LESLIE HAMILTON SHIRLAW 13
Unfortunately, the originals of S'álihotra's works have been lost and it is
now almost impossible to discover the period to which he belonged. Nakula
states that S'álihotra was the son of one Hayaghosa. Mukhopadhya argues
from this that S'álihotra must have lived in the first century A.D. because
the words ' Haya ' and ' Asva ' have an identical meaning, and there was a
celebrated Buddhist preacher called ' Asvaghosa ' at the Indo-Scythian court
of Peshawar in that century. This seems to the writer a somewhat ' far
fetched ' argument and presupposes also that no two Indians ever bore the
same name. Moreover, S'álihotra is supposed to have addressed his lectures
to the famous surgeon, Susrutha, who, according to the authorities, must have
lived about the seventh century B.C. This, allowing for S'álihotra to antedate
him by about a quarter of a century, would place the veterinarian in what,
the writer maintains, was the Golden Age of Hindu medicine. S'álihotra is,
moreover, known to have been a Brahman, and not a Buddhist, and, as pre
viously pointed out, already by the first century A.D. medicine had come to be
regarded as a degrading occupation for the priestly caste. It is also known
that S'álihotra lectured to his students at his retreat in the forest of Campaka
at the foot of the Himalayas in Maghada (modern U. P. and Bengal) and it
appears unlikely that he would have moved into another kingdom, had he been
brought up, as claimed, under the patronage of Kaniska. It is also noteworthy
that Ayurvedic medicine is believed to have originated in Bengal and not in
those areas that were touched by Greek influence.
S'álihotra lectured to his disciples on the history, training, feeding, stabl
ing and grooming of and on how to buy, to keep and to treat a horse in health
and disease, claiming to have acquired this knowledge from Brahma himself.
These lectures, presumably, comprised the original S'álihotra Sastra, which
was divided into eight parts:—(1) Salya or Major Surgery, (2) Salakya or
Surgery of the parts above the clavicles, (3) Kaya-cikitsa or Inner Medicine, (4)
Bhutavidya or Demonology, (5) Kaumarabhrtya or the Science of Paediatrics,
(6) Visatantre or Toxicology, (7) Rasyana or Treatment to prolong life (8) Vaji¬
karana or Treatment to stimulate sexual power : as, indeed, were all ancient
books on Ayurveda. This work is most unfortunately no longer extant. Several
chapters of it, however, are quoted in the Agni Purana, while his lectures on
Hayaurveda are described in the Matsya and Garura Purans. Mitra speaks of
a Hindi work bearing the ' S'álihotra ' translated from the Sanskrit by a Hindu
named Chetana. He believes that it was from this work that the Persian
translation " Kurrat-ul-Mulk " was made in 1381 A.D. (A.H. 783) during the
reign of Ghiyas-ud-din, son of Mohammad Shah. This Persian version claims
to have been translated from the writings of an Indian Brahman, named
' S'álutar ', who was the tutor of Suśruta and observes that it was made ' from
the barbarous Hindi into the refined Persian in order that there may be no need
of reference to the infidels '. A manuscript of this work is now in the Royal
Library, Lucknow. It comprises only 11 chapters of 30 sections and deals
with the names, races, varieties, colours, smells and defects of horses ; with their
feeding, riding and management ; with the determination of their age from
their teeth and with their anatomy. It describes the d seases to which they
are subject and their treatment, particularly in cases of bleeding and hæmorrh¬
age, and also the control of wasp-hives in stables.