uncorrected version - Ines G. Županov

m a r t h a a n n s e l b y
the Caraka-saṃhitā as “mainly concerned with Sāṃkhya and Vaiśeṣika doctrines
and their application to medical thought” and likewise that of the Suśruta-saṃhitā
as being “devoted to an exposition of the Sāṃhkya philosophy and its relevance
to medicine” (ibid.: 243).
As Gerald Larson (1969: 2) writes, the word sāṃkhya itself means
“ ‘reckoning’, ‘summing up’, ‘numeration’, ‘calculation’ ”, and by extension, “ ‘inve
stigation’,‘analysis’ ”, and emphasizes “the enumeration of principles, evolutes, or
emergents”. Both Larson (ibid.: 109) and Surendranath Dasgupta (1965, 1: 212)
characterize the type of sāṃkhya found in the Caraka-saṃhitā as representative
of “an earlier school”, writing that this version accepts “twenty-four rather than
twenty-five principles;” a version that combines “puruṣa (‘anima-principle’) and
avyakta (‘primordial element’) into one tattva (‘true principle’)” (Larson 1969:
109); essentially, that puruṣa and prakṛti are counted as one (Dasgupta 1965: 1,
213). Dasgupta notes further that Caraka quotes one of the Vaiśeṣika-sūtras,
concluding that the Caraka-saṃhitā was “probably written at a time when the
Vaiśeṣika doctrines were undergoing changes and well-known compendiums
were beginning to be written on them” (ibid.: 281).
In a more recent article, Larson (1987: 247) reflects with more care on the
nature of the philosophical material found in early āyurveda, adding to the
dominant strains of Sāṃkhya and Vaiśeṣika identifiable elements from “Vedānta,
Nyāya, Yoga, and early Buddhist and Jain reflection”. Writing on this readily
apparent philosophical eclecticism of the texts, Larson states that
there are a number of variations and divergences in the medical texts from the
purely philosophical accounts of Sāṃkhya…clearly set forth in the śārīra-sthāna
portion of the Suśruta-saṃhitā (III.1.1-23). An allied but divergent Sāṃkhyan
interpretation (albeit with a Vedāntin overlay) can also be found in the first
portion of the śārīra-sthāna section of Caraka-saṃhitā (IV.1.156) [Larson 1987:
249-250].
More usefully, Larson (1987: 257 n3) adds that “the Caraka material in the
śārīra-sthāna is clearly a Vedānticized Sāṃkhya, and not at all an early form of
pure Sāṃkhya”.
Larson also speculates on the nature of the relationship between medicine
and philosophy as one not of dialogue, but of Weberian “elective affinity”, a
notion that
allows for an ongoing exchange between the classical Indian philosophies, on the
one hand, and the practice of traditional Āyurvedic medicine, on the other […] one
can argue that there was a natural affinity between the naturalistic philosophical
systems and Āyurvedic medical practice, which generated a mutually influential
pattern of ongoing interaction [Larson 1987: 247-248].
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