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Sushruta Samhita


The Sushruta Samhita (सुश्रुतसंहिता, IAST: Suśrutasaṃhitā, literally "Suśruta's Compendium") is an ancient Sanskrit text on medicine and surgery, and one of the most important such treatises on this subject to survive from the ancient world. The Compendium of Suśruta is one of the foundational texts of Ayurveda (Indian traditional medicine), alongside the Caraka-Saṃhitā, the Bheḷa-Saṃhitā, and the medical portions of the Bower Manuscript. It is one of the two foundational Hindu texts on medical profession that have survived from ancient India.

The Suśrutasaṃhitā is of great historical importance because it includes historically unique chapters describing surgical training, instruments and procedures.

Ancient qualifications of a Nurse

That person alone is fit to nurse or to attend the bedside of a patient, who is cool-headed and pleasant in his demeanor, does not speak ill of any body, is strong and attentive to the requirements of the sick, and strictly and indefatigably follows the instructions of the physician.

The early scholar Rudolf Hoernle proposed that given that the author of Satapatha Brahmana – an ancient Vedic text, was aware of Sushruta doctrines, those Sushruta doctrines should be dated based on the composition date of Satapatha Brahmana. The composition date of the Brahmana is itself unclear, added Hoernle, and he estimated it to be about the sixth century BCE. While Loukas et al. date the text to mid 1st-millennium BCE, Boslaugh dates the currently existing text to the 6th-century CE.

Rao in 1985 suggested that the original layer to the Sushruta Samhita was composed in 1st millennium BCE by "elder Sushruta" consisting of five books and 120 chapters, which was redacted and expanded with Uttara-tantra as the last layer of text in 1st millennium CE, bringing the text size to six books and 184 chapters. Walton et al., in 1994, traced the origins of the text to 1st millennium BCE.

Meulenbeld in his 1999 book states that the Suśruta-saṃhitā is likely a work that includes several historical layers, whose composition may have begun in the last centuries BCE and was completed in its presently surviving form by another author who redacted its first five chapters and added the long, final chapter, the "Uttaratantra." It is likely that the Suśruta-saṃhitā was known to the scholar Dṛḍhabala (fl. 300-500 CE, also spelled Dridhabala), which gives the latest date for the version of the work that has survived into the modern era.


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