[Buddha-l] Re: Aama do.sa I

[jkirk]

Considering the length of time it took to get anywhere in those days I
suspect one pretty much either had to trade goods or be someone who could
offer specialised services (e.g. a skilled artisan or a physician) in order
to maintain oneself on such long journeys.

Also, given the likelihood of falling ill on long journeys to foreign lands,
if I were a wealthy merchant organising a trading caravan or voyage - one of
the first people I'd want to take along with me would be a trusted
physician. (If the physician were literate he might usefully double up as a
secretary and accountant as well.)

All in all I think medical knowledge would have served as a fairly good
passport and ticket to travel.

...........
Medicines (and drugs) are and always have been an almost ideal object of
trade - light weight, valuable - (with a value that increases the further
away you get from the source), and for the most part non-perishable.  With
trade of specialized goods knowledge of how to use those goods generally
gets traded or transferred as well. (That way you get to sell two things)

Medicine a "special case"? - just look at the number of people - qualified
and unqualified - successfully (at least in financial terms) practising
various forms of "alternative medicine" of exotic origin in the west - often
despite the best efforts of the powerful medical lobby to stop them. Do you
think things would have been so different then? Human nature having changed
very little, I don't think so.

While there may have been resistance  from the local medical establishment
to foreign medicine and ideas, even in those times I can imagine a few local
physicians wanting to obtain the latest exotic medicine or bit of foreign
medical knowledge just to be one up on their colleagues.

I do agree that transfer of this kind of knowledge is a complex process - if
something seems to be efficacious people will inevitably interpret it in
terms of their own way of seeing things - or adapt it to fit in with the
theories current in their society far sooner than they will actually change
those theories in light of this something new.

best regards

- Chris
==============
Hi Chris,

Brilliant. You beat me to it. I'd only add that, as we know from the history
of Indic cultural expansions into southeast asia (such as parts of today's
Indonesia and also former Indo-China and Cambodia), traders over the seas
were the medium of expansion while Hindu priests and/or Brahmins and
Buddhist monks went along to proselytise.
It must be the case that some medical practitioners of Ayurveda were also
'renouncers' and free to accompany traders on the silk routes as well.
(Perhaps grhastya practitioners also went along for these trips, but I doubt
if very many did it, being hooked up with wives and progeny. Of course, such
details can only be speculated upon.) Buddhist monks often knew about
various kinds of medical practice, as did cultivated Brahmins educated in
various shastras of all kinds.

Best, Joanna 



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