Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita

by Nayana Sharma | 2015 | 139,725 words

This page relates ‘Disease in the Vedas’ of the study on the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita, both important and authentic Sanskrit texts belonging to Ayurveda: the ancient Indian science of medicine and nature. The text anaylsis its medical and social aspects, and various topics such as diseases and health-care, the physician, their training and specialisation, interaction with society, educational training, etc.

Disease in the Vedas

< Previous

Next >

The hymns of the Atharvaveda mention nearly a hundred diseases -both major and minor as well as known and unknown. The term used for disease throughout the text is “yakṣma’ though the word “roga’ also appears occasionally.^[1] According to the earliest view of disease held by the ancient Indians, all morbid and abnormal states of the body and mind for which no special reason is assignable, are brought on by attacks of demons. Thus, in the medical charms of the Atharvaveda the diseases are constantly addressed as demoniacal beings.^[2] Disease is seen as the manifestation of the will of a supernatural power. To the Atharvan this power was generally one of the host of demons by which he believed himself surrounded.^[3] Thus, yakṣma is actually such malevolent force that is characterised as entering and possessing each and every part of the body.^[4]

The physician destroys the disease together with the demon causing the disease: vipraḥ sa ucyate bhiṣak rakṣohāmīvacātanaḥ.^[5] Amīvā is a female demon who attacks her victims and causes malnutrition.^[6]

The Atharvaveda knows of innumerable such disease causing demonic entities of vague in outline: Yatudhāna, Kimīdina, Piśāca, Piśācī, Āmīvā, etc.^[7] They are of four main groups: Piśāca, Rākṣas, Atrin and Kaṇva.^[8] Piśācas devour the flesh of their victims (Atharvaveda IV.36.3; V.29.5) and so do the Atrins.^[9] Kaṇvas preys upon the embryo (Atharvaveda II.25.3).^[10] Rākṣasas steal the senses (Atharvaveda VI.111.3) and Apsarās bewilder the mind and cause insanity (Ṛgveda X.11.2; Atharvaveda VI.111.4).^[11] The consorts of the Apsarās, Gandharvas, are dog-like are also sought to be driven away.^[12] These malevolent entities not only cause disease; they are the symptoms of the condition or the disease itself. Thus, the most dreaded disease-demon of the Vedic people, takman (fever or malarial fever^[13]), attacks the victim in the form of thunder and lightning that accompanies the monsoon rain.^[14] He enters the victim’s body and make it tremble.^[15] He is known to be malicious, powerful, unruly, wild, violent, evil, awesome, indestructible, inciting and as one who shakes and excites.^[16] Balāsa (swelling) is his brother, cough is his sister and pāman (rash) is evil his cousin.^[17]

The disease causing entities are often personified and deified, giving rise to an entire pantheon of gods of disease. It is interesting to note that formidable takman is given a position among the divinities along with Rudra and Varuṇa.^[18] He is in fact known as the “son of Varuṇa”.^[19] Demonic beings strike where there is breach of social norms or incidence of sinful deeds. Sometimes diseases are inflicted by the gods as punishment for the same. Varuṇa is said to send dropsy to punish crime, especially falsehood (Atharvaveda I.10.1-4; II.10.1). Rudra’s arrows are believed to cause tumours (Atharvaveda VI.57); takman and kāsikā (cough) are his weapons (Atharvaveda X.2.22). Diarrhoea is connected with the arrows of Parjanya (Atharvaveda I.2), and lightning (Agni) with fever, headache and cough in (Atharvaveda I.12).^[20] Diseases can also be brought on witchcraft and sorcery^[21] as well as krimī, i.e., worms or vermin.^[22] Headache, ear and eye diseases as well as intestinal diseases are attributed to worms; worms in children and in cattle also find special mention in the hymns.^[23]

To the Vedic people, therefore, diseases are essentially in the nature of external afflictions which attributable to various kinds of evil-minded forces invade the body. Consequently, treatment is basically directed towards their removal which takes the form of recitation of spells, wearing of amulets and performance of rituals. The healer exhorts the malevolent spirits to leave the afflicted bodies. Takman is sought to be driven away in an Atharvavedic hymn in the following manner:

“Let Agni expel takman from here; [let] Soma, the pressing stone [and] Varuṇa of refined dexterity [expel him]; [let] the sacrificial altar, the barhīs (sacrificial grass) and the blazing fuel [expel him]. Let the enemies be gone!”^[24]

Charms represent the use of associative magic for the removal of disease symptoms.^[25] They are sought to be expelled and sent elsewhere, sometimes to their appropriate receptacles, such as hariman (jaundice) to yellow objects like the sun and parrots,^[26] and the heat of fever to an aquatic creature like the frog.^[27] Sometimes the demons of disease are exhorted to leave the victim’s body and find an alternative abode among adversaries or undesirable elements. An interesting instance of this is noticeable in a hymn dedicated to the cure of fever. The demon takman is urged to return to his home among the Mūjavants, the Mahāvṛṣas and the Balhikas; or to strike the escaping slave-girl, the lustful young śūdra-girl, the Gandhāris, the Aṅgas or the Magadhas.^[28] In fact the poet exhorts “the unruly one” to “seek out someone other than ourselves.^[29] Treatment with herbs is very much a part of Vedic therapeutics but they are mainly used externally and not so much as as internal medication. They are employed as amulets or in poultices and compresses. They were held in the hand of the healer and ritually waved over the patient in order to drive his affliction.^[30]

It is noteworthy as Zysk points out, that the idea of health in the positive sense is wanting in Vedic medicine. Any notion of the concept was to be found on the negative sense or opposite of what was understood as disease, or more specifically in the absence of particular disease-causing demons, of injuries and damages or of toxins.^[31]

From the discussion of the aetiology of diseases arises the question as to whether the Atharvan healer had any knowledge of the tridoṣa theory of the body, a fundamental cornerstone of the classical medical texts. The principle of three doṣas (dhātus) of the human body goes like a red thread through the whole of medicine.^[32] Bolling opines that it does not appear in the early Atharvan texts^[33] though some scholars like S.N. Dasgupta^[34] and Karambelkar think that the germs of tridoṣa theory are to be found in the Atharvan hymns.^[35] Rao traces the theory back to the Ṛgveda (Ṛgveda 1.34).^[36] However, the theory of three active elements of the organism which, on their equilibrium being disturbed or because of functional anomalies, become its three elements of trouble (tridoṣa), the wind, the phlegm and the bile, had not yet been constituted at the times of the Vedas themselves.^[37] Filliozat points out that the notion of phlegm hardly prefigures in the Atharvaveda, and it is in the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa, that this element is named under one of its principal names, the ślesman.^[38]

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

V.W. Karambelkar, The Atharva-Veda and the Āyur-Veda, p.37.

[2]:

J.Jolly, “Disease and Medicine (Hindu)”, in J.Hastings (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IV, Edinburgh, New York, London, 1911, p.753.

[3]:

G.M. Bolling, “Disease and Medicine (Vedic)”, in J. Hastings (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IV, Edinburgh, New York, London, 1911, p.762.

[4]:

K.G. Zysk, Medicine in the Veda: Religious Healing in the Veda, p.12.

[5]:

Ṛgveda X.97.6; V.W. Karambelkar, The Atharva-Veda and the Āyur-Veda, p. 114.

[6]:

K.G. Zysk, Medicine in the Veda, p. 49.

[7]:

V.W. Karambelkar, The Atharva-Veda and the Āyur-Veda, p. 41.

[8]:

V.W. Karambelkar, The Atharva-Veda and the Āyur-Veda, p. 42.

[9]:

V.W. Karambelkar, The Atharva-Veda and the Āyur-Veda, p. 42.

[10]:

G.M. Bolling, Disease and Medicine (Vedic), in J. Hastings (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IV, p.762.

[11]:

V.W. Karambelkar, The Atharva-Veda and the Āyur-Veda, p.42.

[12]:

Ṛgveda IV.37.

[13]:

V. Grohmann was the first to observe close resemblance between takman and malarial fever. See K.G. Zysk, Medicine in the Veda: Religious Healing in the Veda, p.34, fn.2.

[14]:

K.G. Zysk, Medicine in the Veda, p. 34.

[15]:

Atharvaveda IX.8.6.

[16]:

K.G. Zysk, Medicine in the Veda, p.35.

[17]:

K.G. Zysk, Medicine in the Veda, p.35.

[18]:

Atharvaveda VI.20.2.

[19]:

Atharvaveda I.25.3.