Charaka-Samhita

Ayurveda took its final form in the early centuries of the Common Era, which saw the composition of the two seminal works on Indian medicine, Charaka-Samhita and Sushruta-Samhita

Charaka, well known as the Father of Medicine, has written the great book Charaka-Samhita.

Charaka lived around the first century. He was the court physician of the first century Kushana emperor Kanishka. He travelled continually and reached the patients wherever they were. Due to nobody know where he came from, he became famous as ‘the wandering physician’ or Charaka.

The Charaka-Samhita contains several chronological layers.  The main body of the text presents itself as containing knowledge received by Agnivesha from his teacher, a sage named Atreya.

It seems that the medical system described in the work was known as the system of Agnivesha and that Charaka simply edited Agnivesha’s text.

Later on, in the 4th century A.D, a scholar by name Dridhabala again edited it.

Written partly in prose and partly in verse, Charka-Samhita has 120 chapters arranged into eight sections. The topics dealt with therein are of medical, social and philosophical importance.
Charaka-Samhita 

Medicine in ancient India

There are many who believed that the four Vedas could have been compiled by the second millennium BC.

Each of the Vedas covers the role of ritual in a different sphere of life. The last, the Atharva-veda, is held by believers to have originally contained the basis of Ayurvedic medicine.

Atharvangiras, the old name from the Atharva-veda, suggest a twofold approach: pacificatory-curative practices and the practices of witchcraft and sorcery. Both practices were alike in the hands of priestly magicians and ‘medicine-men’ who dominated the scene before and during the Rgvedic period.

Atharva-veda was rearranged and revised perhaps around 800 BC in samhitas by the physician Charaka and the surgeon Sushruta.

Sushruta and Charaka both wrote encyclopedia medical treatises called samhitas.

The Charaka Samhita may not have been written in its present form until the first century AD. The Charaka Samhita mainly deals with Internal medicine. It is divided into eight parts and 120 chapters.

It also refers to over vegetable 300 drugs, the remainder being from animal and mineral sources. Charaka’s work contains the comprehensive theory and knowledge of Ayurveda, summarizing the ancient oral tradition in the form of lessons.

The current version of the Sushruta Samhita might date to the seventh century AD. Although a text on surgery, it mentioned nearly 400 vegetables drugs. Sushruta Samhita is a comprehensive work that especially details the practice of India surgery, which was as already noted highly advanced.

The number of plant medicines cited in these two works (Sushruta and Charaka) is greater than that of any other ancient people who left record of such matters.
Medicine in ancient India

History of Medicine in India

History of Medicine in India
As with the other ancient civilizations, there is much controversy concerning the early dating of Indian cultures in general and the development of surgery in particular.

In about 1500 BC, the Aryan invaded the Indian subcontinent from Central Asia and brought with them the Sanskrit language.

The earliest writings on Indian medicine are to be found in the Vedas the books of knowledge which were believed to be of divine origin.

Here we can read of sages who would carry bags of healing herbs and who would care for the injured, remove arrows and spears from the wounded and who would employ a plant named after the god Soma, which would relieve pain.

In addition, they would cauterize wounds and snake bites and might even have developed a catheter in order to relieve retention of urine and which would ‘open the flow of urine again like a dam before a lake’.

The earliest Indian surgical author was Susruta. It will probably never be ascertained whether he was an actual historical personage or a name to which collected works of surgical literature are attributed.

The time of his existence is also vague, but it was some time after Christ.

His works were translated into Arabic around AD 800 and are often quoted in the writings of Rhazes.

It is a quite evident that Hindu surgery at this time had reached a high state of excellence.

For example, there is a detailed description of the operation for removal of a cataract in which the opaque lens of the eye is mobilized and then pushed downwards into the lower part of the globe in order to allow restoration of vision.

Susruta also describes what must have been the earliest plastic surgical procedure, the restoration of an amputated nose by means of a skin graft turned down upon the forehead.

Removal of the nose was a punishment for adultery in those days, so there was no shortage of patients for this procedure.
History of Medicine in India