Charaka-Samhita — trans. Kaviraj Avinash Chandra Kaviratna

There is another matter to which the attention of the reader should be drawn. In this division occurs the names of a great many plants. Those conversant with the Indian medical script¬ ures are aware that almost every plant has, in Sanskrit, more than one name. As if to help the cause of confusion, the same name in many cases has, again, been bestowed upon more than one plant. It is, therefore, very difficult, when a particular name is met with, to determine what plant is meant. Lexicons can afford little help. The student of Charaka is obliged in such cases to depend upon tradition and present practice. The medicines named by Charaka are still prepared and prescribed by practition¬ ers. The same ingredients are used everywhere. The same roots and barks and leaves and flowers and fruits, are used from generation to generation In the identification of plants, therefore, tradition and practice must be looked upon if not as infallible at least as helpful guides. To give an example : Hastidanti enters into the composition of some drugs. Lexicons give garden radish as one of the meanings of Hastidanti. Literally, ‘Hastidanti’ means something after the form of an elephant’s

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tusk. A garden radish bears some resemblance to an elephant’s tusk when it is not a large one. Hence, ‘Hastidanti’ commonly means a garden radish. In medical scriptures, however, the garden radish is never understood as the equivalent of ‘Hastidanti.’ It is, on the other hand, a plant wrell-known to the profession and to those that supply the profession with the products of hill and dale, forest and swamp. It is otherwise called ‘Nagadanci’. In Bengal it is known by the name of ‘Cherapata-danti,’ so called because of the indentations on the edge of its leaf. It is not the plant known by the name of Nagadamani or Nagdona.

Medical science, as cultivated in ancient India, had not botany for its hand- maid. Descriptions occur of many plants, but no scientific classification had ever been attempted. Medical students, it is true, have to familiarise themselves with the plants and the minerals mentioned in the scriptures they study. But such study, however regular, cannot lead to that accurate know¬ ledge which a study of scientific botany would confer. There were, again, no botanical gardens maintained by either kings or eminent medical teachers. The plants mentioned in Hindu medical treatises growr on mountain breasts and in dales, on fields and road¬ sides, in bushes and forests and swamps. Persons belonging to the lowest classes of society have always been the purveyors of medical practitioners. It is true, particular practitioners have left behind them compilations carefully describing the plants mentioned in medical treatises ; but these compilations have not as yet seen the light. They are still in manuscript, and are guarded with jealous care by their owners. All these considerations have tended to make the subject of medical botany a difficult one in Hindu Medicine. When to this is added the fact that many plants are no longer obtainable except from inaccessible mountains or distant countries, some idea is capable of being formed of the real difficulties that beset the path of one that seeks to interpret Charaka to modern readers, especially to European and American readers.

It is a matter of deep regret that the first attempt at publishing an English version of Charaka has not met with that measure of support from Indian readers which it has met with from learned scholars and medical men of Europe and America. Costly though

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