Arrianus said of the Hindus that their women were deemed marriageable at seven years of age; but the men, not till they arrive at the age of forty.[253]
Many charms, imprecations, and other superstitious usages of ancient India are contained in the Atharva-veda-Samhitâ. This body of literature dates, according to Max Müller, from 1000 to 800 B.C. (the Mantra period).[254] In this Samhitâ a number of songs are addressed to illnesses, and the healing herbs appropriate for their cure. Sarpa-vidyá (serpent-science) possibly dealt with medical matters also.[255]
The oldest fragments (very poor ones, it must be confessed) of Hindu medical science are to be found in these relics of Vedic times.
In a work on Indian medicine called the Kalpastanum described by Dr. Heyne,[256] we read that the doctor’s apparatus of mortars, scales, etc., must be kept in a place in the wall that has been consecrated for that purpose by religious ceremonies. In the middle of the medicine room the mystic sign must be set up, with images of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.
Many ceremonies must be gone through in the preparation of medicines; the physician must attend to the boiling of some of them himself, and the spot round the fireplace must be smeared with cow-dung by a virgin, or by the mother of sons whose husband is alive; at the same time, offerings must be made to the gods. Should any of the ceremonies be omitted, the patient will repent the neglect, for devils of all descriptions will defile the medicine and hinder its good effect. Before the patient takes his potion, the god of physic is to be worshipped in the person of his deputy, the doctor, who naturally (and for the good of the patient) is to be well rewarded for his services.
Buddhism, says Max Müller, is the frontier between ancient and modern literature in India. He gives 477 B.C. as the probable date of Buddha’s death,[257] and describes the religion of that great sage as standing in the same relation to the ancient Brahmanism of the Veda as Italian to Latin, or as Protestantism to Catholicism. It is a development from Brahmanism, yet it is not the religion of India, though it has greatly influenced Hindu thought.[258]
Buddha’s religious system recognised no supreme deity; a Buddhist never really prays, he merely contemplates.[259]
Man can himself become the only god Buddha’s system finds room for. God becomes man in Brahmanism; man becomes a god in Buddhism. All existence is an evil to the Buddhist; “act” is to be got rid of as effectually as possible, for action means existence. The great end of the system is Nirvāna, or non-existence. “Of priests and clergy in our sense,” says Professor Williams, “the Buddhist religion has none.” Though there is no God, prayer is practised as a kind of charm against diseases; for malignant demons, as we might have expected, are believed by Buddhists to cause these and other evils. These Buddhist prayers are used like the Mantras of the Brahmins as charms against evils of all kinds. The Buddhists have a demon of love, anger, evil, and death, called Māra, the opponent of Buddha. He can send forth legions of evil demons like himself. Some of the precepts of Buddha are fully equal to those of the highest religions—Charity, Virtue, Patience, Fortitude, Meditation, and Knowledge. The special characteristic of Buddhism is the perfection of its tenderness and mercy towards all living creatures, even beasts of prey and noxious insects not being outside the circle of its sympathy. According to the Buddhist’s belief, all our acts ripen and go to form our Karma. The consequences of our acts must inexorably be worked out. This is Brahminical as well as Buddhistic doctrine. “In the Sábda-kalpa-druma, under the head of Karma-vipāka,” says Williams, “will be found a long catalogue of the various diseases with which men are born, as the fruit of evil deeds committed in former states of existence, and a declaration as to the number of births through which each disease will be protracted, unless, expiations be performed in the present life.”[260]
All our sufferings, our sicknesses, weaknesses, and moral depravity are simply the consequences of our actions in former bodies. When the Jews asked our Lord, “Who did sin, this man (i.e. in a former life) or his parents, that he was born blind?”[261] they evidently had in their minds the Hindu doctrine of previous existences. The principles of the Brahminic religion do not appear to have embraced any care for or attention to the needs of sick people. Involved in philosophical speculations, and the perfecting of their system of caste, the founders of the Brahminic religion had no time to bestow on such mundane matters as disease and its cure. It was not until the rise of Buddhism and the political ascendency which it acquired over Brahmanism (from about 250 B.C. to A.D. 600), that public hospitals were established for man and animals in the great cities of the Buddhist princes.[262] Buddhism had a gospel for every living creature; it taught the spiritual equality of all men, whose good works, without the mediation of priests and Brahmins, would save them from future punishment. Medicine, under the fostering care of Buddhism, was studied as any other science, and the noblest outcome of the movement was the establishment of public hospitals. A great seat of medical learning was established at Benares, and Asoka, King of Behar or Putra, published fourteen Edicts, one of which devised a system of medical care for man and beast.[263]