Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/50

 forces of .life and death (i), (though in' fact they represent the two different aspects of the same energy) and controls its evolutionary rhythms through the desire of seeing itself many though one in reality. Does not modern biology endorse the same view when it says that the reproductive cells, as protozoons,.are immortal, and that bodies are the natural appendages which blossom.forth and fall off round these cells for the fructification of their innate purposes of being (2)?

A little more investigation into the biological thesis of the Rishis would be necessary for the clear comprehen- sion of "Shukra-Vahulyani" and '"Shonita-Vahulyam" ' of Sushruta and other Tantras (3). iMan is both animal and spirit ; and the Ayurvedic physiology recognises two distinct sets of apparatus in his organism answering to the different phases of his existence. The one helps him in performing the organic functions, which are so essential to his animal existence, and keeps intact the co-ordination of those inter- nal functions with the incidents of his environments. The other is attuned to the finer forces of nature, and responds

(I) The Evolution of Sex. Ch. XVIII. Prof. P. Gedde/i and J, A. Thomson.

(2) "The body or soma' Weismann says, "thus appears to a certain extent as a subsidiary appendage of the true bearers of the life,— the repro- ductive cells". Ray Lankester has again well expressed this :— "Among the multicellular animals, certain cells are separated from the rest of the consti- tuent units of the body, as egg-cells and sperm-cells ; these conjugate and continue to live, whilst the remaining cells, the mere carriers as it were of the immortal reproductive cells, die and disintegrate. The bodies of the higher aniivals which die, may from this point of view be regarded as something temporary and non-essential, destined merely to carry for a time, to nurse, and to nourish the mure important and deathless fission -products of the unicellular egg."— Quoted in the Evelution of Sex (P. Geddes and J, A. Thompton) 1901. Chap. XVIII.

(3) Sarada Tilak Tantram.

(B) Sushrula SamhilA (ShSrira Sthdnam Ch. Ill )