Page:A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.djvu/42

34 (gems) which had been lost in the Deluge. Dhanvantari is said to have come out of the ocean with a cup of Amrita, or the beverage of immortality ; and he takes in India the place occupied by AEsculapius amongst the Greeks. Having learnt Ayur Veda from Devoclasa or Kashiraja, as he is otherwise called, Sushruta and his companions returned home and wrote independent works on Medicine and Surgery. But Sushruta excelled them all. His work was translated into Arabic before the end of the 8th century a.c. It has been translated into Latin by Hepler and into German by Vullers. Charaka was also translated from Sanskrit into Arabic in the beginning of the 8th century, and "his name repeatedly occurs in the Latin translations of Avicenna, Razes, and Serapion" (Hunter). He was posterior to Agnivesha, for he states that he received the materials for his book from that learned sage, whose work he re-cast.

The next authority on Hindoo Medicine is, who flourished about the second century before Christ. He was an inhabitant of Sindh, in Western India. In his work called "Ashtanga-hridaya," he acknowledges the assistance derived from the writings of Charaka, Sush-