Medicine.
Indian medical science must have begun to develop before the beginning of our era, for one of its chief authorities, Charaka, was, according to the Chinese translation of the Buddhist Tripiṭaka, the official physician of King Kanishka in the first century A.D. His work, the Charaka-saṃhitā, has been edited several times: by J. Vidyāsāgara, 2nd ed., Calcutta, 1896, by Gupta, Calcutta, 1897, with comm. by C. Dutta, Calcutta, 1892–1893; trans. by A. C. Kaviratna, Calcutta, 1897. Suçruta, the next great authority, seems to have lived not later than the fourth century A.D., as the Bower MS. (probably fifth century A.D.) contains passages not only parallel to, but verbally agreeing with, passages in the works of Charaka and Suçruta. (The Suçruta-saṃhitā, ed. by J. Vidyāsāgara, Calcutta, 3rd ed., 1889; A. C. Kaviratna, Calcutta, 1888–95; trans. by Dutta, 1883, Chaṭṭopādhyāya, 1891, Hoernle, 1897, Calcutta.) The next best known medical writer is Vāgbhaṭa, author of the Ashṭānga-hṛidaya (ed., with comm. of Aruṇadatta, by A. M. Kunte, Bombay, Nir. Sāg. Press, 1891). Cf. also articles by Haas in vols. xxx., xxxi., and by A. Müller in xxxiv. of Jour. of Germ. Or. Soc.; P. Cordier, Études sur la Médecine Hindoue, Paris, 1894; Vāgbhaṭa et l’Aṣṭāngahṛidaya-saṃhitā, Besançon, 1896; Liétard, Le Médecin Charaka, &c., in Bull. de l’Ac. de Médecine, May 11, 1897.