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xu] Ayur-veda and the Atharva-Veda 279 which the school to which Caraka belonged was in agreement with the Atharva-Veda, and not with Suśruta. Dr Hoernle, who has carefully discussed the whole question, thus remarks: “A really important circumstance is that the Atharvic system shares with the Charakiyan one of the most striking points in which the latter differs from the system of Susruta, namely, the assumption of a central facial bone in the structure of the skull. It may be added that the Atharvic term pratisthā for the base of the long bones obviously agrees with the Charakiyan term adhisthāna and widely differs from the Suśrutiyan kūrcal.” The Satapatha-brāhmaṇa, which, as Dr Hoernle has pointed out, shows an acquaintance with both the schools to which Caraka and Susruta respectively belonged, counts, however, 360 bones, as Caraka did?. The word veda-vādino in Suśruta-samhitā, III. 5. 18 does not mean the followers of Ayur-veda as distinguished from the Vedas, as Dalhaņa interprets it, but is literally true in the sense that it gives us the view which is shared by Caraka with the Atharva-Veda, the Śatapatha-brāhmaṇa, the legal literature and the purāņas, which according to all orthodox estimates derive their validity from the Vedas. If this agreement of the Vedic ideas with those of the Atreya school of medicine, as represented by Caraka, be viewed together with the identification by the latter of Ayur-Veda with Atharva-Veda, it may be not unreasonable to suppose that the Atreya school, as represented by Caraka, developed from the Atharva-Veda. This does not preclude the possibility of there being an Ayur-veda of another school, to which Susruta refers and from which, through the teachings of a series of teachers, the Sušrutasamhitā developed. This literature probably tried to win the respect of the people by associating itself. with the Atharva-Veda, and by characterizing itself as an upānga of the Atharva-Veda.
Jayanta argues that the validity of the Vedas depends on the fact that they have been composed by an absolutely trustworthy
A. F. Rudolf Hoernle's Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, p. 113. ? Ibid. pp. 105-106. See also Satapatha-brāhmaṇa, x. 5.4. 12, also XII. 3. 2. 3 and 4, XII. 2. 4. 9-14, VIII. 6. 2. 7 and 10. The Yājñavalkya-Dharma-śāstra, Vişnu-smrti, Visnu-dharmottara and Agni-Purāna also enumerate the bones of the human body in agreement with Caraka as 360. The source of the last three was probably the first (Yājñavalkya-Dharma-śāstra), as has been suggested by Dr Hoernle in his Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, pp. 40–46. But none of these non-medical recensions are of an early date: probably they are not earlier than the third or the fourth century A.D.
3 The word upanga may have been used, however, in the sense that it was a supplementary work having the same scope as the Atharva-Veda.
