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364
Speculations in the Medical Schools
[CH.
in use for medical purposes and each of them would include many substances and rasas, this character justly deserves to be called virya, or the potency-in-chief for producing medical effects1. He further says that rasa is baffled by vipaka, that rasa and vipāka can baffle virya, if they work in the same direction, and that they may all be baffled by prabhava. These remarks, however, are true only in those cases where rasa, virya and vipāka exist in the same proportion, and it must be borne in mind that some objects may have rasa of such a predominant type that it may overcome the vipaka or the virya2. As regards the relative priority of virya and vipāka, Śivadāsa in commenting on Cakrapani's Dravya-gunasamgraha says that virya is prior to vipaka; and this would imply that, as virya can supersede rasa, so vipāka may supersede virya.
If we look back to the earliest history of the development of Indian medical ideas in the Atharva-Veda, we see that there were two important classes of medicines, viz. the amulets, manis and water. Atharva-Veda, I. 4.4, 1. 5, I. 6, I. 33, VI. 24, VI. 92, etc. are all in praise of water as medicine, and water is regarded there as the source of all rasa or taste. Thus from the earliest times two different kinds of medicines were used. Of these the amulets were more or less of a miraculous effect. It was not possible to judge which kind of amulet or mani would behave in which way; their mode of operation was unthinkable (acintya). It is easy to see that this mode of operation of medicines was what was considered a prabhava by Caraka and Suśruta. With them prabhāva means the mysterious operation of a medicine acting in an unaccountable way, so that, though two medicines might be exactly similar in rasa, virya and vipāka, they might behave differently with regard to their medicinal effects3. Such an effect was thus naturally considered as unthinkable. But the analogy of the old manis was fresh in the minds of these medical thinkers when conceiving this prabhāva, and it was in reality an extension of that idea to other unaccountable effects of medicines1. As none of the chemical effects
1 Astanga-hydaya, 1. 9. 15.
2 Ibid. 1. 28.
rasa-virya-vipākānam sāmānyam yatra lakṣyate viseṣaḥ karmaṇām caiva prabhavas tasya ca smrtaḥ. Caraka-samhita, 1. 26. 69. Cakrapāņi, in commenting on this, says, "rasādi-kāryatvena yan navadhārayitum śakyate karyam tat prabhava-kṛtam iti sūcayati; ata evoktam prabhavo 'cintya ucyate' rasa-virya-vipākatayacintya ity arthah."
maṇīnām dhāraṇīyānām karma yad vividhātmakam, tat-prabhāva-kṛtam teşām prabhavo 'cintya ucyate. (The various actions of amulets are to be considered as being due to a prabhava which is unthinkable ibid. 1. 26. 72.)
