[Buddha-l] Re: Aama do.sa I

[Christopher Fynn]

Hi Dan

I accept that S. Indian medical texts may have nothing to do with or throw no 
light on the text being discussed between you and Stephen - however I'd like to 
take issue with a couple of points you made in your previous reply

you wrote:
> Chris,

>> Should we geographically compartmentalise things so much?

> Slow down. That people moved around, especially (but not exclusively) for
> trade, is not in dispute. 


> What happens when people from different cultures,
> or different parts of a shared culture, encounter each other and intermingle
> is a complex business, and doesn't entail a wholesome transference by
> osmosis of everything from one culture to the other. India was already
> engaged in trade with Solomon, so trade routes were quite early. That does
> not automatically entail that medical knowledge flowed through those
> channels as well.

Considering the length of time it took to get anywhere in those days I suspect 
one pretty much either had to trade goods or be someone who could offer 
specialised services (e.g. a skilled artisan or a physician) in order to 
maintain oneself on such long journeys.

Also, given the likelihood of falling ill on long journeys to foreign lands, if 
I were a wealthy merchant organising a trading caravan or voyage - one of the 
first people I'd want to take along with me would be a trusted physician. (If 
the physician were literate he might usefully double up as a secretary and 
accountant as well.)

All in all I think medical knowledge would have served as a fairly good passport 
and ticket to travel.

> Medical knowledge is a special case -- a guild of highly trained and skilled
> practitioners, that often jealously guard their professional secrets. Some
> treatments for common illnesses might be transmitted, but detailed medical
> training -- the kind, for instance, described in Caraka-samhita, which
> devotes a good deal of attention to aapta (traditional authority, learning
>>from the teacher, exposing charlatans who give legitimate doctors a bad
> name, etc.), is not for general distribution by businessmen. One expects
> with cross cultural encounters to find foreign coins, influences on art,
> etc. Transference of medical knowledge is something else.

Medicines (and drugs) are and always have been an almost ideal object of trade - 
light weight, valuable - (with a value that increases the further away you get 
from the source), and for the most part non-perishable.  With trade of 
specialized goods knowledge of how to use those goods generally gets traded or 
transferred as well. (That way you get to sell two things)

Medicine a "special case"? - just look at the number of people - qualified and
unqualified - successfully (at least in financial terms) practising various
forms of "alternative medicine" of exotic origin in the west - often despite the
best efforts of the powerful medical lobby to stop them. Do you think things
would have been so different then? Human nature having changed very little, I 
don't think so.

While there may have been resistance  from the local medical establishment to 
foreign medicine and ideas, even in those times I can imagine a few local 
physicians wanting to obtain the latest exotic medicine or bit of foreign 
medical knowledge just to be one up on their colleagues.

I do agree that transfer of this kind of knowledge is a complex process - if
something seems to be efficacious people will inevitably interpret it in terms
of their own way of seeing things - or adapt it to fit in with the theories
current in their society far sooner than they will actually change those 
theories in light of this something new.

best regards

- Chris