Charaka-Samhita — trans. Kaviraj Avinash Chandra Kaviratna

Yours of some time ago reached me here, having been forwarded from my address, as also the parts of the English translation of Charaka-Samhita. I have read these parts with great enjoyment. Deeply interested as I am in all that pertains to India, I am especially grateful that this important medical work is to be put into an English dress. It cannot but increase the high value which the scholar already sets upon the literature of your wonderful land. I shall look for the reception of the remaining parts of the work with great interest, and shall not fail to call the attention of my friends to it.

I am very sincerely,

(Sd.) J. N. Fradek BURGH.

( 53 )

[From Du. G. C. Oastleman, of Kansas Crrt, Missouri.] i 17, West 13th Sreet, Kansas City , Missouri , U. S. A.

Gear SIR,

This you may he- more fully prepared to understand and believe when I tell you that I am myself a physician of the broadest gauge, and most progressive kind, and just as broad and progressive in my philosophic and theologic studies and principles* In fact, I feel no aversion to the acceptance of any fact, facts, theory or theories, but freely and gladly accept, whatever is proven to me by sufficient evidence.

Ignorance (the mother of prejudice) is the greatest enemy that the human race has to contend with. Christian¬ ity has controlled Europe and America till within the last one hundred and fifty years. Since then the light has been breaking through its fortifications, until now its most advanced thinkers are breaking away or have broken away from its tyranny, and are rejoicing in a more or less perfect mental, moral, spiritual and political liberty, and this results in what is to them new, great and grand dis¬ coveries, and not the least of these to me is the discovery that they have been and are re-thinking the thoughts and re-discovering the discoveries of their forefathers in Hindustan, made by them hundreds, if not thousands of years, before even settlements were made in Egypt, Greece and Rome; and now I see that the advanced thinkers of your own ancient, great, grand, and glorious nation, Arya, — the prolific mother of nations, — have broken through the shackels of the past, and are willing to tell their Western brethren what has been preserved for them in the hidden archives of Hindustan.

( 59 )

Our Western thinkers seem to pursue a shorter, more direct and positive method of thinking and teaching in everything except the Yoga. In this, both are identical ; except this, the Hindu method is the most full.

Now, when these, things are fully realized by the thinkers and scholars of the East and the West, I think, there will b ; nothing that can prevent them from entering into one long, lasting and loving embrace, as members of a long-separated family, as brethren of the grand old Aryan race. Then, again, will we, indeed, have the “Kritaage” on Earth (the millennium of the Christians).

This very limited expression of my thoughts will enable you to understand to some extent how I appre¬ ciate the favour you conferred on me when you sent me the four parts of the “Charaka-Samhita. ”

In addition to this, I wis.h to say that I was notcnly greatly pleased, but greatly astonished, to find that the ancient Hindu physicians and authors were well acquain¬ ted with facts, scientific facts, medicines and theories, that we in the West have only just, within the last fifty, forty thirty, twenty or even ten years, discovered, and though were new. Now, the fact that they were previously dis¬ covered in the East, does not make them any the less real discoveries, or the less valuable. On the contrary, the two independent discoveries mutually strengthen each other, and of necessity confer an equally mutual, intellectual joy on those that take cognizance of these things. The fact is that my pleasure in such things is so great that nothing but the lack of means prevented me from making my home in India, and wandering over the whole field of

( eo )

ancient Sanskrit and Indian science, art, religion and literature:

I remain yours truly, (Sd.) G. C. Castleman.

[EnoM- Roy Jotendra Nath Chowdry, m. a., b. l., Zamindar, T,akee.]

My Dear Ajunash,