[Buddha-l] Aama do.sa II

[Dan Lusthaus]

[continued from previous message]

[Still quoting the Caraka-samhita]

Aamado.sa of an individual given to habitual intake of incompartible [sic]
food, or food before the digestion of the previous meal or ***uncooked
food*** [my emphasis] is known as aamavi.sa (a condition characterised by
the manifestation of toxic symptoms due to indigestion), because the
manifestations of this condition resemble those of poisoning. ***This is
absolutely incurable*** because of the acuteness and also because of the
contradiction involved in the line of treatment of this condition.

[the commentary gives an explanation of why treatment won't work] ...
Treatment of the aamavi.sa condition involves contradiction, when hot
therapies which correct aama are employed, they aggravate the poisoning
aspect of the condition; when cooling therapies are employed in order to
alleviate the poisonous aspect of the condition, they aggravate aama.
Because of the specific nature of the causative factors, toxic symptoms are
manifested inthis condition as it happens in the case of honey and ghee when
they are combined in equal quantity.

[Returning to the main text, some treatments are nonetheless prescribed]

[13] The curative type of this disease having vitiated aama (undigested food
product) which has become stagnant, should be treated with emesis in the
beginning, by administering hot saline water. Thereafter, fomentation and
suppositories should be employed and the patient should be made to fast.

In the case of visuucikaa (choleric diarrhea), the patient should be kept on
fasting in the beginning, and thereafter, he should be given thin gruel...
Even after the digestion of the food which was responsible for the causation
of aamado.sa (visuucikaa and alasaka), the do.sas remain adhered to the
stomach and during the meal-time also, the patient feels timidity heaviness
of the abdomen and disinclination for food... Food should never be given
when there is indigestion because the agni (digestive fire) which is already
weak due to the vitiation by aama will not be able to digest the do.sas,
drugs and food simultaneously... The patient who is weak and whose kaayaagni
(enzymes responsible for the digestive adn metabolic events in the body) is
also weak will be seriously affected by the dominance of the untoward
effects produced by aamaprado.sa, food and drugs simultaneously...

When the patient is free from aamado.sa, when do.sas are fully matured
(digested) and when the power of digestion is stimulated, the physician
should employ massage....

[14] ... Other useful therapies which though not described here (but
described in the chapter on the treatment of graha.nii or sprue, and
atisaara or diarrhea, etc., for the cure of aamado.sa) should also be
adopted.

[15-18] O! Enlightened one; please tell us where different types of food,
viz. eatables, chewables, drinkables and lickables get digested. Having
heard this question of the disciples, viz. Agnive"sa etc., Lord Punarvasu
replied, "It is in the aamaa"saya (stomach) existing between the umbilicus
and nipples, that the eatables, chewables... get digested. After enterning
into the stomach and getting digested there, the entire digested food
product reaches all the organs of the body through the vessels.

[End of quotations]

So it should be evident that Asanga is not warning against eating raw food,
but is describing a recognized incurable medical condition. Whether Buddhist
medicine of the day parsed aama exactly as CS did -- with two (or four
types) -- is uncertain... as I mentioned, CS and Asanga are often *similar*
but not identical when it comes to lists and details.

CS mentions two types of incurable aama-related illnesses: da.n.daalasaka
and aamavi.sa. We are also told that "all the symptoms of aamado.sa *except
vomiting* and diarrhea are manifested in alasak.

This would suggest that Xuanzang understands Asanga to be referring to the
alasaka -- or more specifically, the da.n.daalasaka form of aamado.sa, and
thus specifies it as the one that "doesn't vomit." That still leaves sheng
as an equivalent for aama problematic.

Yes, sheng can mean "raw," but it usually only does so as a prefixed
adjective in compounds -- 生菓, 生分, 生冷, 生絲, etc., for which I take the
sheng to be suggesting "initially arising, still being 'born,' not yet
having reached maturity" -- and not when used solo. I am not aware of sheng
on its own meaning "undigested food" or "not fully digested food."

Yes, er 而, while usually a conjunction, can be used occasionally in other
ways -- the function you referred (indicating an object), I think, is what I
take to "an implicative result" function: X er Y. i.e., "X and so Y." This
usage is not a common occurrence for Xuanzang, as I'm sure you know.

If for the moment we forget about the Skt and Tib versions, and just look at
the Chinese phrase on its own, then, I maintain, it does not yield a clear
sense. There are ways of indicating something like aama in Chinese medical
terminology, but Xuanzang did not use that. Kuiji only tells us: 四，生而不
吐，不消死, i.e., "death by non-digestion." That is what aama means. He
makes no mention of anything "raw," nor does he explain the "not vomiting"
reference. Dun Lun (aka Daolun) merely repeats Kuiji verbatim.

There is a tendency, when we have versions of texts in Skt, Tib and Chinese,
to want to harmonize the meaning, and so try to find a way to make the ones
that don't initially read like the others read like them after all, even if
that requires a bit of clever linguistic manipulation and permutation. In
this case, I think you may be letting the Tib. guide the way you are reading
the Skt and Ch.

The Skt is problematic because it says: āmaṃ na āddharati -- the negative
na undermines the meaning, since, contrary to what aama means, it states
that the food (aat) is NOT being retained (dhara). As we saw from the CS,
once one begins to vomit, etc., aamado.sa becomes curable. So that is simply
medically wrong (again, assuming the Buddhist medical lore Asanga is drawing
on conforms on this point with CS, which Xuanzang seems to assume is the
case).

One way to take this to the next step -- but I have some deadlines on other
things that prevent me from pursuing this at the moment -- would be to find
the canonical mentions of the nine untimely causes of death, such as the
Pile of Jewels Sutra, especially if we can find a Sanskrit citation, and
compare. It may be, e.g., that XZ was familiar with the sutra version,
recognized it was different from the YBh Skt (assuming his Skt text didn't
already look different from what we have today -- our mss. of the Skt YBh
have lots of problems, as you know), and "corrected" it to conform to the
Sutra passage. Or else, he modified/glossed it to conform to how he
understood it was presently being understood in India. The nine untimely
causes were, apparently, a familiar enough list that they do appear in other
texts (cf. Birnbaum's Healing Buddha, ca. p. 88 or so). I just haven't
located an alternate Skt version. Remember, also, that Geshe Kelsang
Gyatso's description of the nine included an item that mentions vomiting
(though his versions is "Vomiting digested food" -- an incongruous mirror
image of the aama passage) -- all of which suggests that several versions
and a number of explanatory glosses have been in circulation, which may not
have exactly captured what was meant in the original texts.

Dan Lusthaus