Tantra Dosha and Tantra Guna in the Ashtanga Hridaya: Charaka's 19 Marks of a Good Book, Arunadatta's 15 Faults

इस लेख को हिंदी में पढ़ें: तंत्र दोष और तंत्र गुण: चरक के 19 गुण, अरुणदत्त के 15 दोष

📖 25 min read · Ashtanga Hridaya, Vidyanath's English edition, the Tantrayukti-vichara of its Maulika Siddhanta section (printed pages 513–530), read beside the Charaka Samhita, Vimana Sthana 8 and Siddhi Sthana 12

Where These Pages Sit in Vidyanath's Ashtanga Hridaya

We have been reading Vagbhata's Ashtanga Hridaya, the Sutrasthana, chapter by chapter in Vidyanath's English edition. Our last reading, Kshara Agnikarma Vidhi, finished the thirtieth and last chapter. After it the volume becomes a study book of questions, verses to learn, tables, a plant index and a glossary, all restating what came before. The one section with new matter comes near the end, under the heading Maulika Siddhanta, basic principles.

It has two parts. The first, on srishti-utpatti, the creation of the world from prakriti and purusha, quotes the first chapter of the Sushruta Samhita's Sharira Sthana (verses 3, 4, 6 and 9), which we have read in Karma Purusha. The second, Tantrayukti-vichara, printed pages 513 to 530, opens with the thirty-six tantrayuktis, the devices a treatise is built with. Sushruta's version of that list is the subject of our page on tantra yukti in the Sushruta Samhita, so we do not go through the thirty-six again. This page reads what follows them: everything the commentator Arunadatta added to show how a text should be judged and how its lines should be opened.

Arunadatta's commentary is the Sarvangasundara (the edition spells it Sarvangasundari), and Vidyanath's preamble names it, with Hemadri's Ayurveda Rasayana, as one of the two commentaries on the book still in common use. Our guide to the Ashtanga Hridaya introduces the book itself.

Tantra Dosha: Arunadatta's Fifteen Faults of a Treatise

Vidyanath prints the list first in Arunadatta's Sanskrit and then in English. The Sanskrit opens with the claim a good treatise makes about itself: it is varjitam, free, of fifteen faults, the first of them obscure words.

तथा तन्त्रदोषैः पञ्चदशभिरप्रसिद्धशब्दादिभिर्वर्जितम् ।

The fifteen are aprasiddha-shabda (obsolete words), duhpranita (bad composition), asangatartha (disconnected matter), asukharohi-pada (harsh words), viruddha (contradicting an example, a doctrine or a rule), ativistrta (too long), atisankshipta (too brief), aprayojana (no stated purpose), bhinnakrama (broken order), sandigdha (ambiguity), punarukta (repetition), nishpramanaka (no authority), asamaptartha (no conclusion), aparthaka (meaningless) and vyahata (self-contradiction).

Every one of them can be found by reading the text itself. None asks who wrote it, who uses it or how famous it is. Keep that in mind, because the older list of good qualities does ask.

Tantra Guna: The Nineteen Marks of Charaka Vimana Sthana 8.3

Vidyanath gives the marks of a good treatise, shastra lakshana or tantra guna, as nineteen Sanskrit adjectives and does not say where they come from. They are Charaka's. In the Charaka Samhita, Vimana Sthana 8.3, a student who wants to learn medicine is told to choose the book first; the teacher comes next, in 8.4. In Gabriel Van Loon's English the student should select that which is great, used by eminent and wise men, full of ideas, respected by authorities, intelligible and beneficial to all the 3 types of disciples (dull, mediocre and intelligent), free from the defect of repetition, coming down from the sages, and so on to an image at the end: Such a treatise, like the clear sun, enlightens the entire subject, while warding off the darkness of ignorance.

Vidyanath's nineteen, with his meanings in short:

1. Sumahad-yashasvi: great and famous, consulted by scholars.
2. Dhira-purusha-asevita: kept and used by the wise.
3. Artha-bahula: rich in meaning.
4. Apta-jana-pujita: esteemed by authorities.
5. Trividha-shishya-buddhi-hita: suited to three kinds of student.
6. Apagata-punarukta-dosha: free of the fault of repetition.
7. Arsha: composed by the rishis.
8. Supranita-sutra-bhashya-sangraha-krama: aphorism, explanation and summary in good order.
9. Svadhara: self-explanatory.
10. Anavapatita-shabda: no obsolete words.
11. Akashta-shabda: no harsh or hard words.
12. Pushkala-abhidhana: rich in technical terms and synonyms.
13. Kramagatartha: topics kept in a fixed order.
14. Artha-tattva-vinishchaya-pradhana: firm, unambiguous exposition.
15. Sangatartha: connected matter.
16. Asankula-prakarana: no sections that contradict one another.
17. Ashu-prabodhaka: teaches quickly.
18. Lakshanavat: rich in definitions.
19. Udaharanavat: rich in examples.

Mark six already contains the word dosha: apagata-punarukta-dosha, in Van Loon's words free from the defect of repetition. The idea of a fault in a text sits inside the list of a text's merits from the start.

Tantra Guna Against Tantra Dosha: Eight Exact Mirrors

Put the fifteen faults beside the nineteen marks and most of the faults turn out to be a mark turned inside out. The table is our alignment, made from the meanings Vidyanath prints for both lists. Neither text draws it.

Of the fifteen faults, eight have an exact opposite among the nineteen marks, one a close one, two a partial one, and four none. The exact pairs often share their very words: su-pranita and duh-pranita, well and badly composed; sangatartha and asangatartha; Charaka's punarukta-dosha and Arunadatta's punarukta.

Run it the other way and eleven of Charaka's marks find a partner, while eight do not. The eight are all about a book's standing (great and famous, kept by the wise, composed by the rishis) or about how well it teaches (suited to three kinds of student, rich in technical names, quick to teach, rich in definitions, rich in examples). Charaka judges a book partly from outside, by its reputation and its readers. Arunadatta's faults never leave the page.

One caution about our own table. The bhinnakrama pair depends on reading kramagatartha as "topics in order", Vidyanath's sense. Van Loon renders the same mark with traditional ideas; on his reading bhinnakrama has no mirror and the exact count drops from eight to seven.

Nineteen marks on one side, fifteen faults on the other: eight of the faults are a mark turned inside out.

Nati-sankshepa-vistaram: Too Long, Too Short and Ashtanga Hridaya Sutrasthana 1.5

Two of the faults are a pair about length. Ativistrta elaborates past any need; Vidyanath's example is a discussion of the sweet group that lists every sweet substance there is. Atisankshipta is so compressed that it needs help; his example is the bare word triskandha, the three pillars of cause, sign and medicine, which says little until someone explains it. Charaka's nineteen marks never mention length. The nearest is svadhara, a text that explains itself, which a too-brief text fails; nothing in the nineteen warns against a text that goes on too long, which is why ativistrta has no mirror.

Charaka's closing chapter does talk about length. In Siddhi Sthana 12.36-40 the redactor's work is described this way: The redactor dilates the topics said in brief and abridges the over-detailed ones and thus makes the old treatise a new one. The same passage calls the finished book free from textual defects, and it reaches a second fault without a mirror, asamaptartha, the unfinished text: the redacted book was observed as incomplete by a third, and Drdhabala filled up the gap with 17 chapters. Lengthened, shortened and finished: the faults Charaka's list of merits leaves out are, in his last chapter, the story of his own book.

Vagbhata opens the Ashtanga Hridaya by claiming exactly the virtue the length pair defines. In Sutrasthana 1.4-5, after the line of teachers from Brahma to Agnivesha and the others who each wrote a treatise, he says his book gathers their essence because they were too scattered, and that it is made neither too brief nor too long:

तेभ्योऽतिविप्रकीर्णेभ्यः प्रायः सारतरोच्चयः ॥4॥
क्रियतेऽष्टाङ्गहृदयं नातिसङ्क्षेपविस्तरम् ।

Ati-viprakirna, too widely scattered, is close kin to asangatartha, disconnected matter. Nati-sankshepa-vistaram, not too compressed and not too spread out, is the length pair in two words, and Vidyanath's preamble repeats it in English: the book is neither too abridged nor too elaborated. The fault Charaka's merits never name is the one Vagbhata puts in his opening lines as the reason his book exists.

The picture of a gathering is older still. Charaka ends his own Sutrasthana with it, 30.89 in Van Loon's numbering: As the thread holds together the flowers in a necklace, this sutrasthana has been composed by the sage for the collection of various topics. Sutra means thread.

Scattered, then gathered: Sutrasthana 1.4-5 calls the older treatises too scattered and the Hridaya neither too brief nor too long.

A Printed List of Faults That Shows Two of Them

One small thing on printed page 515 is worth a smile. In the Sanskrit list of tantra doshas as it is set in type, viruddham appears twice, as number 5 and again as number 9, and the numbers 10 and 14 are each used twice. The line names sixteen faults under fourteen numbers, while its heading says fifteen (panchadasha). The English list directly below has fifteen in a clean order, so the intended list is not in doubt.

This is a typesetting slip in a modern edition, not Arunadatta's. But a printed list of the faults of a text shows two of them: punarukta, saying a thing twice, and the kind of broken sequence bhinnakrama describes. The list also overlaps itself once, in the Sanskrit definition of the second fault:

दुःप्रणीतं नाम—सूत्रभाष्यप्रयोजनरहितम् ।

A badly composed text lacks sutra, commentary and purpose (prayojana), and lacking a stated purpose is also, by itself, fault number eight. Nobody writing about writing is immune, which is rather the point of keeping such a list.

Bhinnakrama and Sutrasthana 1.25: Why the Order Is Part of the Meaning

Vidyanath's example for bhinnakrama comes from the first chapter of the Ashtanga Hridaya, and it shows that order is not a matter of style. Sutrasthana 1.25 names, for the three bodily doshas, the best cleansing measure and the best pacifying substance in one line:

शरीरजानां दोषाणां क्रमेण परमौषधम् ॥25॥
बस्तिर्विरेको वमनं तथा तैलं घृतं मधु ।

Nothing in the line says which item belongs to which dosha. The word kramena, "in order", does all the work. The doshas are always named vata, pitta, kapha, so basti, vireka and vamana fall to them in that order, and so do sesame oil (taila), ghee (ghrita) and honey (madhu). Vidyanath's table under the verse sets it out: vata with vastikarma and taila, pitta with vireka and ghrita, kapha with vamana and madhu. Change the customary order of the doshas anywhere in the book without a reason and every line built like this one is misread. That is why a sequence broken without cause is a fault, not a quirk. Our guide to the three doshas keeps the same order throughout.

These are classical statements, quoted for the way they are written, not instructions: basti, vireka and vamana are procedures for a qualified practitioner.

Sesame oil, ghee, honey: in Sutrasthana 1.25 only their order says which dosha the verse pairs each one with.

Viruddha and Vyahata: Contradiction From Outside and From Inside

Two faults are about contradiction. Viruddha looks outward, and Vidyanath gives it three kinds:

• Drishtanta-viruddha, an example that works against its own claim: the self is indestructible because it is not made, "like a pot". A pot is made.
• Siddhanta-viruddha, a statement against accepted doctrine: saying that sweet, sour and salt tastes aggravate vata and pacify kapha, the reverse of Sutrasthana 1.15, where these three pacify vata and increase kapha.
• Samaya-viruddha, going against a rule of tradition. His examples are customs kept since ages for no proper reasoning: not cutting the hair on Fridays, not pulling up grass, not striking stones together.

Vyahata looks inward: the text contradicts itself, a later statement opposing an earlier one. The editor's example pairs two statements about the same enema in the same condition, one recommending it and one forbidding it. We leave the condition unnamed; the point is the shape of the fault. Charaka's sixteenth mark, asankula-prakarana, answers only this inward kind. Nothing in his nineteen speaks to agreement with examples, doctrine or custom, which is why viruddha has no mirror.

Punarukta, Sandigdha, Aprayojana and the Other Faults

Aprasiddha-shabda gets a small table of rare words in Vidyanath: akshiva or vasira for sea salt, bhadra for a bull, arva for a horse. Aprayojana is a text that never says what it is for; if a work has no purpose, the editor says, it is considered useless, and his model of a stated purpose is Charaka's own, Sutrasthana 30.26 in Van Loon: To protect health of the healthy and to alleviate the disorders in the diseased. Our reading of that chapter is Charaka Samhita Part 30.

Sandigdha is a doubtful statement; the editor's example is the bare phrase akala-mrityu, untimely death, given without a word of explanation, and we will not guess at one. Punarukta, repetition, bores the reader and, he adds, makes him doubt the material. Nishpramanaka has no authority behind it, asamaptartha stops without a conclusion, and aparthaka means nothing. Read as a group, the fifteen describe a writer more than a book: someone who chooses odd words, wanders, repeats, contradicts and stops halfway.

The Merits and Demerits Charaka Promised: Siddhi Sthana 12.49-50

Charaka's last chapter lists the thirty-six devices (Siddhi Sthana 12.41-44 in Van Loon's numbering) and says what they are for. As sun is for the lotus and lamp for the house so are the devices of the treatise serving the purpose of amplification and enlightening (12.46); without them, Even studying various treatises a physician does not grasp their ideas (12.47-48).

Then a warning and a promise: Treatise received badly harms the person as weapon does an ignorant one while the treatise and the weapon held up well protects the learned one. And, in Van Loon's brackets: (Hence these will be described again in details in the post-treatise section with (exposition of) merits and demerits of a treatise in order to provide right knowledge.)

A full account of the merits and demerits of a treatise is exactly what the two lists on this page supply. Where Charaka meant it to be given is not settled by these pages. Van Loon's note says only that the line refers to volumes 3 and 4 of P.V. Sharma's edition, and the Charaka Samhita as we have it ends with this chapter. Whether the promised section was lost, never written, or meant as a pointer to another work, we cannot tell from what we have read.

Fifteen Kinds of Vyakhya: How a Commentary Opens a Line

The faults are a reader's test. The next four lists are a commentator's tools, and Vidyanath introduces them in one sentence: Arunadatta, the commentator of Astanga Hrdaya has dealt in detail, a large number of devices other than tantrayuktis such as 15 vyakhyas, 7 kalpanas, 20 or 21 asrayas and 17 tacchilyas. A vyakhya is an explanation, and the fifteen ways of giving one are:

1. Pinda: a whole subject summed up in one sutra.
2. Pada: splitting the words apart.
3. Padartha: the meaning of each split word.
4. Adhikarana: a topic announced, then set out in detail.
5. Prakarana: settling a side question by a point already made.
6. Artha: the natural state of a thing, such as the heaviness of urad and the lightness of moong (masa and mudga).
7. Krichchhra: expanding a sutra stated too briefly.
8. Phala: one's own view, after the views of others.
9. Uchchitaka: drawing out the example inside a sutra.
10. Nyasa: raising a doubt and settling it later with references.
11. Prayojana: the purpose behind a statement.
12. Anuloma: explaining in the sutra's own order.
13. Pratiloma: explaining against that order.
14. Sutra: going through the sutras one by one.
15. Samasta: a commentary on the whole compendium.

Much of the list is about order and scale: anuloma and pratiloma are the two directions a commentary can move through a line, sutra-vyakhya and samasta-vyakhya its two sizes. And two of the fifteen answer faults directly. Krichchhra repairs atisankshipta, and prayojana repairs aprayojana. The commentator's job, on this list, is to fix in the reading what the writing left undone. For pinda the editor quotes the eight-branch line of Sutrasthana 1.5, and for adhikarana the sentence that opens Sutrasthana 2, athato dinacharyadhyayam vyakhyasyamah, after which a full account of the day follows.

Pada Vyakhya on the First Line of the Ashtanga Hridaya

For pada-vyakhya the editor splits the very first words of the book: atha + atah + ayushkamiyam + adhyayam + vi + a + khyasyamah. It has three parts, he says: undoing the sandhi (sandhi-viccheda), resolving the compounds (samasa-vigraha) and stating the derivation (vyutpatti-kathana). Padartha-vyakhya then gives each piece its meaning: atha, after that; ayu, life; kama, desire. Vidyanath's commentary on that chapter does the same in earnest: atha + atah means "afterwards", after the prayer, and ayushkamiya is a chapter for those who desire long life.

This is the pattern of the whole section: Arunadatta's devices are taught with the Ashtanga Hridaya's own first chapter. Every example in these pages that draws on Sutrasthana 1:

Seven of the examples draw on Sutrasthana 1: two on its opening sentence, two on verse 5, and one each on verses 15, 25 and 27. The verse 15 example is the editor's false statement, so it uses the verse by turning it upside down; he does not cite the verse, and the match is ours. A student working through this section is, without being told, reading the book's first chapter a second time.

Saptavidha Kalpana: Seven Assumptions a Careful Reader Makes

First, a word that is itself a lesson in context. Most readers meet kalpana in Ayurvedic pharmacy, where it means a form of preparation; the five kashaya kalpanas, from fresh juice to cold infusion, are the subject of our page on the Charaka Samhita's five preparations. In Arunadatta's list the same word means a supposition, an interpretive step the reader takes. The seven, which the editor calls minor devices:

1. Pradhanasya kalpana: crediting the best of a group with the group's chief quality. Ghee is "the" oleating substance (snehana) though oil oleates too; milk "the" sustaining one (jivaniya) though water sustains too; honey "the" binding one (sandhanakara).
2. Pradhanena kalpana: naming a group after its chief member, as in the groups called pippalyadi, vidaryadi and surasadi.
3. Guna kalpana: taking a word in its general sense, not its technical one (next section).
4. Lesha kalpana: inferring what the author did not quite say.
5. Vidya kalpana: judging an author's learning in other sciences from what he quotes.
6. Bhakshya kalpana: explaining by comparison with something eaten or used, as when Ayurveda is compared with nectar.
7. Ajna kalpana: a learned command that needs no reason given.

Guna Kalpana and the Sixteen Gunas of Sutrasthana 1.27

Guna is a technical word: in Ayurveda it names the qualities of substances, heavy and light, cold and hot. Guna kalpana lets the reader take it in its plain sense, "virtue", when the context asks. The editor's example is Sutrasthana 1.27:

भिषग्द्रव्याण्युपस्थाता रोगी पादचतुष्टयम् ।
चिकित्सितस्य निर्दिष्टं, प्रत्येकं तच्चतुर्गुणम् ॥27॥

The four limbs of care (pada chatushtaya) are the physician (bhishak), the medicine (dravya), the attendant (upasthata) and the person cared for (rogi), and each is chatur-guna, possessed of four gunas. Those sixteen are not qualities like heaviness or heat. The physician's four, in Vidyanath's list, are professional skill, sound knowledge of theory, wide practical experience, and purity in mind, body and speech. Read guna technically and the verse makes no sense; read it as "virtue" and it is plain. That silent switch is what Arunadatta names.

Ajna Kalpana: Why Sadvritta Asks for No Proof

Ajna kalpana is a learned person's command about conduct, given without reasons, and the editor's example is the whole of sadvritta, the code of good conduct. Our readings of Charaka's version, from Charaka Samhita Part 8 to the shorter pieces on its rules of speech, work, trust, envy and forgiveness, show what that looks like: a long run of rules, very few of them argued.

Arunadatta does not pretend those rules are derived from anything; he names the kind of statement they are. The device has a twin among the faults. Samaya-viruddha, going against a rule of tradition, is the fault of breaking exactly this kind of statement, and the editor's examples of such rules are customs kept for no stated reason.

Seventeen Tacchilyas: Calling One Thing by Another's Name

Tat-shila means "like that". A tacchilya is a usage in which one thing is spoken of in terms of another that resembles it, contains it or goes with it. Arunadatta, the editor says, regarded it as an inevitable part of scientific writing and counted seventeen kinds:

Most of these are figures of speech every language uses without naming them. "The tongue tastes" is how anyone talks; in a technical text the sense of taste (rasanendriya) seated in the tongue is what is meant, and a commentator who knows the seventeen can say exactly what a loose sutra does and does not claim.

Mula-samjna and Tatsthya: When Rupa Means a Symptom

Vidyanath prints the Sanskrit definitions of two of the seventeen in full. The first is mula-samjna:

मूलसंज्ञा नाम—या लोकेऽन्यस्मिन्नर्थे प्रसिद्धा तन्त्रे चान्यस्मिन् (अर्थे) निवेशिता ।

A word well known in the world in one sense and set down in the treatise in another. His example is rupa: in ordinary speech shape, colour or beauty; in Ayurveda, the signs by which a condition shows itself. The second is tatsthya:

तात्स्थ्यं नाम—यदन्यस्यैवार्थस्य तत्स्थत्वादन्यस्यैव कल्प्यते ।

One thing taken for another because it dwells in it. A person says the bladder hurts; the bladder feels nothing, the person does. The organ is named, the person is meant. Everyday speech still swaps the part for the person in exactly this way.

Arthashraya: Twenty Supports, and a Twenty-First Added Later

An ashraya is a prop. Arunadatta's arthashrayas are the supports a reader leans on when a sentence will not stand by itself, and in his Sanskrit there are twenty:

विंशत्याश्रया भवन्ति । यथा—आदिलोपः, मध्यलोपः, अन्तलोपः, उभयपदलोपः, आदिमध्यान्तलोपः, वर्णोपजननम्, ऋषिक्लिष्टम्, तन्त्रशीलम्, तन्त्रसंज्ञा, प्राकृतम्, समानतन्त्रप्रत्ययः, परतन्त्रप्रत्ययः, हेतुहेतुकधर्मः, कार्यकारणधर्मः, आद्यन्तविपर्ययः, शब्दान्तरम्, प्रत्ययः, उपनयः, सम्भवः, विभवः

Vidyanath's English list has twenty-one. Sankara Sarma, whom the editor calls the author of a work on tantrayuktis, added upadhi-lopa, the absence of a condition; Arunadatta does not mention it, while Sankara Sarma and Bhattara Harichandra do.

The first five are ellipses, lopa, named by where the missing word falls. Adi-lopa drops it at the start: a line says rasa nourishes, and the word for meat in "meat soup" is left out. Madhya-lopa drops it in the middle: the Ashtanga Sangraha calls a chapter drava-dravya-vijnaniya when it means drava-dravya-svarupa-vijnaniya, the knowledge of the nature of liquids. The Hridaya's fifth chapter carries the same short name, and our page on Drava Dravya reads it. Anta-lopa drops it at the end, ubhayapada-lopa in two places, and adi-madhyanta-lopa in all three, an undesirable device, the editor says, that only a learned person can repair.

The rest name a reader's habits. Varnopajanana supplies the missing word. Rishi-klishta is a teacher's slip that sticks: roma, body hair, said as loma and kept that way by the students. Tantrashila explains some things briefly and others at length. Samana-tantra-pratyaya explains from another book of the same science, paratantra-pratyaya from an allied one, such as the Vaisheshika school for the six categories (padarthas). Karya-karana dharma lets an effect be called by its cause, as when diseases are called doshas, and adyanta-viparyaya is a change of order made for a valid reason, the permitted version of bhinnakrama.

Shabdanyatva (shabdantara) records synonyms. The editor's example is ten words for disease: papma, jvara, vyadhi, vikara, duhkha, amaya, yakshma, atanka, gada, badha. Charaka's Nidana Sthana 1.5 gives seven of them, in Van Loon vyadhi, amaya, gada, atanka, yaksma, jwara, vikara; where the other three come from, these pages do not say. Pratyaya dharma is the opposite of honest naming, the real cause kept out of sight while a minor one takes the importance; the editor's example is a mental disturbance blamed on spirits when its real cause, he says, is a failure of judgment (prajnaparadha).

Prakritakhya and Tantra-samjna: Saindhava Is Salt in Medicine

Two supports decide meaning by setting. Tantra-samjna picks, from a word's many meanings, the one its science uses: in rasashastra, the editor notes, rasa means mercury, though elsewhere it means taste, juice and much else. Prakritakhya reads a word by the topic at hand. Saindhava, "from the Sindhu country", means a horse in a passage about war and rock salt in a passage about medicine. And when a list of plant products names kshira, it means the plant's milky latex, not cow's milk.

This page has already used the device once. Kalpana means a preparation in the pharmacy chapter and a supposition in Arunadatta's toolkit, and only the setting tells you which.

Saindhava: rock salt in a passage about medicine, a horse in a passage about war. The setting decides.

Upanaya and Sambhava: How the Ashtanga Hridaya Announces Its Own Map

Upanaya means bringing near. Vidyanath prints its definition:

उपनयो नाम—सूत्रहेतुप्रस्तावेन यत्रान्यत्प्रकरणमुपनीयते ।

Another topic brought in on the occasion of a sutra. His example is Sutrasthana 8, the chapter on the quantity of food, which goes on to discuss visuchika, a disorder the text ties to eating too much. Quantity is the subject; the disorder is brought near because it follows from getting the quantity wrong. Our reading of that chapter is Ahara Matra.

Sambhava is the brief mention of topics an author means to cover in full. The editor's example is the eight-branch line of Sutrasthana 1.5:

कायबालग्रहोर्ध्वाङ्गशल्यदंष्ट्राजरावृषान् ॥5॥

Kaya, bala, graha, urdhvanga, shalya, damshtra, jara, vrisha: eight compressed words, and the rest of the Ashtanga Hridaya is the long version, unpacked on our page about the eight branches of Ayurveda. The same line was the example for pinda-vyakhya. One verse, two devices: read as a summary of the whole science, it is pinda-vyakhya; read as a promise of what the book will cover, it is sambhava.

Where the Toolkit Repeats the Tantrayuktis

Arunadatta's lists are not all new, and the editor says so. Avayava-tacchilya can be considered as arthapatti tantrayukti, implication. Lesha kalpana corresponds to uhya tantrayukti, deduction. Varnopajanana, by Arunadatta's own admission, is identical with vakyasesa type of tantrayukti, filling an ellipsis. And taddharmata, he notes, is similar to upamana, comparison, one of the means of knowledge rather than a device.

So of the fifty-nine devices Arunadatta adds (fifteen vyakhyas, seven kalpanas, seventeen tacchilyas and twenty arthashrayas), three are tantrayuktis under other names on the editor's own word. We have not checked the other fifty-six against the thirty-six ourselves.

Vibhava: The Device the Manuscript Lost

The last support on the list cannot be explained. Vidyanath prints the start of its definition and then stops:

विभवो नाम—विभवकल्पनायाश्चास्यां विशेषः ।

His note reads: Since Arunadatta's manuscript is mutilated after the word bhangya, it is not possible to formulate a precise idea about vibhava.

So a toolkit for reading difficult and damaged texts ends in a damaged text. The twenty supports include five kinds of ellipsis, each repairable when the words around the gap survive. Here the words around the gap are gone, and none of the twenty can bring them back. The commentary's last word on filling gaps is itself a gap, and the editor leaves it open rather than fill it.

The last of Arunadatta's twenty supports breaks off with his manuscript, after the word bhangya.

Thirty-Two, Thirty-Six or Forty: Counting the Devices

None of these counts is fixed. The editor gives thirty-two tantrayuktis for Kautilya and for Sushruta (Uttara Tantra 65), thirty-six for Charaka (Siddhi Sthana 12) and for Vagbhata in the 50th chapter of Uttaratantra, and forty for Bhattara Harichandra, a commentator on Charaka who recognised four more. One detail settles which Vagbhata that is. The Ashtanga Hridaya has six sections and one hundred and twenty chapters, its Uttara Tantra forty of them, as the same edition's preamble says. A fiftieth chapter can only belong to the Ashtanga Sangraha, which the preamble credits to Vriddha Vagbhata.

The disagreement is not a weakness: two careful readers can cut the same habit into one device or two. The editor's own rule is the sensible one: the number of devices in a scientific treatise depends upon the volume of subject matter.

Reading a Health Page With the Nineteen and the Fifteen

Charaka's advice was written for a student choosing a book, but it travels well. The fifteen faults need nothing but the page in front of you, which makes them a usable test for anything written about health today.

On the other side, Charaka's marks still describe a page worth trusting: definitions (lakshanavat), examples (udaharanavat), sections that agree (asankula-prakarana) and firm statements instead of fog. Hold this page to the same test. It states its purpose at the top, names its sources by edition, page and verse, keeps what the texts say apart from what we read into them, and flags what it cannot settle. By the length test it is on the long side; Arunadatta would probably call it ativistrta, and he would have a point.

What This Page Leaves Out

• The thirty-six tantrayuktis themselves; Sushruta's thirty-two are read on our tantra yukti page.
• The creation account (srishti-utpatti) that opens the section. It quotes the Sushruta Samhita's Sharira Sthana 1, which our Karma Purusha page reads.
• The study appendices, including a table of weights and measures with modern figures; classical measures deserve their own page, read from the classical sources.
• One of the editor's illustrations of obscure words, from a passage on marital conduct; we used his three other rare words instead.
• The condition named in the vyahata example, and the procedural detail in two tacchilya examples. Those procedures belong to qualified practitioners.

What We Could Not Settle

• Vidyanath gives no source for the nineteen marks. We matched them to Charaka's Vimana Sthana 8.3; Van Loon's English covers the same ground, running a few of the nineteen together.
• Where the editor's ten synonyms come from: Charaka's Nidana Sthana 1.5 has seven of them.
• Under the twentieth support the Sanskrit definition is printed as svabhavo nama, while the list and the English say sambhava. It may be a misprint; one printing cannot settle it.
• What Charaka's promised "post-treatise section" was, beyond Van Loon's pointer to P.V. Sharma's edition.
• Who Sankara Sarma was, beyond the editor's "author of tantrayuktis"; we have not tried to identify him further.
• Search demand. In Google Search Console our Sushruta tantra yukti page shows 48 impressions for "tantra yukti" at an average position of 10, and our Ashtanga Hridaya guide 34 for "ashtanga hridaya commentary". There are no rows for tantra dosha, tantra guna, tacchilya or arthashraya, so their demand is unknown, not low.

From Our Shelf

A short note on what we make, kept deliberately apart from everything above. Ayurveda Hub is a small Indian maker of everyday household and grooming goods, worked in small batches. Some of what we make shares materials with the examples on this page, and we have left every one of those items off it on purpose, so that nothing quoted above could be read as a claim about something we sell. The single item below is the one thing on our shelf that this reading never touches. If it does not interest you, please skip it.

That is the whole of the sales pitch. If you came for the reading and leave having bought nothing, that is a perfectly good outcome from where we sit.

More to Read on This Topic

Sushruta's closing chapter, the one that follows his tantrayuktis, is read in Dosha Bheda Vikalpa.

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