return of peace, the small Aryan settlements grew in number and prosperity. And the rich Aryan nobles now travelled in stately carriages, and as there were constant accidents there arose a class of surgeons who exclusively devoted themselves to the treatment of injured animals. The surgeons, now no longer required in camps and on battle fields, had to attend on the rich ladies at baronial castles during parturition, the magic doctor (Bhisag Atharvan) who could assuage fever and concoct love potions (i) being held as the greatest of them all. But the Vedic Aryans had a regular armoury against pain and suffering, which is in no way inferior to our present day Materia Medica. But of that we shall speak later on in connection with the therapeutics of Sushruta.
The scope and nature of Sushruta's Surgery:-So much for the history of Vedic Surgery. It is in the Sushruta Samhita that we first come across a systematic method of arranging the surgical experiences of the older surgeons, and of collecting the scattered facts of the science from the vast range of Vedic literature. Sushruta had no desire of abandoning the Vedas in the darkness and pushing en an independent voyage of discovery. The crude methods
and the still cruder implements of incision such as, bits of glass, bamboo skins etc., laid down and described in the Samhita, may bj the relics of a primitive instrumentalogy which found favour with our ancestors long before the hymnisation of any Rik verse. Practical surgery requires a good knowledge of practical anatomy. The quartered animals at the Vedic sacrifices afforded excellent materials for the framing of a comparative anatomy (2). Sushruta
devoted his whole life to the pursuit of surgery proper, to
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Indic characters)
Rik Samhit5. X M. 145 S. i.
(2) Vide .^itareya Br^hmana I, 2. II, i±. Ill, 37,
