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A. Wezler, On a Prose Passage in the Yuklidipika
Journal of the European Ayurvedic Society 3 (1993)
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able to perceive more clearly how far the continuity really extends - and will consequently wonder whether it is at all justified to speak of a 'break' between the Vedic and the post-Vedic period.
That this general assumption is also confirmed by Ayurvedic literafure, has been pointed out by me in a recently published afticle. In the present essay I should like to draw attention to, and briefly discuss, some other pieces of evidence. Already when I glanced through a part of one of the medical Samhitas for the first time, what struck me among other things was the practice of referring to a particular chapter by a designation which is in fact nothing but a secondary noun derived by adding the affix-w-to-often-'irregular compounds formed out of the first work at the very beginning of the chapter concerned. For this, of course, reminds one of a similar practice used in certain Vedic texts, viz, Brahmanes, etc.
I need hardly state explicitly that I do not have in view (the) commentators of the Ayurvedic Samhitas, as their testimony would be of no importance for the question at issue here, unless they did not simply carry on, or copy, a corresponding practice of the authors' of the mala texts themselves. Thanks to the help kindly rendered me by Dr. R.P. DAS - and thus ultimately to the well-known project of my colleague R.E. EMMERICK, the publication of the results of which many people are eagerly looking forward to -I am able to give in an 'Appendix' a complete list of all the occurrences of designations (ending in lya) found in the four works on which EMMERICK's project is based, as well as the identification of the chapter/passage referred to. For the point I want to make it is sufficient to give here just a few examples.
At AS, kalpasthāna 7.40, the expression matrafitiya(-ukto vidhih) is used, and what is referred to is the 11th adhydya of sütrasthana, the first sentence of which reads as follows: athato mdtrafitlyam ndadhydhyam vyvik hyrylimah 'now in the following we shall henceforth)/after the
preceding chapter explain the chapter that is called "that dealing with him who takes a (particular, i.e. limited) quantity of food (only, as one ought to dol". Or at CS sutra. 17.121 it is stated that a number of classes of diseases (120) are taught kiyantalfirasiye 'sminn adhyaye, 'in this adhyaya which contains (i.e. begins with the words) "how many [diseases have been taught) in (ie, on the head", the reference being to the 17th chapter, i.e. that at the very end of which the expression quoted is found and which begins thus:
athdrah kiyantahsirasiyam adhyāya vyakhydsyamah lilliti ha smaha bhagavan atreyah II
kiyantah firasi prokrah rogd hdi ca dehinām I etc. This second example is particularly instructive in that it clearly shows that the secondary noun formed by adding the suffix -Iya- has to be rendered by "containing the words) "...", and this evidently holds good for the first example, too, the correct rendering of which would be the chapter containing (ie, starting with) (the word "matraši", which forms in fact the beginning proper of this chapter, i.e. is found in the first sentence of AS, sutra. 11.2.
Or that what is referred to by saying at SS, uttaratantra 47.74 of a particular vidhi, and of its laksana, that they are sadyovraniyokta, is SS, cikitsitastbäna 2, although in this case we do not find the words sadyo vranam as the beginning of the first sentence of this adhyaya, but only as prior member of compounds that denote its contents. Thus already at the very end of the immediately preceding chapter cikitsita. 1.139cd, the author announces, 'In what follows I am going to say even more with regard to the treatment of suddenly caused) wounds' (bhiyo 'py upari vaksami sadyovranacikitsite 11); accordingly the first sentence of the 2nd adhyaya reads thus: atharah sadyovranacikitsitam yakhyāsyamah."
But in the SS there are also designations of the type known to us from the AS and CS. Eg. dvivrartlyokta vidhana at sutra. 16.15 refers to the adhyaya cikitsita. 1, the beginning of which (after the usual introduc. tory formula) reads as follows: dvou vranau bhavatah (färira ägantukas ceti), so that the correct rendering of the designation dvivraniya again cannot but be the chapter) which contains (i.e. begins with) (the words), there are two types of] wounds".
W her Form und Charakter der sogenannten "Polemiken im Staatslehrbuch des Kantalya" (Intersuchungen zum Kaufiliya Arthasastra Ily, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandish Gesellschaft 143.1993: 106-134. C. also my article 'A Note on Sanskrit Whrling, and whinahay, to be published in one of the next issues of the Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik.
That is to say I am not convinced that the explanation of atal as it is usually given by commentators is correct, viz. that, as part of this stereotypical introduction, il incans 'therefore
71 Cf. also SS, cikitsita 2.59.