Philosophy and Medicine in Early Classical India 2

The Carakasamhita is one of the most important and oldest treatises of the classical Indian tradition of medicine (Ayurveda), going back to the first centuries C.E. Its third book, the Vimanasthana, is a rich source for basic notions and concepts of early classical Indian medicine inasmuch as it treats topics such as the general nature and classification of diseases and their specific relationship to "tastes" and humours, the types and combinations of medicinal substances, the foodstuffs employed in treatment, dietary rules and regulations, and the kinds of basic constitutions of patients which play a central role in therapy. It is also of high relevance for the cultural and religious history of early classical India owing inter alia to its treatment of epidemics and environmental issues as well as the human life-span (ayus) in a cosmological-mythological context and in connection with fate and human agency (karman). Furthermore, the Vimanasthana is of great importance for the early history of Indian philosophy under various aspects: in the context of the extensive treatment of medical diagnostics in chapters four and eight, the epistemology of Indian medicine which is related to the epistemology of early classical Indian philosophy is presented in its peculiar context, whereas the detailed treatment of scholarly debate in chapter eight - in the context of medical didactics, advanced training and professional competition - offers insight into early classical Indian dialectics and the beginnings of Indian logic, next to aspects of the sociology of science. In spite of the high relevance of the Carakasamhita as such, the text has not yet been critically edited although its transmitted state poses many problems. Following upon a preceding project in which the eighth chapter of the Vimanasthana was critically edited for the first time on the basis of 44 mss. and a well-documented, much improved text provided, the project aims at the critical edition of the entire Vimanasthana. Next to the available manuscripts of the basic text, which could be assigned to four large groups of textual transmission and which will hopefully be augmented by manuscripts from South India, it will take into consideration the preserved commentaries and the evidence of other classical works on Ayurveda. The oldest commentary that is fully preserved, Cakrapanidatta`s Ayurvedadipika (eleventh c.), will play a special role in the constitution of the text; thus, a working edition of the commentary on the Vimanasthana, equally on the basis of original manuscripts, will be prepared for more reliable access to this important testimony. The resulting critical text will be well-documented and well-reasoned in accordance with modern textual criticism using innovative tools such as computer-based numerical cladistic analysis - adopted and adapted from evolutionary biology - to confirm and refine the stemmatic hypothesis relating to a complex contaminated transmission; it will for the first time present a truly reliable source for the study of the individual topics of the Vimanasthana and serve as a model for critical editions of comparable texts. An extensively philologically and historically annotated translation of the crucial eighth chapter as well as annotated translations of the other chapters based on the critical text will provide scholars of South Asia, historians of science and philosophy, and scholars of religion and cultural history alike with an authentic and historically contextualized insight into the unique combination of medicine, dialectics, philosophy, and religion as presented by the Vimanasthana of the Carakasamhita.

The Carakasamhita, written in Sanskrit, is one of the oldest treatises of the classical Indian tradition of medicine (Ayurveda) (ca. 1st to 2nd c. C.E.). Its third book, the Vimanasthana, is a rich source for our knowledge of basic notions and concepts of early classical Indian medicine. It is also of relevance for the cultural and religious history of early classical India. Furthermore, the Vimanasthana has special im-portance for our knowledge of the early history of Indian philosophy: its treatment of medical diagnostics in the fourth and eighth chapters is intricately related to early classical epistemology, whereas the exten-sive exposition in the eighth chapter on scholarly debate as part of medical didactics, advanced training and the practice of professional competition offers insights into early classical dialectics and the begin-nings of Indian logic, next to aspects of the sociology of science. The most important central result was the completion of the first critical edition of the philosophically most relevant eighth chapter. On the basis of the testimony of 55 manuscripts (mss.) a thoroughly docu-mented, well- reasoned and much improved text could be constituted. In the editing process, two comple-mentary approaches were innovatively integrated: the cladistic analysis of variant readings (i.e., a quanti-tative approach) and the text- critical philological discussion of the variants (i.e., a qualitative approach) with stemmatological considerations. Even though there are limitations regarding the application of cladistic techniques to textual traditions, such as the occurrence of contamination, the utilization of tools used in cladistics, a method designed by systematic biologists to reconstruct evolutionary trees of species, proved highly valuable in the development of the hypothetical stemma codicum. It could thus be shown for the first time that the majority of the mss. of the Vimanasthana that are still available nowadays can be assigned to two recensions (Kashmiri and Eastern) with four large branches of textual transmission. The Kashmirian tradition clearly preserves a more original version of the text than the other branches. The text of the oldest fully preserved commentary on the work, Cakrapanidatta`s Ayurvedadipika (11th c.), was collated on the basis of nine mss. and could be determined as being based on an early version of the Ben-gali branch. Aspects of the innovative methodology of the project and the transmission of the chapter were internationally presented in numerous of papers and lectures. The critical text provided a new reliable basis for focussed studies inter alia on logic, debate and episte-mology in ancient Indian medical science and the historiography of Indian philosophy, on the initiation of the medical student, on ritual elements of the medical initiation in comparison with the orthodox-brahminical rituals of initiation, and on images of physicians and their professional rivals in early classical Ayurveda, in the larger context of the history of the religious affiliation of Indian medical scholars and practitioners, their socio-religious self-understanding and self-affirmation, and the sociology of the pro-fession. Furthermore, studies were prepared on the examination of the patient`s constitution according to the Vimanasthana and on the dialogue between patients and physicans towards the treatment of diseases by knowing health. A first structural analysis of Vimanasthana 8 could be achieved and aspects of the cultural history of the transmission of the Carakasamhita be explored on the basis of the available mss., augmented by a study of the textual history of the sixth book (Cikitsasthana).