G.
JAN MEULENBELD: A History of Indian Medical Literature. (Groningen
Oriental Studies Volume XV/IIII.) Groningen: Egbert Forsten
(Ia and Ib) 1999; (IIa and IIb) 2000; (III) 2002. Ia: 1 frontispiece,
xvii, 699 pp.; Ib: 1 frontispiece, vi, 774 pp.; IIa: 1 frontispiece,
viii, 839 pp. (in addition: reprint of 19 pages defective in Ia);
IIb: 1 frontispiece, viii, 1018 pp.; III (Indexes):
1
frontispiece, ii, 549 pp. Euro _600.
'I
never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.'
This remark by the critic Sidney Smith is a great comfort when
approaching the task of writing a review of G. Jan Meulenbeld's
gargantuan A History of Indian Medical Literature, published in
five bound volumes totalling 4,020 pages, and including over 36,600
footnotes. This work is a unique survey of traditional
Indian
medical literature, born of a scholarly lifetime of reading the
texts in the original languages, and noting the important features
of their contents, their intellectual and medical innovations,
the biographical details of their authors, and very much besides.
Few other branches of Indian literature are served by a reference
work of this completeness, substance and scope. Pingree's labours
on jyotih D s aa rstra and Kane's on dharma are perhaps of the
same
order. And as with those works, one may turn to HIML for a wealth
of literary and historical information ranging far beyond the
medical. Meulenbeld's HIML is truly a landmark work, not only
for medical history, but also for Indology as a whole.
Volumes
Ia (text) and Ib (footnotes) are dedicated to the foundation works
of ayurveda, the CarakasamD hitar, the Susa rutasamD hitar, the
AsD t D a rnd gahr D dayasamD hitar and the AsD t D a rnd gasamD
graha. The content of each of these major works is summarized
in detail, with frequent notes giving points of interest and further
reading. Full details are given of all the past discussions about
the relationship of these works to each other, and of the dates
of their layered parts and the identities of their authors. The
identities and roles of the key contributors to the text of the
Carakasam D hita r, A¯ treya, Agnives´a, Caraka and
DrDd Dhabala, are discussed at length. The persons called Sus
aruta and their identities are examined, as well Dhanvantari,
Divoda rsa, and the problem of the later revision and expansion
of the Susa rutasamD hitar, including the role, if any, of a Na
rga rrjuna in this process, are all detailed. The relative chronology
of these two works is discussed. As in many other topics, Meulenbeld
presents the evidence and past argumentation comprehensively and
fairly, and in doing so shows us that the evidence presently available
does not warrant a firm conclusion on the matter. The over-confident
pronouncements of past scholars, even great ones, are not conclusive.
A full survey of the AsD t D ar ndgasam D graha is given in a
manner which makes it simultaneously a verse-by-verse comparison
with the Hr D daya . Following this, Meulenbeld discusses the
dates of these two works, the theories concerning their authorship,
and the identity of Va rgbhat Da. This discussion is extremely
detailed, covering a mass of data from external sources such as
the Chinese Buddhist monk I-ching, and internal ones such as the
large number of common verses or ideas in the two works. Meulenbeld
is certain that these works are not by the same author. He examines
and rejects the opinion of Hilgenberg and Kirfel that the SamD
graha is an enlarged version of the Hr D daya, in which verse
passages have been changed into prose. Meulenbeld carries the
discussion of this problem forward decisively, showing that citations
from Nis´cala's Ratnaprabha r and S ´ ivadar sasena's
commentary on the Hr D daya prove the existence of a Madhyava
rgbhat D a, a treatise intermediate between the SamD graha and
the Hr D daya. Meulenbeld notes that the surviving textual evidence
makes it 'legitimate to have doubts about the authenticity of
the text of the SamD graha as it has been transmitted' . (Ia,
655). To his cogent textual arguments about these works may be
added the observation that few manuscripts of the SamD graha survive,
and most of those are fragmentary. This fact inevitably raises
questions about the history and textual security of the printed
editions of the SamD graha on which today's scholars rely. The
Hr D daya, by contrast, is represented by hundreds if not thousands
of manuscripts from all over South Asia: for centuries it has
been the principal school text in Kerala, and in traditional centres
it still is. On this complex topic, Meulenbeld concludes that
the many problems about the texts and their authors are 'far from
even approaching a solution' (Ia, 656). The early compendia called
'the great triad ( br D hattrayi )'those ascribed to Caraka,
Susa ruta and Vargbhat Daare works that at least most Indologists
have heard of, if not studied. But volumes IIa and IIb of HIML
will reveal to many for the first time the staggering volume and
diversity of scientific literary production in the post-classical
period. They survey the thousands of Indian medical works written
from about AD 600 up to the present. As far as is possible, each
work is described under the following headings: contents, authors
and works quoted in the work, its special features, the author
and his date, and later authors and works that quote the work.
The 'special features' sections deserve particular mention, since
they give invaluable information about plants, diseases, or concepts
that are mentioned uniquely in a work, or indeed that one would
expect to find but are missing. It is especially this detailed
analysis of positive and negative evidence, combined with the
citations and testimonia, that enables Meulenbeld to place works
in a chronological relationship to each other, and to solve innumerable
arguments about priority and dating.
Volume
II opens up a vast new arena for research. And while all periods
produced unique and important works, it is particularly fascinating
to see
that
the rate of literary production in no way diminished in the later
periods.
Authors
in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced
a rich
and
important crop of diverse medical treatises, often describing
new diseases,
new
theories, new treatments, and new medicines. These facts decisively
contradict
the two common opinions that post-classical Indian medicine was
static
and unchanging, and that medical creativity entered a dark age
after Var gbhatDa. This volume also includes several chapters
that will be of interest to a wide range of scholars beyond medical
historians. These include the chapters about the pre-modern literature
on cookery, on the specialist treatises about pulse diagnosis,
on veterinary medicine, on several alchemical treatises, and on
the study of gems. Amongst the appendices is a valuable collection
of references to medicine found in non-medical literature. This
is effectively a research bibliography arranged by title, covering
132 works and genres. Thus, headings such as 'Inscriptions' ,
'Jain literature', or 'Maha rbhar rata' give the researcher an
immediate head start in studying the medical materials of these
fields, and will be especially useful for teachers thinking of
pointing their postgraduate students towards projects in medical
history.
Volume
IIa is completed by a bibliography, the most substantial ever
published for ayurveda. This bibliography has also now appeared
as a database available for consultation on the Internet. An Annotated
Bibliography of the History of Indian Medicine is (in 200304)
at the address http://www.ub. rug.nl/ indianmedicine/ . It contains
some 10,000 entries, and is due to be updated as new publications
appear: submissions are invited. The online bibliography is searchable
in various ways, including keyword, adding greatly to its value
as a research tool. The fifth and last part of HIML, vol. III,
provides a comprehensive set of indexes, entirely necessary to
provide access to the materials of the first four volumes, where
information on related topics can sometimes be widely separated.
It is important to read the 'Directions for Use' at the beginning
of this volume, which explain some special features of the indexes.
HIML
focuses primarily on Sanskrit literature, which is justifiable
in view of the fact that the vast bulk of surviving literary material
on Indian medicine is in that language. But medical literature
in Tibetan, Arabic, Prakrit, Pali, Hindi and many of the other
Indian vernaculars are also considered, though normally in the
context of their relationship to the Sanskrit materials. Meulenbeld's
rich appendices to his 1974 Ma rdhavanida rna had already to a
large extent replaced Kashikar's 1956 update and translation of
Jolly's 1901 Medicin as the basic survey and bibliography on medical
literature. Other important surveys included P. V. Sharma's Ar
yurved kar Vaijñar nik Itihar s, and Atrideva Vidyar landka
rra's A r yurved kar Br D hat Itiha r s. HIML has now unquestionably
become the foundational work on the subject. But its scope is
so much greater than earlier works that it cannot sensibly be
compared with them. The publication of HIML is a quantum leap
in the study of Indian medical literature, and provides so much
collateral information on other fields that it is already becoming
a necessary reference for general work on Indian culture. A colleague
working on tantric sources recently sent me an email that is typical
of responses to HIML: 'To say that it's a goldmine, awesome, etc.
is an understatement. I can hardly conceive of one person doing
all that work in one lifetime'.
In
his introduction (Ia, 4), Meulenbeld makes the point that HIML
is not and does not seek to be a 'continuous history of Indian
medical literature' in the sense of providing what one might call
a 'story', having progressive and regressive lines of development,
and offering the reader a global sense of the meaning and shape
of Indian medical history and its literature. There is a great
deal of information on these topics to be found scattered in HIML,
and it provides the comprehensive and necessary foundation for
such a narrative history.
But
Meulenbeld notes that with the publication of HIML, it is now
possible for someone else to 'take upon himself the duty of composing
a readable, yet accurate and detached, history of Indian medicine
and its literature'. One area in which discoveries based on the
leads given in HIML are especially likely to be fruitful are manuscript
studies. HIML is primarily based on the evidence in published
editions of texts, but it also takes careful account of a large
amount of manuscript evidence. Inevitably there is much more to
be done in this field, especially as new Indian manuscript collections
are being catalogued all the time. Thus, a copy of S aan dkarasena's
Nar dD ipraka r sa a was recently found in Wellcome MS Indic d
80, a Kashmiri Sa arrada r manuscript datable to c. 17501850.
This pushes the probable date of S aand karasena's activity back
almost a century earlier than HIML 's tentative dating. Such additions
to the evidence provided by HIML will doubtless gradually accumulate
over the decades ahead, during which HIML will continue to provide
the fundamental reference point for research.
Reciprocally,
HIML will be a critically important aid to future cataloguers
of Indian medical manuscripts. Almost every page of HIML contains
nuggets of cultural and historical gold. For example, when Meulenbeld
is discussing the Kalyar nD aka rraka by the Deccani Jaina author
Ugrar ditya he notes that 'The developed state of alchemy in a
[South Indian] treatise from the ninth century can only be explained
by assuming that this science originated in Southern India and
spread from here to the northern parts of the country much later'
(IIa, 155). Such incidental remarks, arising out of the close
scrutiny of particular texts, can be expected gradually but profoundly
to affect the alignment of many other aspects of Indian literary
and cultural history.
The
printing of the work is exemplary, and misprints are astonishingly
few, which is just as well, given the many thousands of cross-references
and citations throughout the text. The volumes are expensive,
and this precludes their distribution in India beyond a very few
well-funded libraries. This is regrettable, since the scholarship
in these volumes will be slow to reach those whose medical tradition
is so superbly explored.
DOMINIK
WUJASTYK
http://eprints.
ucl.ac.uk/ archive/00001069 /01/2004_ BSOAS_ReviewOfMe ulenbeldHIML.
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