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The textual and cultural history of medicine in South Asia based on newly-discovered manuscript evidence

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Note to “Doṣas by the Numbers”

Posted on January 22, 2022January 22, 2022 by Kenneth Gregory Zysk

In my recent publication “Doṣas by the Numbers: Buddhist Contributions to the Origins of the Tridoṣa-theory in Early Indian Medical Literature with Comparisons to early Greek Theories of the Humours” , I cited Suśrutasaṃhitā, Sūtrasthāna 1.24 (2) as follows, based on the vulgate edition of :

śārīrās tv annapānamūlā vātapittakaphaśoṇitasannipātavaiṣamyanimittāḥ

But bodily (unbalances) that have their roots in food and drink result from an imbalance of wind, bile, phlegm, blood, and their simultaneous corruption.

On the website of the Suśruta Project, there is another version of the passage based on a ninth-century manuscript from Nepal:

śārīrās tv annamūlā vātapittakaphaśoṇitavaiṣamyanimittāḥ

But bodily (imbalances) that have their roots in food result from an imbalance of wind, bile, phlegm, blood

The Nepalese version provides a shorter version, where pāṇa, “drink,” and sannipāta, “simultaneous corruption,” are not present. This harmonizes with Suśrutasaṃhitā Sū.21.3-4, where four doṣas are mentioned. Not only is the Nepal version the most acceptable reading, but it is more apparent that Suśruta offers a version of the doṣas that includes four pathogenic agents rather that three or five. A number with blood as the fourth is a version which pointed out is very old. Moreover, the connection with digested food and the fourth doṣa as blood (śoṇita) bring this formulation of four pathogenic agents closer to the formulations of the four humors of in early Greco-Roman medicine (e.g., ).

References

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Jouanna, Jacques. 2012. “The Legacy of the Hippocratic Treatise The Nature of Man: The Theory of the Four Humours.” In Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen: Selected Papers, edited by Ph J. van der Eijk, 335–59. Studies in Ancient Medicine, v. 40. Leiden ; Boston: Brill.
Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. 1991. “The Constraints of Theory in the Evolution of Nosological Classifications: A Study on the Position of Blood in Indian Medicine (Āyurveda).” In Medical Literature from India, Sri Lanka, and Tibet, 91–106. https://goo.gl/D79azA.
Zysk, Kenneth. 2021. “Doṣas by the Numbers: The Buddhist and Greek Contributions to the Origins of the Tridoṣa-Theory in Early Indian Medical Literature.” History of Science in South Asia 9 (January). https://doi.org/10.18732/hssa68.

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The Suśruta Project is funded as a four-year Insight Grant by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanites Research Council. Grant no. 435-2020-1077.  Dates: 1 April 2020 - 31 March 2024. Applicaton DOI.

Supplementary funding is provided for the project from the Singhmar Chair Endowment Grant administered by the University of Alberta.

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