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IS THERE AN INNER CONFLICT OF TRADITION?
JOHANNES BRONKHORST
paradigm dramatically shifted from a magico-religious to an empiricorational approach to healing." Ascetic traditions, he further maintains (p. 20), played a crucial role in facilitating this transition. It occurred largely because of close associations between medicine and the heterodox ascetic traditions of ancient India" (p. 26).
It is true that ZYSK does not refer to the work of Louis DUMONT. It is however hard to deny that he makes a very similar point. It is the ascetics that made the intellectual revolution possible which supposedly took place in Indian medicine during the late-Vedic period. And the suggestion is that both the healers and the ascetics originally belonged to the same, more or less Vedic, society. Their break with that society, we are given to understand, was due to the fact that both the ascetics and the healers chose a way of life that was in some way opposed to Vedic society.
As in the case of the theories of DUMONT, we have to ask here too the question whether the ascetics concerned were linked to the new medical ideas because they were ascetics, or because they came from a social background where such ideas held sway. In the first case we have to assume that both the healers and the ascetics broke away from Vedic society, in the second case they didn't have to, because they did not really belong to it. In both cases we should expect the heterodox ascetics to be acquainted with the non-Vedic forms of medicine. If the healers had broken away from Vedic society, these non-Vedic forms of medicine must be looked upon as new, and revolutionary. If not, we must consider the possibility that these non-Vedic forms of medicine were not necessarily new, and may have been around for a while, but then of course in what I will call the non-Vedic segments of society. How can we, on the basis of the available evidence, choose between these two possibilities?
The fact that there were both Vedic and non-Vedic ascetics may allow us to reach a solution. The Vedic ascetics, we might expect, were somehow linked to Vedic forms of medicine; the non-Vedic ascetics to the non-Vedic forms of medicine. Is there a way to test this hypothesis?
There is, and ZYSK provides us with the evidence. He refers to two Greck passages preserved by the historian and geographer Strabo. The first one is a well-known account by Megasthenes, who was sent around 300 B.C.E. as an ambassador by the first Seleucus to the court of Candragupta Maurya at påtaliputra. This account describes one kind of Brahmanical ascetic, and two kinds of Sramaņas. In an earlier publication I have been able to show that these altogether three kinds of ascetics agree in many details with a similar division found in the Apastamba Dharma Sutra.23 The second kind of Sramana, in particular, is described as surviving by begging, and as remaining motionless for long periods of time. Interestingly, this second kind of Sramana are here called "physicians' (latpirot). The passage further speci fies (I use ZYSK's translation, p. 28): "and she says that they are able to bring about multiple offspring, male offspring and female offspring, through
the art of preparing and using drugs, but they accomplish healing through grains for the most part, not through drugs, and of the drugs (he says that the most highly esteemed are the ointments and the plasters".
ZYSK's comments on this passage are worth quoting (p. 28-29): "The Sramanic healers are said to effect their cures mostly through grain foods (oitía), and when they employ drugs (pápaxc), the most esteemed are ointments (cxixplota) and poultices (katakaouata). Inherent in this distinction is the internal dietary use of foods and the extemal application of drugs, both of which are fundamental to the rational therapy (yuktivyapdraya) of ayur. vedic medicine. The former helps to sustain and regulate the internal functions of the human organism by restoring a balance to the bodily elements, while the latter eradicates afflictions located on the body's surface. Medical passages contained both in the Buddhist monastic code (Vinaya) and in the carly ayurvedic treatises are replete with illustrations of the medicinal use of foods and the therapeutic application of remedies such as ointments and poultices."
ZYSK is also no doubt right when he states (p. 28): "The passage clearly points to a connection between the physicians ... and the framanas... recognizing the former as a subgroup of the latter." One may have doubts as to whether healers in the time of Megasthenes were really a subgroups of the Sramanas, and whether they really all survived by begging, and remained motionless for long periods of time. Perhaps Megasthenes' testimony is not reliable in all these details. It must however be admitted that these kinds of healers are here said to be connected in one way or another) with the Sramanas.
More interesting for our present purposes is another passage from Strabo's Geography (15.1.70), also referred to by ZYSK. ZYSK offers the following translation: 24
In classifying philosophers, (the writers on India) set the Pramnal (.c., framanas) in opposition to the Brachmanes (1.c., Brahmanas). [The Pramnai) are captious and fond of cross-questioning, and they say that the Brachmanes practice natural philosophy and astronomy, but they are derided by the Pramai as charlatans and fools. And (they say that some are called mountain dwelling, others naked, and others urban and neighbour ing, and (the) mountain-dwelling (Pramnai) use (.e., wear) hides of deer and have leather pouches, full of roots and drugs, claiming to practice medicine with sorcery.
spells, and amulets. This passage causes ZYSK some problems. He comments (p.32): "The mountain-dwelling Pramnai (Rpáuvau) in this passage differ from the
24. ZYSK 1991: 32: cp. MCCRINDLE 1901: 76; JONES 1930: 122-125. The original Greck
reads (Joncs 1930: 122-124; Meincke 1877: 1001): 1.00 pous, te roic Bpayagiv αντιδιαιρούνται Πράμνας, εριστικούς τινας και ελεγκτικούς τους δε Βραχμάνας φυσιολογίας και αστρονομίαν ασκείν, γελωμένους υπ' εκείνων ώς αλαζόνας και ανοήτους Τούτων δε τοις μεν ορεινούς καλείσθαι, τούς δε γυμνήτας, τους δε πολιτικούς και προσχωρίους τους μεν ορεινούς δοραίς ελάρων χρήσθαι, πήρας δ' χειν ριζών και φαρμάκων μεστάς, προσποιουμένους ιατρικήν μετά γοητείας και επωδών και περιάπτων.
23. BRONKHORST 1993. ch. I.
