26 A Short History of Ayurvedic Veterinary Literature
of food and wool but also as baggage animals in the hills ; while the camel
corps was an indispensable branch of the army transport service. There
is evidence of the early domestication of dogs, cats, pigs, hens and hawks,
but all, save the hawk, were apparently so numerous that disease and death
were regarded merely as a convenient way of keeping down numbers, in a
country where the killing of animals is anathema.
Hawking, however, has been a favourite sport of India from time im-
memorial. It is mentioned by Ktesias and even Asoka appears to have
countenanced it, though he did forbid the ' feeding of the living with the
living ', which has been taken to mean the feeding of hawks with the blood
of living pigeons. In the Bibliolheca Indica has been printed a book on
hawking by the royal poet, Rudradeva of Kumaon, called ' Syainika Sastra ',
wherein he describes the kind and quality of food to be given to hawks, their
tending during the different seasons and their treatment in disease.
Dogs do not appear to have attracted veterinary attention, save in
their character as transmitters of rabies. Susruta mentions the bites of dogs
as causing disease and says, ' If a patient sees the image of the animal that
bit him in the water or a mirror he is sure to die '. This is interesting in
that it conforms nearly to European superstition. Wise quotes an ancient
Hindu medical work which runs :—' When a dog, jackal, fox, wolf, bear or
tiger becomes mad, it foams at the mouth, which remains open, its tail hangs
down, it does not hear or see well and saliva flows from its mouth. It snaps
and bites each other. The part that is bitten becomes senseless, blood flows
from the wound, which becomes black and other appearances are observed
as when wounded with a poisoned arrow. A person bitten makes the same
kind of noise and movements as that of the animal which has bitten him.
When such a person sees the shape of the animal which has bitten him either
in water or in glass, it is an unfavourable symptom. It is also unfavourable
when a person is afraid of water and dreads either seeing or hearing it. To-
wards the termination of the disease the person becomes convulsed, in-
sensible, powerless and dies '. The treatment recommended is, first the scari-
fication of the part and the squeezing out of the blood, after which the part
is to be burnt by means of hot ghee. Then Azida (a mixture of antidotes) is
to be applied and old ghee given internally.
Ayurvedic practitioners discovered early that the goat is very refractory
to consumption and used this knowledge to devise remedies for this disease
in man. Moreover, it appears that the old Scottish custom of sleeping in
a cow byre to cure this disease, was practised also in India. In the Charaka
Samhita, the making of clisters for goats and camels is mentioned; while
from Asoka's edicts, it is evident that the castration of goats, rams and boars
was common. The Charaka Samhita also provides the information that
goats were ' fed on twigs and leaves '; while in the ' Toy Cart', we read of the
massaging of a ram ' like a wrestler after a match '.
Little or nothing can, therefore, be discovered from the study of ancient
Sanskrit books regarding general veterinary practice, from which it may be
assumed that any care that may have been taken of the less valuable domestic
animals was of a wholly unscientific nature, carried out on the ' hit or miss '
principle by the owners.