History of Science in Early South Asia

Speaker: Dr Philipp A. Maas, Associate Professor, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (URL)
Title: The cultural identity and religious orientation of early classical Ayurveda
 
Abstract
More than once in the history of Indological research, scholarly opinions regarding the original cultural milieu and religious orientation of Ayurveda have altered. Initially, scholars regarded Ayurveda as an off-shoot of Vedic Brahmanism. In the 90s of the last century, Ken Zysk strongly challenged this view by arguing that Ayurveda’s apparent affiliation to Vedic Brahmanism merely reflects the endeavor of Ayurvedic physicians to create acceptance in a society committed to Vedic norms and values. According to Zysk, ayurvedic medicine was initially developed in Buddhist and cognate ascetic milieus. In 2007, Johannes Bronkhorst advanced Zysk’s line of argument. Bronkhorst hypothesized that the rational-empirical medicine of Ayurveda was a distinctive feature of the culture of Greater Magadha, a region that he identified as Ayurveda’s cultural homeland. In the present reading session, we reconsider Bronkhorst’s hypothesis based on selected passages from the earliest preserved medical Sanskrit compendia, the Carakasaṃhitā (CS) which distinctively reflect physicians’ religious orientations and cultural identity. The session starts with an analysis of the two origin myths of Ayurveda and Rasāyana in CS Sūtrasthāna 1.13–40 and Cikitsāsthāna 1.4.3f. Both passages programmatically position Ayurveda in its contemporary cultural and religious environment by integrating religious ideas that Bronkhorst identified as characteristics of Vedic Brahmanism and the religion of Greater Magadha. Taking into consideration additional textual materials from the CS and Strabo’s Geography, I suggest, however, that the cultural and religious hybridity of the CS does not exclusively result from the Brahminization of medical knowledge of Greater Magadha. Various medical currents of thought merged in the ayurvedic school of Punarvāsu Ātreya to form a specific religious and social group with a distinct identity and worldview. This group mythologically located its region of origin in the mountains of the Himalayas rather than in the cities of greater Magadha.
Text passages:

• CS Sū 1.3–23 (ed. Trikamji Acarya, p. 1–6)
• CS Sū 30.21 (ed. Trikamji Acarya, p. 186)
• CS Sū 30.29 (ed. Trikamji Acarya, p. 189)
• CS Vi 8.54, l. 20–25 (ed. Trikamji Acarya, p. 270)
• CS Ci 1.4.3–4 (ed. Trikamji Acarya, p. 387)
• CS Ci 1.4.51–53(ed. Trikamji Acarya, p. 389)

(Sanskrit text edition available at https://archive.org/details/Caraka1941)
Strabon, Geographika 15.1.70; Transl. Bronkhorst, Johannes. Greater Magadha: Studies in the Culture of Early India. Handbuch Der Orientalistik. Abt., Indien 19, 2. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007, p. 78:
"In classifying philosophers, [the writers on India] set the Pramnai (i.e., Śramaṇas) in opposition to the Brachmanes (i.e., Brahmins). [The Pramnai] are captious and fond of cross-questioning; and [they say that] the Brachmanes practice natural philosophy and astronomy, but they are derided by the Pramnai as charlatans and fools. And [they say that] some [philosophers] are called mountain-dwelling, others naked, and others urban and neighbouring, and [the] mountain-dwelling [philosophers] use (i.e., wear) hides of deer and have leather pouches, full of roots and drugs, claiming to practice medicine with sorcery, spells, and amulets."
 

Speaker: Prof. Dominik Wujastyk, University of Alberta
Title: New findings from the Suśruta Project. 
Abstract: Exploring the early history of medicine in South Asia through the ninth-century Nepalese recension of the Compendium of Suśruta. We will discuss the rise of the importance of the figure Dhanvantari in the ayurveda tradition.  We will also discuss the differences found in the ninth-century treatise when compared with the printed versions of the Compendium as that have informed general knowledge about the work since the late nineteenth century.  We will focus on the surgery on the ear and nose, and on the dangers of poison

 
Holiday!  No session today.

Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Copenhagen (URL)
Phañjikā: An Early Cruciform Game at a Late Medieval Indian Court

The cruciform game of caupaṛ, adopted by the British as Ludo in the late 19th century, is often referred to as the national game of India. In the late 16th-century Ain-i-Akbari, the Mughal court historian Abul Fazl wrote that "[f]rom times of old, the people of Hindustan have been fond of this game." The question, however, remains as to how old those "times of old" actually were. The earliest certain references to the game are found in Bhakti poetry and Sufi romances from the late 15th and early 16th centuries, but now a hitherto unexplored chapter from the 12th-century Mānasollāsa adds new evidence. It reveals the existence of what appears to be an elaborate form of the game played at the court of King Someśvara III (r. 1127-38) of the Western Cāḷukya Empire.

This paper traces the early history of caupaṛ and engages with key passages from the chapter on phañjikā, or the game of five, in Mānasollāsa 5.16. It reconstructs the layout and rules of the game as far as possible, and discusses the clearly amorous purposes to which it was put. Phañjikā was primarily played by women and young boys to while away time in the palace, but when the king joined the game it took on the character of a lover's game. The same is true of caupaṛ in later textual and visual sources, thus further closing the gap between the two games.

Prof. Emeritus K. G. Zysk, University of Copenhagen (URL)
Topic: Mesopotamian and Indian Bird Omens
 
Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between bird omens that occur in both the Sanskrit Gārgīyajyotiṣa Aṅga 42 and the Akkadian Šumma Ālu and related Cuneiform tablets. After an overview of the Sanskrit omens and their source, the study proceeds to compare the Indian and Mesopotamian bird omens with special reference to the omens of the crow in an attempt to show that the Akkadian omens was the archetype of the Sanskrit omen verses. The paper concludes with a list of contents of Aṅga 42, followed by the Sanskrit text and translation of verses 6-29 on the crow. 

A. J. Misra, Marie Curie Fellow, University of Copenhagen (URL)

Persian Astronomy in Sanskrit: A Comparative Study of Mullā Farīd’s Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī and its Sanskrit Translation in Nityānanda’s Siddhāntasindhu
 
Abstract
Starting from the late medieval period of Indian history, Islamicate and Sanskrit astral sciences exchanged ideas in complex discourses shaped by the power struggles of language, culture, and identity. The practice of translation played a vital role in transporting science across the physical and mental realms of an ever-changing society. The present study begins by looking at the culture of translating astronomy in late-medieval and early-modern India. This provides the historical context to then examine the language with which Nityānanda, a seventeenth-century Hindu astronomer at the Mughal court of Emperor Shāh Jahān, translated into Sanskrit the Persian astronomical text of his Muslim colleague Mullā Farīd. Nityānanda's work is an example of how secular innovation and sacred tradition expressed themselves in Sanskrit astral sciences.
 
This article includes a comparative description of the contents in the second discourse of Mullā Farīd's Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī (c. 1629/30) and the second part of Nityānanda's Siddhantasindhu (c. early 1630s), along with a critical examination of the sixth chapter from both these works. The chapter-titles and the contents of the sixth chapter in Persian and Sanskrit are edited and translated into English for the very first time. The focus of this study is to highlight the linguistic (syntactic, semantic, and communicative) aspects in Nityānanda's Sanskrit translation of Mullā Farīd's Persian text. The mathematics of the chapter is discussed in a forthcoming publication. An indexed glossary of technical terms from the edited Persian and Sanskrit text is appended at the end of the work.
 
My paper on Persian Astronomy in Sanskrit is downloadable below.

• Presenter: Dagmar Wujastyk, University of Alberta
• Topic: Readings from the Kalyāṇakāraka of Ugrāditya (fl. ca. 800 CE), a Jain work on medicine and alchemy.
• Bibliography
  • Link to the Kalyāṇakāraka at Panditproject.org
  • Link to the pages to be read in this session.

• Presenter: Andrey Klebanov, Kyōto University
• Topic: Readings from the anonymous *Suśrutavyākhyā
• Files to be used during the reading session (I will also show them on screen):
  • Introductory notes;
  • Draft edition of the *Suśrutavyākhyā, Sū 15;
  • Structure of SS Sū 15 in the vulgate text;
  • Vulgate edition of the Suśṛutasaṃhitā, Sū 15, with the Nibandhasaṃgraha by Ḍalhaṇa.
• Further Bibliography and Links:
  • Klebanov, Andrey. “On the Textual History of the Suśrutasaṃhitā, (2): An Anonymous Commentary and Its Identified Citations.” In Body and Cosmos. Sudies in Early Indian Medical and Astral Sciences in Honor of Kenneth G. Zysk, edited by Toke Lindegaard Knudsen, Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, and Sara Speyer, 110–39. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2021. PDF,
  • Klebanov, Andrey. “On the Textual History of the Suśrutasaṃhitā (1): A Study of Three Nepalese Manuscripts.” eJournal of Indian Medicine 12, no. 1 (2021): 1–64, https://doi.org/10.21827/ejim.12.1.37385 (open access),
  • Suśrutasaṃhitā, Sū 15, e-text on SARIT,
  • Link to the Suśrutavyākhyā at PanditProject.

• Presenter: Dominik Wujastyk, University of Alberta
• Topic: Early Modern Eristic: Readings from the medical polemic Rogārogavāda by Vīreśvara
• Bibliography
  • Sanskrit text of the Rogārogavāda
  • Rogārogavāda entry at PanditProject
  • Wujastyk, Dominik. (2009) "Contrasting Examples of Ayurvedic Creativity around 1700", in Mathematics and Medicine In Sanskrit, ed. Dominik Wujastyk (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass), pp. 144–146. PDF
  • Wujastyk, D. (2009) "Post-classical Indian Traditions of Medical Debate and Argumentation". eJournal of Indian Medicine, 2(3), 67–81. nline at: https://ugp.rug.nl/eJIM/article/view/24721.

     

• Time-Buddy
•  Presenter: Dominik Wujastyk, University of Alberta
• Topic: Readings from Sanskrit alchemical literature.  The Rasendramaṅgala of Nāgārjuna Siddha
• Bibliography
  • Wujastyk, D. (1984). “An Alchemical Ghost: The Rasaratnākara by Nāgārjuna,” Ambix, 31: 70–83. DOI: 10.1179/amb.1984.31.2.70.    (PDF)
  • Unpublished survey of manuscripts.
  • Rasendramaṅgala at PanditProject
  • Interview on the Rasendramaṅgala with Jacqueline Hargreaves for the Ayuryog project (June 2020, 35 minutes).
  • Provisional critical edition of the text for reading in today's session. (It will also be shown on screen so you don't need to download this.)

• Time Buddy
• Presenter: Dominik Wujastyk, University of Alberta
• Topic: Readings from the anatomy of Caraka: Carakasaṃhitā, Śārīrasthāna 1
• Bibliography
  • Sanskrit text from Ācārya 1941 edition
  • Translation, Mehta 1949
  • Wujastyk, D. (2012). “The Path to Liberation through Yogic Mindfulness in Early Ayurveda.” (ed.) White D. G.Yoga in Practice, pp. 31–42. Princeton University Press.  (PDF)
• Some relevant websites:
  • Carakasaṃhitā at PanditProject (a database of authors, works and manuscripts)
  • Carakasaṃhitā Project at the University of Vienna (many useful resources related to the C.)
  • The Suśruta Project at the University of  Alberta (a recently-begun project on the Suśrutasaṃhitā)

• Time Buddy
• Continuing the program from the previous session (see "Past Meetings," below on this screen).

• Time Buddy
•  Continuing the program from the previous session.

• TimeBuddy - meeting time in different timezones.
• Presenters: Kenneth Zysk (University of Copenhagen) & Tsutomu Yamashita (Kyoto University of Advanced Science)
• Topic: Sanskrit Medical Scholasticism.  Readings from the Caraka Saṃhitā: Cikitsāsthāna 2.2 with Jajjaṭa’s Nirantarapadavyākhyā and other commentaries Sanskrit Medical Scholasticism

The committee decided that the first meeting of the Working Group on the History of Science in Early South Asia should be dedicated to medical science and continue as much as is possible the projects that stem from the earlier working group on the Caraka Saṃhitā, begun some years ago in Vienna. In line with this, Tsutomu and I volunteered to chair the first couple of sessions of the workshop.
The seminars will be devoted to the scholastic tradition of medical Sanskrit, as it pertains to the text of the Caraka Saṃhitā. We shall focus on the Caraka Saṃhitā, Cikitsāsthāna 2, which deals with Vājīkaraṇa or “Potency Therapy”. This chapter of Caraka’s corpus was chosen for two reasons. First, it is the first complete chapter that contains the commentary of Jajjaṭa, the earliest extant commentary available to us; secondly, it is the second in a set of two chapters or rather books, which together form a specific system of knowledge, which in all probability was incorporated into the corpus at an early date. The two chapters or books, Rasāyana and Vājīkaraṇa, which together deal with the prolongation and propagation of human life by the use of specialised medicines. Both chapters are constructed in the same manner, being divided into four separate parts (pāda) or chapters, indicating that structurally they derive from a common source.
Since our study aims at the Sanskrit medical tradition of the Caraka Saṃhitā, we wanted to include all the extant Sanskrit commentaries on that text. We are in the process of editing the commentary of Jajjaṭa, which occurs only in 20th century copies of a single lost palm-leaf manuscript. Although a version of the commentary has already been published, it requires critical appraisal from the original sources. The other three commentaries also occur in published versions. For the sake of discussion, the commentaries have been broken up into two groups:

•  Old: Jajjaṭa’s Nirantarapadavyākhya (7th-8th cent. CE), and Cakrapaṇidatta’s Āyurvedadīpikā (3rd quarter of the 11thc cent. CE)
• New: Gaṅgādhara’s Jalpakalpataru (mid-19th cent.) and Yogīndranāth Sen’s Carakopaskāra (early 20th cent.)  

In the seminars, we shall look at all these commentaries for a given set of verses, first in order to understand the text and how the system of commentary works with medical literature; secondly, to ascertain how the information was transmitted over time; and finally, what kind of historical and cultural information can be gleaned from them.
Since the first part of the chapter Vājīkaraṇa has been published, we begin with the second part or chapter, called simply, “milk has been poured” (āsiktakṣīrika)” over it. Since most of the chapter contains medical recipes or formulae, we shall try to unpack precisely the step-by-step method by which the formula was prepared, which cannot be understood without the help of the scholastic tradition. Information will be distributed before the scheduled seminar. This is the first time for this kind of one-line seminar for most of us, so patience is required in the beginning. As background reading, I suggest that participants look at the following:

• Zysk, K. “Sanskrit commentaries on the Carakasaṃhitā with special reference to Jajjaṭa’s Nirantarapadavyākhyā.” eJournal of Indian Medicine, 2 (2009), 83-99. PDF: https://ugp.rug.nl/eJIM/article/download/24722/22172
• Zysk, K. and Tsutomu Yamashita. “Sanskrit Medical Scholasticism: Jajjaṭa’s Nirantarapadavyākhyā and Other Commentaries on the Carakasaṃhitā, Cikitsāsthāna 2.1,” eJournal of Indian Medicine 10.1 (2018-19), pp. 1-113.  DOI: http://doi.org/10.21827/5c3f01174756c
• Scan of MS Thiruvanantapuram ORIML T850 at archive.org
• Nirantarapadavyākhyā entry at Panditproject. org