An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita, Vol. I: Sutrasthanam — trans. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna (1907)

So far Sushruta is at one with the modern Western theory of preponderant katabolism or anabolism in the ovum as the determining factor of the sexual diamorphism to the extent that seeds or reproductive cells are the bearers and not the manufacturers of life, only containing those categories which foster life, and help its evolution into an organic being. To deny this would be to admit the chemical, or physiological basis of life, which, as a theory, was never acceptable to the biologists of ancient India. The number of reproductive cells may be increased bv suitable dietary, and to say that the immortal reproductive cells, as the creators of life, come out of the mortal, organic food stufll* is to say that darkness is the father of light. The question of the immortality of the seed (germ plasm) has

(I) ^a«g^: q^q^ft qgr?^ Uw^r[ ^^T^_^ \ fl^^qif^flT ^'qi'Sn?!^ l^fl^cTT II D5rub5hi (Quoted by Arunadatla in his commentaries on Viigbhat).

INTRODUCTION. XXXVii

been elaborately discussed in the Gommentaries on the Sankhya Darshanam(i). The, Pjah Vindus (germ cells) pulsate with the vibrations (rhythmic movements), which are^the relics of the primordial ethereal vibrations, which ,ushered in the birth-throes of the universe. ^ As such, they are essential to the evolution of life ; and man, as an offspring of the universe, still retains them in his reproductive cells as the best condition for calling out the life in his offspring, when its seK enters into the impregnated ovum in the mother's womb. Life is the essence of self, and not the prjoduct of any chemical or physiological process. It is an influx ; and microscopes and spectroscopes mav not expose to view the hinterlands of birth and genesis. Perhaps it was this theorv of will-force and intensity of parental desire as determining the sex in the child, together with the facts of parthenogenesis observed in lower animals, from which Sushruta was disposed to extend the analogy to the human species, and believed that conception without sexual union is possible in women.

^j. The conception of the nature of these Matrika and J '.rika Shaktis is more clearly set forth in the Pauranika n jth regarding the origin (etiology) of fever ; Sushruta relates the story as follows : — Daksha, the father of the universal mother, (or constructive metabolism in man) insulted the divine father, her consort (destructive metabolism), by witholding his quota of sacrificial oblations. The wrath of the insulted deity broke out in the shape of a morbific heat (hyperpyrexia) which is fever. The process of digestion in man has been often compared 'to an act

(l) (a) qRHTSTtftS'C^I^T ^"Wl,^^ I

Sankhya Sutra Ch. I. 122.

(b) fT^5TT<T ^^fh '

Ibid. Ch. III. 3.

(c) *r% f% ^^^^^m^^mfn^]^'^^wf^^Tff x?m^i ^^i*

Sankhya Prabachana Vashya (Vijn^n Bhikshu) Ch. I. S. I.

XXXVni INTRODUCTION.

< f

• < of Homa sacrifice (i) in the Ayurveda. Stripped of its allegory the myth may be exp^iined quite in a pathological lin^ It means that when the t*itrika Shakti, the process of destructive metabolism (Pita, father or Shiva in Hindu mythology being the god of destruction or disintegration) of the body is not properly served by the factors, which noun'sh its constructive metabolism (Father of the Matrika Shakti), the excrements and excretory process of the body are arrested (b^r the wrathful deity), and the heat generated in consequence is fever. Fever, then, is a disease of defective digestion and excretion. Whenever this Pit rika Shakti,. is disturbed or not properly served there is fever, and heat is one of its essential effects.

With a precision and love of details, which mark the best days of Brahmanic literature, Sushruta lays down rules of diet and conduct to be observed by the enceinte, from month to month, during the whole period of gestation, and gives medicinal recipes for the development of a partiall}^ atrophied child in the womb.