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post-Buddhist Indian literature. To say that the references discussed in the preceding part of this article, including the YBhāşya, 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 74 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 » 75. 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 76 who aptly remarks 77 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 BHĀSARVAJÑA'S Nyāyabhūsana, p. 458.16 ff. As noted by W. Halbfass (Studies in Kumārila and Sankara, Reinbek, 1983, p. 15, cf. also fn. 81), «the samsāramocaka [too] presents himself as a benevolent physician in the wider context of samsāra », 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 Bhāşya 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 cf. A III.238.5 ff., 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.
