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A. Wezler
post-Buddhist Indian literature. To say that the references discussed in the preceding part of this article, including the YBhasya, so important to Kern, do furnish the evidence needed, would be nothing but an arbitrary assertion, merely meant to warrant an assumption that cannot be supported otherwise.
4.3. But what about the evidence found in Buddhist texts themselves? As regards the Lalitavistara passages, all that can be learned from them is that the Buddha was compared to a physician by his adherents. And this can hardly be regarded as a new and important piece of information. For, firstly, the idea that God" or a particular god or the propounder of a doctrine of salvation helps men by healing physical and/or spiritual ailments is so widely spread that there is nothing strange in that such a comparison may have been drawn by Buddhist authors, too, without their possessing any tradition that the Buddha himself had actually learnt from medicine, and shrewdly applied its division to his own teaching; and, secondly, it is already in much earlier Buddhist texts that the Buddha is characterized or sometimes even made to say of himself that he is an anuttaro bhisakko sallakatto, an unsurpassed physician, (the best) surgeon". This comparison (echoed as it were in statements like those of Conze and Mizuno quoted above) is not only met with rather frequently already in early canonical texts, but has obviously also proved a quite fruitful idea, variously developed in later times, as was shown recently by R. Birnbaum" who aptly remarks" that the Buddha frequently made analogies to disease and healing to explain various facets of his teaching». Nevertheless, one cannot but observe that in the passages inspected or referred to until now the Four Noble Truths are not mentioned at all, not to speak of explicitly paralleling them with corresponding systematic parts of the science of medicine. And, to be sure, passages like Mil 247.11 where a
«
74. Cf. also the recent study of G. BUDDRUSS, Khowar-Texte in arabischer Schrift (Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz), Wiesbaden, 1982, p. 12. For an interesting comparison between God the Lord and a physician in the context of a theodicy-like discussion see BIASARVAJRA's Nydyabhusana, p. 458.16 ff. As noted. by W. Halbfass (Studies in Kumarila and Sankara, Reinbek, 1983, p. 15, cf. also fn. 81), the samsåramocaka [too] presents himself as a benevolent physician in the wider context of samsåra, and reference is made to the expertise of the good doctor who knows that sometimes he has to apply harsh means to bring about a change for the better. God is called a medicament (ausadha) by Madhva in his Bhasya on Taitt. Up. 2.2.
75. It 101.15-16; cf. (without bhisakko) Sn 560 and (sallakatto only) Sn 562. The first of these passages is referred to Mil. 215.11; as for the well-known parable of the man wounded by an arrow cf. M 1.429 as well as M II.216, Mil 169.9 ff., 247.10 ff.; for a kusalo bhisakko in a simile ef. A III.238.5 f., Mil 229.5 ff.; bhisakko is called an adhivacana of the Buddha A IV.340.5 ff.; the Buddha is compared to a kusalo vejjo Pj 1.21.19 f.
76. The Healing Buddha, Boulder (Co.), 1979.
77. Viz. on p. 15; cf. also the subsequent sections.
On the Quadruple Division of the Yogasästra
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physician (bhisakka) is characterized as roguppattikusala, well-acquainted with competent in discovering the origin of disease, is by no means conclusive."
But what about the passage in Buddhaghosa's Vism 512.7-9 referred to by Birnbaum" which runs thus: rogo viya ca dukkhasaccam, roganidanam iva samudayasaccam, rogavüpasamo viya nirodhasaccam, bhesajjam iva maggasaccam? It is true, the Four Noble Truths are here clearly compared to corresponding parts of medical science; but, on the other hand, one must not forget that the famous commentator is sepa rated approximately by a millenium from the Buddha himself and one cannot overlook that this is but one in a series of different analogies given by Buddhaghosa without (explicit) reference to canonical texts and that it does not at all imply that the Truths were borrowed from the medical method.
317
There is, however, a further reference by Oldenberg which has still to be followed up, viz. that to an article of L. de la Vallée Poussin " who after having quoted the relevant lines from Kern's Manual of Indian Buddhism draws on his part attention to some more material, viz. two passages in the Bodhicaryavatāra and an explanation found in Yasomitra's Abhidharmakośavyäkhyä. Among these quotations the two former ones are but reformulations of ideas attested already in canonical Päli texts in the context of the comparisons mentioned above (p. 316). What the author is concerned with is to lay stress (1) on the extreme foolishness of him who though suffering from a disease refuses the help of a person capable of healing it and (2) the (correct) observation that there is no physician but cures disease with some pain in the treatment". The latter reference, however, is indeed of such a kind
78. Viz. in fn. 37 on p. 22.
79. JRAS, 1903, pp. 578-80. The two passages quoted from the Bodhicaryavatara
are II.55 ff.:
itvaravyddhibhito 'pi vaidyaväkyam na langhayet /
tatra sarvajñavaidyasya sarvasalydpaharinah / väkyam ullanghayamiti dhig mam atyantamohitam //. and VIII.22 ff.:
sarve 'pi vaidydḥ kurvanti kriydduḥkhair arogatām / tasmad bahuni duḥkhäni hantum sodhavyam alpakam // kriyam imam apy ucitām varavaidyo na dattavan / madhurenopacarena cikitsati mahaturan //
adau säkädidäne 'pi niyojayati nayakaḥ /
tat karoti kramåt pascad yat svamämsäny api tyajet //
80. Practically all of them are quoted also above, p. 315 and fn. 71.
80a. The same idea is also met with e.g. in Samadhirajasūtra 9.43-46.
81. This is de la Vallée Poussin's rendering of the first line of his second quo tation from the Bodhicaryavatara (cf. above fn. 79), the gist of which, however, is that the Buddha differs from a physician precisely in this respect. The idea expressed in the first line was appealed to also by the so-called Samsaramocakas; cf. fn. 74 above.
