with the view to teach the Science of Surgery with all its allied branches of study to men.
In the present science (Ayurveda), the Purusha (self-conscious organic individual) is described as the resultant of the combination of the soul and the five primary material principles. All medical acts such as, surgical operations, administration of medicinal remedies and applications of alkaline substances, or (cauterisation, etc.), are restricted to the Purusha alone.*[1]
Why is it so? The answer is, simply because the created world is composed of two distinct classes, such as the mobile and the immobile.†[2] These two classes, in their turn, are further sub-divided for the purposes of the science of medicine into the two orders, Agneya hot and Saumya (cool. Hence the world is composed of five material principles, though characterised by the twofold virtues, Agneya (hot) and Saumya (cool).‡[3]
- ↑ * It may be questioned why they should be confined to the Purusha? Such a query may be successfully met by the statement that the Purusha alone is the receptacle of health and disease in contradistinction to the Self or Ego.
- ↑ † The vegetable world belongs to the latter category, while animals, possessed of locomotion, belong to the former.
- ↑ ‡ It may be argued here, since everything in the universe is composed of the five fundamental material principles [of earth, water, fire (heat), air and sky (ether)], it is not competent to assert that the universe is possessed of the twofold attributes Agneya (heated or fiery) and Saumya (cool or watery), alone. But since fire (heat) or water (cold) predominates in all things in the universe in juxtaposition with the primary virtues of the
