ペンギン版の簡単なアユールヴェーダのテキストを少しチェックした。文献は、The Roots of Ayurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Dominik Wujastyk (London: Penguin Books, 1998)
伝染病の原因は不正であるという。王が不正に生きるとその臣民にも不正が広がり、通商によってそれが広がる。そして、不正が徳を圧倒するときがやってくると、神にも見捨てられてしまう。季節の雨水は乱れ、風は正しく吹くことをやめ、植物の実りは狂い、薬草はその力を失う。すると伝染病が起きる。
というのが議論の筋である。まず重要なポイントは、まず王の不正が出発点であること、伝染病が起きた時に、王はまず自分の行いをただす必要があることである。これが聖武天皇が天平の天然痘を前にしたことであると考えるといい。（彼が典拠としたのはなんだろう？）ついでにいうと、長い歴史スパンをとると、王の過ちから無知な民衆の過ちへと大きく力点が変わっていることも憶えておいたほうがいい。
それよりも重要なことは、人為と自然が共鳴して乱れ、その帰結として伝染病が起きていることである。ここでもともと伝染しているのは病気というよりも不正である。臣民は王の真似をして不正となる。それが自然を侵し、最終的には薬草の効力が低下して医学が無力になり、伝染病が襲う。
[The editor has] not included any material from the much earlier religious literature of India, for example from the Vedic Samhitas or Brahmanas. These texts are not about medicine as classically conceived, but about Indo-Aryan ritual practices. It is true that there are parts of these texts, especially the Atharvaveda, which bear on the early history of medicine in India. [///] However, if we look more closely at the medical ideas and practices preserved in the early Vedic religious literature, we find that for the most part they do not form an obvious precursor to the system of classical Ayurveda. Indeed, such medical material as is recoverable from the Vedic literature remarkable more for its differences from classical Ayurveda than for its similarities. To quote but one example, there is no clear mention in Vedic literature of the system of three humours or dosas, one of the centerpieces of Ayurveda. Xxix
Zysk sees Ayurveda as a medical tradition emerging from the ascetic miliey which existed in North India in the fifth century BC. He has found evidence in the earliest literature preserved by Buddhist monks, who were part of this milieu, which meshes almost perfectly with early Ayurveda as represented by the Compendia of Susruta and Caraka. Xxx“A translation that reads well in English may still be wrong: one that reads badly in English is always wrong.” Xxx, citing A.S. Tritton.
It is well known that when European physicians first encountered Indian medicine in the sixteenth century they found a system that was – in its broad outlines – completely recognizable. Xlv.
Caraca’s compendium “On epidemics”
My dear boy, one may observe the worsening conditions of the constellations, all the planets, the moon, sun, wind, and fire, and the view in all directions too; they are all behaving unnaturally. Not long from now, the earth herself will cease to yield the proper savours, potencies, ripening, and potential in herbal medicines. And the disruption is bound to lead to the prevalence of disease. So, my dear boy, before the calamity, and before the earth loses her juices, you must gather the medicines, while their savours, virtues, ripening, and potential are still intact. 38.
My dear boy, one may observe the worsening conditions of the constellations, all the planets, the moon, sun, wind, and fire, and the view in all directions too; they are all behaving unnaturally. Not long from now, the earth herself will cease to yield the proper savours, potencies, ripening, and potential in herbal medicines. And the disruption is bound to lead to the prevalence of disease. So, my dear boy, before the calamity, and before the earth loses her juices, you must gather the medicines, while their savours, virtues, ripening, and potential are still intact. 38.
The root cause of epidemics is “unrighteousness” “Thus, when the leaders in a district, city, guild, or community transgress virtue, they cause their people to live unrighteously. / Their subjects and dependents from town and country, and those who make their living from commerce, start to make that unrighteousness grow. The next thing is that the unrighteousness suddenly overwhelms virtue. Then, those whose virtue is overwhelmed are abandoned even by the gods. Next, the seasons bring calamity on those whose virtue has thus been overwhelmed, on those who have unrighteous leaders, on those who have been abandoned by the gods. 41-2
So the rains do not provide water at the proper time, or it rains in the wrong way. The winds do not blow properly. The earth suffers disaster. The waters dry up. The herbs become denatured, and mutate. They they bring epidemic destruction on the localities, because of the corruption in what one touches, and in what is edible. 42.
