Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/477

Chap.XL.] no potency without a taste, and taste without a drug or substance is an absurdity.- Hence a substance (vegetable or otherwise) is the greatest of them all. A taste and a substance are correlative categories from the time of their origin, like a body and an embodied self in the plane of organic existence. Since an attribute per se can not be possessed of another attribute, the eight kinds of potency (properties) can only appertain to a substance and not to a taste, which is an attribute in itself. Substances are digested in an organic body and not the six tastes simply for the reason of their being invisible and intangible in themselves. Hence a substance is the greatest of all the aforesaid five factors (of substance, taste, virtues, etc.) and the attributes lie inherent in the substance.

Unscrutable and unthinkable are the virtues of drugs (medicines), which are above all rules of syllogism; and hence drugs (medicines), which have been observed to be efficacious from time immemorial, as well as those laid down in the scriptures on medicines, should alone be used in the course of a medical treatment. A learned physician should think it a sacrilege to logically dispute the efficacy of a medicine of tested virtue, and which has been adopted after generations of careful observation and is instinctively pronounced by men as a beneficial remedy.