Vagbhata

The Indian doctor Vagbhata (वाग्भट, Vāgbhaṭa , probably lived around AD 600 ) and is considered to be the author of the Ashtanga Hridaya (“core of medicine”) and Ashtanga Sangraha (“summary of medicine”). The Ashtanga Hridaya is written in verse, the Ashtanga Sangraha partly in verse and partly in prose. For a long time it was assumed that the authors of these two works were different people (Vagbhata I and Vagbhata II); which work was the older remained unclear. Modern authors like Dominik Wujastyk now assume that the authors of both works are one and the same person, as they correspond in terms of content and are word for word in sections. It remains unclear whether the author first wrote vagbhata in verse and later explained and supplemented it with prose texts, or whether an earlier prose work was put into meter at a later point in time.

His father's name was Simhagupta, and his grandfather had the same name Vagbhata. He learned medicine from his father and from a teacher with the Buddhist name Avalokita. Whether Vagbhata was a Buddhist himself remains unclear. From the content of Ashtanga Hridaya and Ashtanga Sangraha it can be concluded that the author was a knowledgeable and practicing doctor. According to Wujastyk, Vagbhata's works represent the most extensive synthesis of Indian medicine ever created. He compares the importance of Vagbhatas for the medical tradition in India with the importance of Ibn Sina for the medical tradition in the Islamic world. Vagbhata refers to the works of his predecessors Sushruta and Charaka ; he unified and arranged a mass of contradicting medical data in his works, thus creating the textbook of Indian medicine par excellence. Vagbhata's work has survived in a greater number of manuscripts and has found more commentators than his predecessors Sushruta and Charaka. His two works were translated into Tibetan , Arabic and Persian as early as the 8th century , and thus influenced medical tradition outside of India as well.

literature

• Luise Hilgenberg, Willibald Kirfel: Vāgbhaṭa's Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā - an ancient Indian textbook of medicine . Leiden 1941 (translated from Sanskrit into German with introduction, notes and indices)
• Claus Vogel: Vāgbhaṭa's Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā: the First Five Chapters of its Tibetan Version Edited and Rendered into English along with the Original Sanskrit; Accompanied by Literary Introduction and a Running Commentary on the Tibetan Translating-technique (Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft - Franz Steiner GmbH, 1965).
• G. Jan Meulenbeld: A History of Indian Medical Literature (Groningen: E. Forsten, 1999--2002), IA parts 3, 4 and 5.
• Dominik Wujastyk: The Roots of Ayurveda . Penguin Books, 2003, ISBN 0-14-044824-1
• Dominik Wujastyk: "Ravigupta and Vāgbhaṭa". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 48 (1985): 74-78.