1870.] Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 285 



Charaka is not the original author of the work which goes by 

 his name. That author was Agnivesha, who, along with five other 

 rishis, Bhela, Jatukarna, Parasara, Harita, and Ksharipani, re- 

 ceived instruction from Bharadvaja, who himself was taught by 

 Indra. Indra had received the science from the twins Ashvini 

 Kumaras ; Ashini Kumaras from Prajapati, to whom the science 

 (Ayurveda) was revealed by Brahma, the supreme creator. 



But Charaka does not pretend to the authorship of the work. 

 At the end of every sthana, nay at the end of each Chapter or 

 Adhyaya, we have the admission : 



from which it appears that he gives the authorship to Agnivesha, 

 and takes credit to himself only for revision and correction, 



In the fabulous account of Charaka in Bhabaprakasha, quoted 

 in Paja Padha Kanta's Sabdakalpadruma, and alluded to above, he 

 is said to have compiled from the works of the six disciples of 

 Bharadvaju. This is very probable, but he does not say so himself. 



As to the antiquity of the work, it is impossible to fix the date 

 when it flowed from the lips of Atreya, or issued from the pen of 

 Agnivesha, and when it was revised and edited by Charaka. All 

 that we can say, at the present stage of our inquiry, is, that it 

 seems to us to be anterior to Sushruta, the only other ancient 

 Hindu work on medicine extant. Sushruta calls himself the son of 

 Yishva Mitra, who was the contemporary of Pama, and claims to 

 have derived his knowledge of medicine from Dhanwantari. Now, 

 Dhanwantari is a mythological personage, but the Dhanwantari 

 from whom Sushruta received instruction in Ayurveda was he who 

 was called Dibodasa and was king of Kasi, which is now our 

 modern Benares. It is singular that neither of these works makes 

 any allusion to the other. Both make Ayurveda of divine origin, 

 and they agree in tracing this origin from above downwards as far 

 as Indra. But after that they diverge. Charaka, as we have seen, 

 makes Bharadvaja derive his knowledge from Indra, whereas 

 Sushruta makes it Dhanwantari. We are inclined to think Su- 

 shruta to be a later work, inasmuch as his preceptor is a later per- 

 sonage than Bharadvaja. 



Besides the above, we have other grounds for believing Sushruta 

 to be a later work. Though not so full and copious, it is more 



