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involved. Is the assumption at all justified that the division when attested in such texts forms at the same time the scheme on which the actual exposition of the argument of the texts concerned is based? In other words: Can we expect to find the quadruple division attested in an Ayurvedic text in such a manner that this text itself is explicitly or implicitly divided into exactly four systematic parts or chapters corresponding to the four vyūhas?
As to this, it seems expedient to proceed with caution; for, a first warning against such an assumption is the observation, simple though it is, that, in any case in Yoga texts, the caturvyūhatva is at best stated to be a divisionary scheme, but that it is nowhere actually made the basis of a corresponding disposition of the material: there is no Yoga text in which this systematic division is taken seriously in such a manner that the exposition actually follows this scheme. A second warning is given by another division of the science of medicine referred to in medical texts themselves, viz. the octopartite division of therapy. Yet, it is not these eight parts of Ayurveda as listed e.g. in the Suśrutasamhitā I, 1, 7, or in the Astāngahşdaya I, 1, 5cd-bab, that matter in the present context, but a fact stressed by J. Filliozat in the introduction to his recent edition of the Yogaśataka, a medical text attributed to Nāgārjuna 42; for, referring to an article of C. Vogel's 43 he points out that « dans le titre des Astāngasamhitā et Astāngahrdayasamhitā de Vāgbhata, astānga désigne la science médicale en général et non les parties de l'ouvrage >> 44.
What both these observations come to is that it would indeed be well to distinguish between a division of the science of medicine taught somewhere, on the one hand, and the actual internal organisation of medical texts, on the other. Therefore, one has to reckon with the possibility that all one finds in medical texts is simply a reference to the scheme, perhaps even in an offhand manner. The degree of probability that at least this kind of evidence can actually be found is, however, quite high, for the quadruple division is, according to C. Vogel 45, referred to by yet another witness, and, to be sure, an independant one, viz. Bu-ston (1290-1364) who in his comprehensive « History of Buddhism », coming to speak of medical works, says 46: « As for the works on medicine, they teach four (topics): disease, cause of disease, medicament as antidote to disease, and method of curing thereby ». Though the succession of the last two members is, again, reversed and the Tibetan gso-ba'i spyod-lam does not fully correspond to the Sanskrit term
42. Publications de l'Institut Français d'Indologie, no. 62, Pondichéry, 1979.
43. Viz., On Bu-ston's View of the Eight Parts of Indian Medicine, in IIJ, VI (1962), pp. 290-95.
44. Op. cit., p. IV. In Vogel's article (the reference should be «p. 291, n. 3», not «n. 2 »), however, this is not expressly stated though perhaps implied.
45. The reference is to his article mentioned in fn. 43. 46. Quoted from Vogel, loc. cit., p. 290.
