Page:A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.djvu/220

in concluding that either the Aryans have copied their system of medicine from the Greeks, or the Greeks have derived theirs from the Indians. There is no internal or external evidence to support the first inference. For the Indians are a more ancient nation, and their medical books are older than any yet discovered on the surface of the earth. They are acknowledged on all hands to be thoroughly conservative, and as such have a natural repugnance to borrow. Sir William Hunter justly observes that Religion and Philosophy have been the great contributions of India to the world. As regards philosophy in general, Mr Colebrooke, in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. I., has reason to assert that "the Hindoos were teachers and not learners." All the important sciences have taken their birth in India. It does not stand to reason, therefore, to suppose that the science of medicine could have been borrowed from the Greeks, who themselves have lost all vestiges of that science, which is being practised at the present day all over India more or less in its original form. Professor Weber, who is never known to be partial to the Indians, asserts in his History of Indian Literature that "there is