kalala by 'Flöckchen' ("small lake' or 'pat"). Other, different explanations by various scholars have been collected by DAS (op.cit. in fn.38), In, to $13.21. -Note the marked anthropocentrism of Sankhya in this regard, which is somewhat irritating as the YD mentions (124.23) the bodies of planel, asterisms and stars'. In this connection attention may also be drawn to W. SLNE's sludy of Bhaskarakasha's Cittanubodhafästra in this volume of the JEAS.
Note that in SK 40 the expression adhivdsitan is used instead.
15 Nolady so far seems to have wondered whether they are also subsumed under the wion of Mhavas. The phrase yatha caite taha, inserted by the author of the YD between idac and pidad of SK 43, could be taken to support this assumption, Ingether with what he adds immediately after the kánika, supplementing the predicale, trividha evri 1. However, the explanation (YD 124.22) kalalādigrahanena farirány ahal seems to contradict it, but this explanation is problematic anyway insofar as it would be nonsensical to speak of a body which has the body as its locus/substratum'.
16 The dirtinaries do not list bhisegreda, but the appada compound bhiseid. Ilence one will have to at least consider the possibility that bhisopreda means "knowIedge of remedies'.
1ER in 12.10 (c. my JEĀS article cited in In..p.132). There is very little likelihood that bhisagveda refers to a particular part of (a) medical work(s) only.
"That a conditional clause is at least intended is confirmed by the fact that the subscqucat passages are invariably introduced by atha.
That is to say, I assume that kpiradana denotes the same dish as Nepali Ahir, one of the NIA successors of ksira.