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in a Sūtra, to be sure a Buddhist Sūtra. In view of the probable date of the Yogacărabhūmi, this Sūtra, according to Schmithausen, can hardly belong to a period after the beginning of the 4th century, but is probably earlier.
In the light of this additional evidence the following observations and assumptions can be made:
a) that the science of medicine or medical treatment can be systematically divided into four parts was common knowledge of educated people, or at least it was widespread;
b) this knowledge is attested obviously independently in Brahmanical as well as Buddhist 57 sources the most ancient of which date back to the first half of the 1st millennium;
c) it seems natural to assume that the division was first conceived by a medical author and only later referred to and utilized by others, i.e. applied to other Ŝāstras also which, though significantly different, nevertheless exhibited a specific similarity with the science of medicine.
4. In what follows, Buddhism again may serve as a cue for focussing attention on still another problem raised by the theory of the quadruple division of the Cikitsāśāstra, a problem which is perhaps even more important than all those discussed so far in the course of the present study. What I have in view is the assertion found in not a few works on or expositions of (early) Buddhism, viz. that this fourfold division of medicine it was that inspired the Buddha to his << Four Noble Truths ». Thus e.g. E. Frauwallner 58 simply states as though it were a fact established beyond any doubt, and without giving any reference, that « the fourfold division of the truth discovered [by the Buddha]... is borrowed from the medical method ». Equally apodictic is H. Zimmer who in his << Philosophies of India » 59 remarks: << Following the procedure of the physician of his day inspecting a patient, the Buddha makes four statements concerning the case of man. These are the socalled "Four Noble Truths" which constitute the heart and kernel of his doctrine ».
57. Of the two other Buddhist authors referred to in the foregoing, viz. Bu-ston and Nāgārjuna, at least the former might have derived his knowledge from the lost Sūtra and not directly from a medical text. In any case, there is no clear evidence in favour of the assumption that the Buddhist sources depend on the Brahmanical or vice versa as regards the quadruple division of medicine.
58. Geschichte der indischen Philosophie, Bd. I, Salzburg, 1953, p. 184 History of Indian Philosophy, tr. by V. M. BEDEKAR, vol. I, Delhi, 1973, p. 146.
59. New York, 1951, p. 467; the German translation, Zürich, 1961 (= Frankfurt, 1973, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 26), p. 417 f. Cf. also H. ZIMMER, Indische Sphären, Zürich-Stuttgart, 1963, pp. 219 and 221.
