Page:The Surgical Instruments of the Hindus Vol 1.djvu/12

iv Secondly, monuments or inscriptions scattered about the country have to be searched, as references found therein to the science of medicine, are more trustworthy than documents which may have been more or less tampered with by interpolations of subsequent writers. Thus we learn from the Edicts of Aśoka, that hospitals were established by him in different parts of his kingdom, not only for the treatment of suffering humanity but also for the brute creation.

Thirdly, personages and scenes in connection with medical practice, and figures of herbs may have been represented in works of art which must be thoroughly examined. But unfortunately we do not possess any such work of art and so we can learn nothing to our purpose from this source. In the interpretation of the subject of the Friezes of the Rani Naur and Ganesha's Cave, Dr. R. L. Mitra says,—"The shampooing in the Ganesa Cave may be for a parent, but the close seat with the right hand round the neck of the male personage in the other, would be highly unbecoming in an unmarried female. But if the stooping figure be taken to be that of a wounded man, a wounded priest for instance, the lady may be a maiden nursing him without any offence to propriety. It is true that the appearance of the figure on the mattress does not indicate suffering from a wound, but in the Rani Naur frieze, the stooping head affords some indication of it."