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The Transmission of Indian Knowledge to Islamicate Civilization

Lecture Notes for Berlin Workshop, September 2014


Y. Tzvi Langermann

I have chosen to speak today about the transmission of Indian knowledge


to Islamicate civilization. However, I will exploit this opportunity to make
some general observations about the transmission of knowledge,
illustrating them with examples from my specific topic. But first, let me offer
a brief list of points that I think are important concerning the transmission of
Indian knowledge.
Hybridized already. Dimitri Gutas placed at the beginning of his
seminal book, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, this quotation from Edward
Said: "Partly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one
another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous,
extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic." (Edward W. Said,
Culture and Imperialism)
Clearly, Gutas has in mind the hybrid reflected in the title of his book
(and the subtitle, "Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement"). However, the
process should be taken to refer not just to the hybridization that went on
within Islamic civilization, but no less to the cultures that fed into
Islamicate civilization. This is certainly the case with astronomy: "Greek
astronomy" was thoroughly hybridized with the Babylonian tradition, and
"Indian" astronomy was ereced on the basis of pre-Ptolemaic Greek
traditions, with an input from Babylonia as well.
Reception of Indian medicine, like that of Indian astronomy, belongs
to earliest phases of reception of "foreign sciences" in Islamic civilization
recent paper of Kevin van Bladel shows that Barmakids, who brought
Indian science to Baghdad, originated from an area in Central Asia that
maintained significant contacts with India, including the importation of
Sanskrit texts
No translations of medical texts extant, other than Shanaq's book on
poisons; other texts cited from, referred to; very often citation is only to
"the scholars of India" or the like; al-Tabari's work most important,
concentrated repository of Indian medicine in Arabic
In astronomy, a new hybrid eventually developed, mainly based on
Greek astronomy, with Indian trigonometric methods (and some other
stuff), and a whole lot of innovations on the part of Islamicate scientists
by contrast, medicine was far less integrated into the Islamic medical
tradition that developed; of course some materia medica made their way
into the Arabic literature on the subject, but materia came from all over
the world, and do not say much (at least in my opinion); acquiring a plant,
which may or may not be recognized by the consumer as being of Indian
origin, is not of the same order as absorbing Indian notions of maintaining
health, rejuvenation, and the like
similar to situation of Plato; Ibn al-Nadim and others indicate that
much more was translated than is available now, also some earlier
thinkers (Bakr al-Mawsili, Abu Bakr al-Razi) drawn to Platonism; but as it
was displaced by Aristotelianism, texts also lost;
no indigenous people who knew Sanskrit--Indian scholars attracted to
Baghdad, seemingly mainly as physicians; differs from Greek tradition,
where Christian scholars knew Greek, also had Syriac versions of Greek
texts
meeting with a living culture; Greek civilization considered to be dead,
doesn't appear to me that Byzantines were identified with Greeks even if
Greek manuscripts were available there;
a great burst in reception of Indian materials well after Abbasid
period, translations go on well into modern times
later translations part of a two way process, with products of
Islamicate civilization being made available in India
No translations of medical texts extant, other than Shanaq's book on
poisons; other texts cited from, referred to; very often citation is only to
"the scholars of India" or the like

Obviously the first and very critical stage in the transmission of knowledge
is the actual transfer from bearer to recipient. This can be done orally,
person to person. The bearer may belong to the transmitting culture, but
may also be someone who belongs to the recipient culture, who has visited
and witnessed phenomena belonging to the transmitters. Transmission can
also be carried out in writing, by producing a translation (or summary, or
report) of a book written in the language of the transmitting culture.

Written transmission, by way of translation, may be the most important


means. This seems to be particularly true for Islamicate culture,which
witnessed a massive, government sponsored appropriation of the written
heritage of a number of civilizations. Translation is also the most amenable
form of transmission for academic study. One can have before oneself two
texts, in two different languages, and undertake a comparative study.
Philological skills, rather than historical training, seem to be the forte of
people who engage in this form of research. However, translation is not
necessarily the way in which transmission made its greatest impact. We
must be careful not to identify the two processes, translation and
transmission.

Indeed, the full story of transmission is much more complex. A competitive,


or even hostile encounter, can be responsible for a very weighty
transmission; and a painstaking translation, which takes into account
commentaries in the Hindu tradition as well as a proper choice of words
and phrases for the proper presentation to a Muslim audience, can have no
effect at all. Here are examples of both of these options from the
transmission of Indian knowledge to Islamic civilization.

In a paper that appeared only posthumously, and unfortunately was not


included in the five volume publication of his collected works, the late
Professor Shlomo Pines begins by noting notes the disputation conducted
by Jahm bin Safwan (a Muslim whose views were far removed from what
later became Muslim orthodoxy) with Buddhist monks early in the eighth
century. ("A Study of the Impact of Indian, Mainly Buddhist, Thought on
Some Aspects of Kalam Doctrines." Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
17 (1994): 182-203) Indeed, his heresy as he himself is said to have
admitted, was a consequence of his dispute with the Samaniyya (the
common Arabic term for Buddhists):

This is the sum of the discourse (Kalm) of the Jahmiyya. They were
called after Jahm, because Jahm b. Safwn was the first who derived this
discourse from that of the Samaniyya, who are a subdivision (sinf) of the
Iranians (al-ajam ) in the region called Khursn. They induced him to
have doubts with regard to his religion in such a way that for forty days he
stopped praying. For he said: I will not pray to someone whom I do not
know. (p. 2, from al-Ash'ari, ed Ritter, p. 280)

Jahm's perplexity was caused by the Buddhist challenge to his source of


knowledge, in this case, his knowledge of God; God cannot be perceived
by the senses. Pines goes on to show that the sources of knowledge
(pramAn.as), especially that of inference (anumAnA) were a central theme
in the debate. According to one version, Jahm asked the Buddhists if they
believe in the soul. They do, but the soul can be known only by inference.
Jahm drew then an analogy between knowledge of the soul and knowledge
of God. Jahm's ultimate reply, which is that the existence of God is known
by inference (dalil), was later adopted by many mutakallimun.
This article by Pines, in which the great man returned to a question he left
open in his dissertation, contains many twists and turns. I have greatly
simplified the account of Jahm's disputations, and skipped over many
points. The key point he develops is that the concept of "necessary
knowledge" ('ilm daruri), so important in the kalam, "is derived to a
considerable extent from an Indian, primarily Buddhist, notion" (p. 10).
However, the Indian impact on epistemology, as it emerged in Islamic
thought, is not a case of a simple direct translation or borrowing. No
translations into Arabic of the Sanskrit texts consulted by Pines are known
to have been made. Moreover, it was not the single event of Jahm's
disputation which opened the door for Indian epistemology into Musim
theology.
Rather, in the words of Pines, "The disputations of Jahm with the Buddhists
do not by themselves adequately account for the origins of these Kalm
doctrines. Their adoption appears to point to numerous and prolonged
intellectual contacts between Muslims and Buddhists, and perhaps also to
adepts of other Indian philosophical schools." (pp. 15-16)
The argument rests, so I think, on a correspondence between the sources
of knowledge in Buddhist thought and the kalam, in which pratskayam,
"whose etymology is evocative of perception", and ilm daruri, which literally
means "necessary knowledge". The "way of thinking", as Pines puts it, and
the categories included in "necessary knowledge" by some leading
Mu'tazilis--especially a person's awareness of the states of his own soul--
have no counterpart in Greek thought, but they bear an unmistakeable
resemblance to the Buddhist conception of perception. Moreover, the
difficulty that some Mu'tazilis saw in these meanings that are given to to the
adjective "necessary" in the term "necessary knowledge" point to the origin
of the concept in a foreign culture. (Pines suggests that it may be due to
the difficulty in translating the Sanskrit word niyata).
As in all his studies, Pines approaches his own suggestions critically, and
all that he suggests is preliminary, and further study is needed, hopefully on
the basis of new sources, etc. However, he has indeed said a lot.
Let us know contrast this story with the case of the Arabic version of the
Yoga-Sutra prepared by Abu Rayhan al-Biruni. It is a real work of art; I can
think of no other book where the intermediary took such pains to present
something very foreign--not just that it was written in a foreign language,
but mainly because it, and the commentaries it spawned, encapsulate a
way of thinking, and a way of life, so different from that which the recipient
public was familiar. Biruni did not merely render into Arabic the short work
ascribed to Patanjali.
Al-Biruni's version survives in a single manuscript, which is not in a good
state of preservation. It was first discovered by Louis Massignon, and
studied by a number of great scholars, most notably Helmut Ritter. A full
Englsih translation, with an introduction and copious notes, was published
by Shlomo Gelbaum and Tuvia Gelblum in four installments in BSOAS. The
sutras, most of them anyway, are found in al-Biruni, but they have been
"woven together with a commentary on the Yogasutra, assuming the form
of a dialogue of questions and answers" (pt 1, 303). Scholars, most
recently Pines & Gelbaum, have invested a great deal of effort in trying to
identify the commentary, without success. The two scholars further suggest
that "al-Biruni relied to a considerable extent on his own intelligence and
autodidactic capacity in studying the sutras and their commentary."
Finally, we must also take into account an active intervention on al-Biruni's
part, namely islamization. This in fact complicates the question of
identifying the commentary used by al-BIruni. The notions of devotion and
liberation, and concept of the deity, which are expounded in al-Biruni's text,
could suggest that he was using one of the commentaries composed when
India "was full of mystical and devotional currents, and whose versions of
the Yoga were shaped under the influence of Vedantic ideas and bhakti
(mystical devotion)" (305, from M Eliade); however, the use of Arabic terms
such as khalas or ittihad could be due to al-Biruni's effort at making the text
understandable, if not acceptable, to his Muslim audience. An example of
islamization is found in his rendering of karma-vipaka, the result or effect of
karma (intentional action) by a phrase that invokes the pair raha-khawf
(optimistic hope or dread), a dialectic common to Sufism (my observation).

In sum, Pines & Gelblum characterize al-Biruni's Arabic treatise as "an


operative or functional, though not literal, translation of the Yogasutra with
commentary" (p. 307). The question I want to raise is this: what effect did
this functional translation, in which the author invested considerable effort,
have on Islamicate civilization? DId it contribute in any way to the spread of
knowledge of the yoga? The answer seems to be a clear, resounding no.
Biruni prepared an Arabic version of another Sanskrit text, the Samkhya,
and that does not survive in even a single manuscript, or quotation (other
than in al-Biruni's own book on India). Indeed, al-Biruni's magnificent book
on India, which is replete with snippets from Indian texts, and otherwise
unknown literature from Greek and other languages, also had no impact at
all on Islamic thought. These scholarly, professional, learned translations
had no impact at all. Yoga did make inroads, especially among Sufis, as we
shall see later; but not by way of al-Biruni.

al-Tabari
I propose to look today not only at direct literary translation, but at later
stages of transmission, where the received knowledge becomes
embedded, seamlessly, in texts of the recipient culture. This belongs to the
phase that Professor Sabra called "naturalization", though he did not use
the term in this specific manner. Both of these processes may be illustrated
from the work of Ali bin Rabban al-Tabari.

I mentioned earlier that we know, from the bibliography given by Ibn al-
Nadim in particular, that several medical treatises were translated from
Sanskrit into Arabic; Ibn al-Nadim names about ten. However, almost none
of the translations are extant. Extensive citations, or perhaps paraphrases--
I cannot say, and it does not matter much for the present discussion--are
found in the writings of one medical writer and historian Ali b. Rabban al-
Tabari.

There has been some controversy about his biography. At one time it was
thought that he was born a Jew, but now it is quite clear that he was born
into a Christian family; in any event, he did convert to Islam later in life. He
worked in the first half of the ninth century. It is now thought that he died
around 864, which means that reports that he was the teacher of Abu Bakr
al-Razi--one of the most important Arabic writers, who also had access to
Indian medical texts--these reports must be taken to refer to al-Tabari's
enormous influence on al-Razi (Sezgin, 237). Both al-Tabari and al-Razi,
as far as we know, relied on the Arabic translations that had been prepared
earlier.
I have looked at the materials drawn from India in two of al-Tabari's
writings. His mini-encyclopedia, Firdaus al-Hikma, which was edited nearly
a century ago by Siddiqi, and his treatise on the preservation of health
(Tadbir al-Sihha), which is found in a single manuscript at Oxford, and has
not yet been studied at all. It is interesting to compare the way the Indian
science is presented in the two books

Firdaws: almost as an afterthought, a spur to the reader to think about an


alternative to the dominant tradition, which is the Greek; section on Indian
medicine missing from Berlin MSS, one of manuscripts used in SIddiqi's
edition.
[p. 557] "Now that I have come to the end of the book, I think it fitting to
record in one section (maqala) some chapters taken from the better books
of the India on medicine, and the more excellent of their remedies. I have
found that doing so will add to knowledge of the student. Indeed, when he
will know what these two great nations agree upon, and what they dispute,
he will be benefit from it (tafannaqa bi-hi; see Freytag); he will come out
with its knowledge and application. What I have written contains many
items that agree with the doctrine of the philosophers of al-Rum, but also
items that conflict with them. I do not know their arguments in their defense.
Perhaps the reader will find in it a nice teaching, or a correct opinion, which
he will then accept, rejecting that which contradicts it. I have put together
here a small collection, and some sources ('uyn) from the science of the
peope (? of India?? min 'ilm al-qaum), which I have gathered from the
book[s] Jarak (Caraka), Susrud (Susruta), Nidan (Nidana), and
(Astangahrdaya)."
The Carakasamhita, probably dating from te second century, reached
Arabic readers through the intermediary of a Persian translation. It is cited
about twenty times by al-Razi in his al-Hawi.
The Susrut dates to the fifth century; it is too is cited by al-Razi.
The Nidana of Madhava was written probably in the 7th century if not later,
thus making it (probably) the latest book of Indian medicine cited by al-
Tabari.
FInally, the Astangahrdaya of Vagbhata; its date is not known. Al-Razi
refers to it a few times in his al-Hawi. In fact, al-Tabari and al-Razi are the
only authors so far known (as listed by Sezgin) to have cited from Indian
medical works.

Tadbir al-Sihha: seemingly more egalitarian; having presented the Greek


tradition, will now present the Indian one: "We have now explained what
the Romans have said about hygiene. As for the Indians, they say [as
follows]." The Firdaws has 36 chapters on India. The first seven chapter
deal with some basic ideas of the human body, the definition of medicine,
what the physician needs to know, and so forth. The next ten chapters deal
with diet, sleep, etc.--that is, hygiene or preventative medicine. The
remaining chapters deal mostly with pathology and therapeutics. So about
one-fifth of the section on India takes up the same issues as the book on
hygiene. The late treatise that I will talk about at the end of my
presentation, the section on India is devoted exclusively to preventative
care as well. It seems to me that on that issue, which is very similar to what
we would call choosing a healthy lifestyle, there was more of an openness
to alternatives in Islamicate civilization. Basic pathology and therapeutics,
by contrast, had to stay in line with the Galenic tradition.

FIrdaws: cites by name Indian books


Tadbir al-Sihha: no source references; again, it seems that the rules for
maintaining health were viewed as national or ethnic traditions rather than
the contribution of individual, name bearing authorities

I would now like to look at one particular part of the daily routine, and
suggest--with all due caution, as a possibility at best--that a rule was
absorbed, transformed , and naturalized. I am sharing with you a research
question that is in its infancy; what I am about to suggest is at best highly
speculative. However, I think it worthwhile, especially to share with you how
I define the problem, and try to tackle it.

The daily routine is that of brushing one's teeth with the siwak, a toothbrush
made from a twig. It is an ancient practice, widespread in the East, and
mentioned inter alia in pre-Islamic poetry. Clearly one brushes one's teeth
in order to have clean teeth, sweet-smelling breath, and other benefits for
the teeth, mouth, and gums. However, some texts--Indian and Islamic--
ascribe to the use of the siwak benefits that go far beyond dental hygiene. I
think it not wild to suppose that these extra-dental benefits were taken over
from Indian sources; however, no route of transmission can be sketched
yet.
Let us first look at the passage from al-Tabari's Tadbir al-Sihha:

"We have now explained what the Romans have said about hygiene. As for
the Indians, they say [as follows]. Whoever desires health ought to arouse
from his sleep in the final seventh of the night. He should then perform his
ablutions, put on his cleanest garment, and begin to praise Allah and
beseech Him to [provide him with] his needs. He should clean himself from
contact with anything bitter or spicy; the siw?k should be moist, even (?),
with few knots, as wide as the pinky finger and as long as a handspan. It
should not be from a trees that are unknown, because one cannot be sure
that it is not poisonous. Moreover, it should be neither rotten nor very old.
He should brush along the breadth of the teeth, gums, and tongue. In
summertime he should wash his mouth with cold water, and in wintertime
with hot water. The benefits of the siw?k include cleaning the mouth,
liquefying the phlegm, freeing the tongue and making it sweet, clarifying
speech, and whetting the appetite. Someone suffering from indigestion
should not clean [with the siw?k], nor someone who is vomiting, or suffers
from cough, facial paralysis, thirst, ophthalmia [eye disease], or palpitations
of the heart."

The use of a twig as a sort of toothbrush was part of the dental hygiene of
many cultures in the East. There is evidence that it was practiced by the
pre-Islamic Arabs. The Prophet was scrupulous about its practice.
However, the ahadith that mention the siwak or miswak do not specify the
medical benefits of its use, especially those that are not related directly to
the teeth or even to the mouth. These are, however, mentioned by later
medical writers, especially scholars like Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, in his al-
Tibb al-Nabawi:

"Siwak is favorable for many reasons, such as perfuming the breath,


strengthening the gingival, clearing the phlegm and the sight and
preventing cavities. It is also keep up the health of the stomach, helps the
digestion process, clears the voice, makes the speech eloquent, and
encourages individual to recite the Quran, remember of Allah and pray.
Siwak also fights the feeling of sleepiness and lethargy, pleases the Lord,
gratifies the angels and boosts up the act of good deeds (Ibn Qayyim,
2003)." (from Sunna of Siwak)

Note these extra-dental properties in particular: (1) makes the speech


eloquent (2) encourages individual to recite the Quran, remember of Allah
and pray (3) fights the feeling of sleepiness and lethargy
In the Firdaws the same routine is given as in al-Tabari's Tadbir al-Sihha,
nearly word-for-word, but the source is named: the Astangahrdaya of
Vagbhata. However, in that treatise I see no benefits listed, neither dental
nor-extra dental (trans. K.R. S. Murthy, Varansai, fifth edition 2001).
However, a very problematic source does list extra-dental benefits similar
to some found in al-Tabari and especially to those listed in al-Tibb al-
Nabawi. These include "a relish for food", "sense of freedom to the teeth,
tongue, lips and palate", and especially, strengthening "the religious
inclination" and giving "lightness to the organs". These are cited by
Bhishagratna as "additional texts" to his translation of the Susruta, one of
the texts that al-Tabari does know. Now these "additional texts" are a
mystery; from Bhishagratna's introduction I would take them to be what we
might call variants or interpolations, but he gives no details (manuscripts,
books) that can allow us to identify them.

Still, I hope that my methodology is clear and sound. Finding the same or
very similar idiosyncratic extra-dental benefits ascribed to the siwak in both
traditions indicates a transmission. The inclusion of these benefits in a book
on the medicine of the Prophet is about as much as one can ask for as far
as naturalization.

Amrtakunda

The Amrtakunda (Pool of Nectar), is a text on Yoga; it no longer is extant


in its original language. Fortunately, the transmission of this text has been
studied by Carl Enrst, a South Asianist as well as leading scholar of
Sufism. The Arabic version circulated under two different titles. Persian,
Urdu, and Turkish versions were also prepared. The Yoga techniques
(including asanas or positions) were practiced by some Sufis. However, the
Arabic version was not a pure translation, but, rather an Islamicized hybrid.
The entire product was Islamicized as well. For details of this fascinating
story I refer you to Ernsts article in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
(Ernst, Carl W. "The Islamization of Yoga in the Amrtakunda Translations."
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13.2 (2003): 199-226.) Ernst gives
considerable space to a critique of so-called Orientalist attempts to find
Indian influence upon Sufism. I am not about to say anything about
sources of influence; I only wish to document the reception and
transformation of an Indian text, relying in part of Ernsts own research.
The introduction tells us that the texts (first Persian, from which the Arabic
was made) in Bengal in 1210; the translators were yogis who converted to
Islam. Ernst regards this story as fictitious but nonetheless holds that the
text was first rendered into Persian; so we have here a chain of
transmission from one language to another. The new Arabic text acquired
a new title, Hawd al-Hayat or Hawd Ma al-Hayat, Pool of Life or Pool of
the Water of Life). It also carried an alternative title, Mirat al-Maani, The
Mirror of Ideas. Moreover the Persian who prepared the Arabic text not
only reworked it thoroughly; he also added pieces from two other texts, one
of which (the Hymn of the Pearl) traces back to a gnostic work, the Acts of
Thomas, the other to a treatise by the twelfth century Ishraqi philosopher,
Suhrawardi Maqtul. In short, he produced a deeply hybridized, Islamic text,
using materials drawn from a number of traditions.
This text underwent a different sort of transmission, remaining in the Arabic
language but transcribed into the Hebrew alphabet. Transcription of this
sort was in fact a large-scale phenomenon among Jews in Arabic speaking
lands, many of whom could not read the Arabic script. The transcriptions of
Mirat al-Maani were made in the Yemen, not later than fifteenth century,
and possibly much earlier. This is not surprising: Yemen was a key node in
the flourishing India trade of the period, and its active Jewish community
was very deeply immersed in philosophy and science, and was quite open-
-as indeed were many of the local Muslims--to literature produced by
members of other faiths. In fact, the references to this book in Yemeni
Jewish literature, and a few manuscript fragments of the transcription that
we have, are likely to be the earliest record of The Pool of Life in Arabic
speaking lands. It is cited, for example, in an interesting document
published by my late mentor, Rabbi Yosef Qafih, which defends the
allegorical reading of scripture that was so widely applied by medieval
philosophers, and so controversial.
For purposes of illustration, let us look at one of the fragments of this text
transcribed into the Hebrew alphabet; I found in the Nachlass of Rabbi
Qafih, in a folder full of fragments that he did not manage to get to in his
lifetime. WIth a little bit of imagination, you should be able to understand
that the diagrams illustrate the yoga exercise in which one focuses ones
vision on the tip of ones nose.

A Chapter on Rasayana (medical or alchemical recipes for health,


especially the prolongation of life and rejuvenation)

My second example is drawn from one of my own ongoing projects. It


concerns a rather late text which presents, in Arabic, an entire chapter on
rasayana (or, in the Arabic broken plural used by the author, rasain),
recipes for drugs that promise longevity, rejuvenation, or both. It is one part
of a treatise which I found in a manuscript housed in Teheran (but
conveniently put on-line by the Iranians), which has never been studied,
nor is it even mentioned in most of the basic bibliographical tools. As far as
I can determine, the author, whose name is Muhammad Ali al-Qazwini,
lived in the 18th century; the treatise, however, reads just like any medieval
work. The author is definitely a Shiite, probably living or working in the
vicinity of Kerbala.
In the few minutes that remain for my talk I can mention a couple of salient
points. Al-Qazwini praises his teacher for being someone who joins
between tradition and reason (al-jmi bayna al-maql wa-l-manql). He
then announces that in his own treatise I have joined between prayer and
medication.
I consider works proclaiming to join between two or more traditions to
constitute a genre of Arabic literature which address a necessary feature of
the processes of transmission and hybridization. The most important
representative, the work ascribed to al-Farabi joining between Plato and
Aristotle, continues a tradition that had begun in late antique classical
culture. Another early Arabic treatise joins together Galen and
Dioscorides.
Some times, it is clear that the author is interested in presenting the
consensus of different traditions. This is evident, for example, in al-Risala
al-Haruniyya, written by the Damscene Masih bin Hakam in the early ninth
century. I have suggested elsewhere that Masih was a member of the
Isawiyya, a Jewish-Christian sect. Masih tells his that he spent three years
studying in India before moving to Baghdad, where he worked in the
service of Harun al-Rashid. In his book, he cites a certain Filatis (the name
is surely corrupted, I cannot identify him), an Indian scholar, no less than
sixteen times. In most of these citations, Filatis and Galen are said to have
taught the same doctrine. Sometimes other famous people from antiquity,
such as Hippocrates and Aristotle, join in the consensus. In most of the
remaining citations, Filatis speaks of astrology, which is not surprising for
an Indian.
But let me return to the tract I am studying. It "joins together" three
traditions--here not referring to a consensus, but a comparison of different
teaching that all aim at the same goal: an Islamic one, consisting mainly in
what we would call popular, farmers almanac, snake-oil remedies for
longevity and rejuvenation; Greek medical advice on the same topics; and
the Indian recipes which are the focus of my current research. Works of this
sort reveal an awareness on the part of actors, and indeed, an active,
conscious participation, in the process that we would call, I think,
hybridization.

I do not know to what extent al-Qazwini drew directly from Indian (Sanskrit)
sources. Rasayana are mentioned in a few earlier Arabic books (including
al-Birunis book in India) but they are not the ones described by al-Qazwini.
The only book he cites by name in this chapter is another Arabic text, 'Uyun
al-Shifa' (The Wellsprings of Healing), also unknown--but again, I may
have found a copy in a different manuscript at Teheran. He does, however,
transcribe in another chapter a mantra that is to be chanted when preparing
the sulfur rasayana; so there is a good chance that he is drawing directly
from Indian sources. Nine rasayanas are described. Most of the rasayanas
are mineral-based, using mostly sulfur, mercury, and, yes, arsenic; and
rasayana is a term used in Indian alchemy. However, I would not classify
the text under consideration as alchemical; medicine and alchemy have a
had a long working relationship. The last two recipes are different: a recipe
for bil oil, prepared from the pit of the Bengal quince; we know from other
sources that that is a sacred tree to which magical properties have been
ascribed. The last item is for a drug which is said to fortify vision, but
functions also as an anti-toxicant. The Carakasamhita, one of the most
important compilations of Indian medicine, lists eye-medication as one of
twenty-four therapeutic measures that are to be taken against poisoning.

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