Sushruta Samhita
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| Language | Sanskrit |
|---|---|
| Composed | Earliest content may date from 250 BCE; general form reached about 500 CE |
| Published | 1911 and 1916 (Bhishagratna's English translation, vols. II and III) |
| Publisher | Kunja Lal Bhishagratna (vol. II); S. L. Bhaduri (vol. III) |
| Place | Calcutta |
| Volumes | 3 (Bhishagratna's translation) |
| Pages | Bhishagratna vol. II, p. 685; vol. III, p. 41 |
|---|---|
| Chapter | Uttaratantra 11 (bhaṅga); Kalpasthāna 2 (vijaya); Uttaratantra 24 and 39 (vijayā); the identification with cannabis is contested |
| Uses documented | Medicinal, in passages Grierson read as cannabis in 1894; the reading is contested |
| Digital facsimile | Bhishagratna's translation, vol. III, on Wikimedia Commons |
|---|---|
| Modern translation | Kunja Lal Bhishagratna (ed. and trans.), An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita, 3 vols, Calcutta (vol. II 1911, vol. III 1916) |
The Sushruta Samhita (Suśrutasaṃhitā, "The Compendium of Suśruta") is a Sanskrit treatise on medicine and surgery and one of the defining texts of Ayurveda. Its earliest content may date from as early as 250 BCE. It was re-edited several times until about 500 CE, when it reached the general form in which it survives.[1]: 141 In 1894 the colonial civil servant George Abraham Grierson named it as the earliest work in which he had found bhaṅgā (cannabis) mentioned as a medicine. The report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission repeated his finding.[2][3]
The claim passed into later surveys of cannabis in India.[4][5]: 228 G. Jan Meulenbeld (1989) examined each passage cited for it and concluded that "the early medical saṃhitās do not mention Cannabis, in spite of assertions to the contrary".[6]: 61
The text
The compendium is divided into sections (sthāna). In Kunja Lal Bhishagratna's English translation, published in three volumes, the Nidāna, Śārīra, Cikitsita and Kalpa sections fill the second volume and the Uttaratantra the third.[7][8] The Kalpasthāna deals with poisons. The Uttaratantra opens with diseases of the eye.
Around the turn of the 11th century Candraṭa wrote a work on correcting the text's readings. By the time of the commentators Gayadāsa (about 1000) and Ḍalhaṇa (about the 12th century), many variant readings were in circulation. No critical edition has been attempted.[1]: 145–146 A palm-leaf manuscript of about half the text, copied at Deopatan in Nepal in 877 and now in the Kaiser Shamsher Library, Kathmandu (NAK 9/699), came to scholarly attention in 2007. If its date holds, it is about a thousand years older than any witness to the text known before.[1]: 146–147 Meulenbeld cited the Bombay edition of Jādavji Trikamji Ācārya (1938).[6]: 70 Editions and translations number some verses differently: the eye verse below is 11.3 in Grierson, 11.5 in Meulenbeld and 11.4 in Bhishagratna.
Passages read as cannabis
Uttaratantra 11: twigs for fomenting the eye
Chapter 11 of the Uttaratantra treats abhiṣyanda (ophthalmia) caused by the deranged humour śleṣmā or kapha (phlegm). In Bhishagratna's translation its fourth verse reads:
Tender twigs or leaves of Kutannata, Áshpotá, Phanijjhaka, Vilva, Pattura, Pilu, Arka and Kapittha should be employed in (mildly) fomenting the affected eye.— Suśrutasaṃhitā, Uttaratantra 11, trans. Bhishagratna (1916)[8]: 41
Grierson read the word bhaṅga in this passage, which he cited as "Ut. XI, 3", as hemp: "Bhanga is recommended together with a number of other drugs as an antiphlegmatic".[2]: 247 The verse is Uttaratantra 11.5 in Meulenbeld, who wrote that it "contains a compound with bhaṅga as its last member". There the word "does not denote a plant" but abbreviates pattrabhaṅga, "a leafy branch or the leaves (of the trees mentioned in the compound)".[6]: 61 Bhishagratna's "tender twigs or leaves" translates the same compound.[8]: 41 Meulenbeld read bhaṅgā the same way in two prescriptions of Ravigupta's seventh-century Siddhasāra. R. E. Emmerick, the editor of the Siddhasāra, had followed the work's Tibetan translation in taking the word for cannabis.[6]: 63
Uttaratantra 24 and 39: vijayā
Grierson also found vijayā in two passages of the Uttaratantra (chapters 24 and 39), as a remedy for catarrh with diarrhoea and as an ingredient in a prescription for fever from an excess of bile and phlegm. In both passages, he judged, vijayā is probably harītakī, the yellow myrobalan, and "does not mean hemp". He reported Hoernle's view that in the oldest medical works the commentators explain the word in that sense.[2]: 246–247 Harītakī is Terminalia chebula. Ḍalhaṇa's commentary on Uttaratantra 24.21 and 39.196 explains vijayā as harītakī.[6]: 62
Kalpasthāna 2: the root poisons
Chapter 2 of the Kalpasthāna lists the poisons of plant and mineral origin by the part that yields them. Bhishagratna's translation names eight root poisons, the last of them Vijayā.[7]: 685 Vaidya Bhagwan Dash wrote in 1978 that cannabis, "called vijayā in this case", is one of these. Meulenbeld called the statement "not correct". In the Sanskrit (Kalpasthāna 2.5) the eight names form a compound whose last member is vijaya, not vijayā. Meulenbeld took the identity of this vijaya to be unknown and judged cannabis improbable, because its roots are not described as poisonous.[6]: 61
How the claim travelled
Grierson wrote his note for the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1893–94) after searching "all the Sanskrit and Hindi books accessible to me". He placed "the first mention of bhanga as a medicine which I have noted" in "the work of Suçruta (before the eighth century A.D.), where it is called an antiphlegmatic". The same note opens the history of cannabis in Sanskrit with the Atharvaveda.[2]: 246 The Commission's report opened its summary of the ancient medical writers with this finding. Grierson's caveat on vijayā and Hoernle's view of the commentators appear there as well.[3] A version of Grierson's note appeared in The Indian Antiquary (vol. 23, 1894).[6]: 61
In the United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics in 1957, I. C. and R. N. Chopra wrote that in "Susruta" "cannabis leaves are recommended along with a number of other drugs as antiphlegmatic, as a remedy for catarrh accompanied by diarrhoea, and as a cure for biliary fever". These are the three uses in Grierson's note, where the second and third belong to the passages in which vijayā probably means myrobalan.[4][2]: 247 Michael Aldrich (1977), citing Grierson, wrote that cannabis was "first prescribed by Hindu physicians as an antiphlegmatic agent".[5]: 228 Meulenbeld names the Dictionary of the Economic Products of India of George Watt and the Pharmacographia Indica of Dymock, Warden and Hooper among the works that place cannabis in the early compendia.[6]: 61
Reassessment
Meulenbeld's 1989 study treated bhaṅgā as a substance "added to the materia medica after the age of the classical saṃhitās of Caraka, Suśruta and Vāgbhaṭa" and used its first appearances to date later medical works.[6]: 60 He placed "the earliest incontestable reference to Cannabis as a medicinal substance" in Vaṅgasena's Cikitsāsārasaṅgraha, of the 11th or 12th century. In his summary, texts that describe or prescribe cannabis "should not be assigned to earlier periods unless convincing proof to the contrary can be adduced".[6]: 64, 67 Dominik Wujastyk (2002), building on Meulenbeld, concluded that "reliable references to cannabis do not date from before about AD 1000".[9]: 55
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Wujastyk, Dominik (2013). "New Manuscript Evidence for the Textual and Cultural History of Early Classical Indian Medicine". In Wujastyk, Dominik; Cerulli, Anthony; Preisendanz, Karin (eds.). Medical Texts and Manuscripts in Indian Cultural History. New Delhi: Manohar. pp. 141–157.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Grierson, George Abraham (1894). "Note on references to the hemp plant occurring in Sanskrit and Hindi literature". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–1894. Vol. III. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. pp. 246–249.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. X, "Effects – general observations", para. 459, pp. 174–175 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chopra, I. C.; Chopra, R. N. (1957). "The use of the cannabis drugs in India". Bulletin on Narcotics (1). United Nations: 4–29.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Aldrich, Michael R. (1977). "Tantric cannabis use in India". Journal of Psychedelic Drugs. 9 (3): 227–233. doi:10.1080/02791072.1977.10472053.
- ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 Meulenbeld, G.J. (1989). "The search for clues to the chronology of Sanskrit medical texts, as illustrated by the history of bhaṅgā (Cannabis sativa Linn.)". Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik. 15. Reinbek: Dr. Inge Wezler, Verlag für Orientalistische Fachpublikationen: 59–70. ISSN 0341-4191.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Bhishagratna, Kunja Lal, ed. (1911). An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita. Vol. II. Calcutta: the author – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Bhishagratna, Kunja Lal, ed. (1916). An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita. Vol. III. Calcutta: S. L. Bhaduri – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ↑ Wujastyk, Dominik (2002). "Cannabis in Traditional Indian Herbal Medicine". In Salema, A. (ed.). Ayurveda at the Crossroads of Care and Cure. Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar. pp. 45–73. ISBN 972-98672-5-9.