In the territory of modern India, several medical traditions coexist, the most common of which are Ayurveda, unani (a Greek tradition based on the teachings of Hippocrates and Galen and presented in areas of India where the Islamic population predominates), siddha (associated with Dravidian culture, predominates in the south of India among the Tamil-speaking population), Tibetan medicine (common in border areas, in the Himalayas among the Buddhist population), allopathy, homeopathy, naturopathy.
Of all the traditional systems of medical knowledge, Ayurveda is the most well-known both in India and abroad. The classic period of the history of this branch of medicine is represented by the works of three great "elders" - Charaka, Sushruta, Vagbhata.
It should be noted that there are usually two main schools of Ayurveda: atreya (the school of doctors, i.e. it is closest to our concept of "therapist") and dhanvantari (the school of surgeons). Charaka represented the first school and dealt primarily with the problems of physiology, anatomy, etiology, pathogenesis and diagnosis of various diseases, their treatment, and life extension, which was reflected in his treatise "Charaka Samhita". Sushruta is a representative of the school of surgeons, so in his work "Sushruta Samhita" he describes in sufficient detail the surgical equipment, gives a classification of abscesses, burns, fractures, wounds, etc. In his treatise, more attention is paid to the anatomy (and even embryology) of a person, how bones, nerves, heart, blood vessels, circulatory system, and various vital points are arranged, including for massage.
The text of the Ashtangahridaya Samhita, written by Vagbhata in the sixth century, was used in the study. It is this work that is considered a universal textbook on Ayurveda: it was memorized by representatives of medical dynasties in ancient times; it is based on and referenced to this day; it became a kind of link between the Indian and Tibetan traditions, since the classical canonical treatise "Zhud Shi" is completely based on the texts of the Vagbhata; "Ashtangahridaya Samhita" had an unconditional impact on the development of the It also influenced Avicenna, who used its translation into Arabic when writing his "Canon of Medical Science".
Thus, the selection of basic terms underlying the physiological concept of Ayurveda was carried out according to the above-mentioned text of Vagbhata [Vagbhata's Hrdayam, 1995]. Analysis of the selected terms revealed the following: despite the fact that the conceptual framework of the ancient Indian medical tradition, its concepts themselves, and their philosophical justifications are unique and specific, the lexical base of Ayurveda is mostly common Indo-European. There are a number of parallels with other ancient Indo-European languages, which in their lexical composition contain words that correspond to the words used in Ayurvedic treatises in terminological meanings.
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Let's illustrate this with a concrete example. The very name "Ayurveda" consists of components related to the common Indo-European lexical layer. The first one is particularly interesting: it goes back to the root * aiu -, which expressed the concept of a certain cyclic life force that passed from one life to another and with which the idea of eternity was connected. Different ancient Indo-European languages have reflected in their words different aspects of this general idea: avest. "life span";" age"; etc. - Greek. "always", "life force"; "duration, duration of life", Latin aevus, aevum "eternity"; "time of life", aevitas "eternity", aeternus "eternal"; Gotsk. aiws "time, eternity". And now let's see what Ayurveda is (and, accordingly, how the proto-Indo-European root was reflected in this Indian word). Ayurveda in the Indian cultural tradition is seen not just as a system of medical views and specific prescriptions, but as a certain philosophy of life, the science of life and the science of the ability to live, and one where a person is thought of as part of the macrocosm, and therefore must live in harmony with it and with himself, following its laws; moreover, man (microcosm) is arranged in the likeness of the universe, and all physiological and mental processes are similar to those observed in the macrocosm. Skt. it carries the idea of eternal life force, capable of various kinds of rebirths and reincarnations. But, as it turns out, this typically Indian and specifically Indian idea - the eternity of life force and its cyclicity - was originally contained in the common Indo-European root and, moreover, in one form or another is represented in the lexical units of various Indo-European languages.
A study of the basic terms of Ayurveda has shown that most of them are recorded in etymological dictionaries as common Indo-European vocabulary. At the same time, it is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that many ancient languages actually had in their lexical composition those elements that make up the lexical core of Ayurveda and name the concepts that make up the essence of its physiological concepts - for example, all the names of the 5 primary elements, 7 components of the human body, sensory organs and organs of activity, spirit, soul, mind, etc. This is a kind of top-down view of the lexical systems of Indo-European languages. And when you look from above and find these rather numerous parallels, you are not surprised, because you expect that a closer examination of the semantics and etymology of these lexemes and roots (not from above, but as if from inside the language system) will highlight something special, specifically Indian, different from everything "non-Indian". But in most cases, this doesn't happen either. So, for example, the main names of the first element water, which go back either to the Proto-Indo-European root "water", or to* ued "wet, moisten", have the same or very close (sometimes with additional shades) meanings in different languages, cf.: skt. "water", avest. "running water, river", Lat. amnis "river, stream, stream", lit. as "water", Irl. abann "water"; Skt. udaka "water", etc. - gr. "water", Latin unda "wave". Nothing specific is found in the ancient Indian names of fire or air (wind), heart or blood: other Indo-European languages retain these words with approximately the same sets of meanings, which is reflected in a number of authoritative etymological dictionaries of common Indo-European lexics1.
Quite naturally, the following question arises: due to what this ancient vocabulary was reinterpreted in a special way, entering the conceptual and terminological system of Ayurvedic treatises; due to what it names specifically Indian concepts and serves as a means of expressing a very peculiar ancient Indian medical tradition, completely unlike European systems of medical knowledge? The reasons for this phenomenon may lie in the following.
1 The study was conducted using the following dictionaries: [Buck, 1949; Cappeller, 1887; Monier-Williams, 1976; Rokotu, 1948-1959; Walde, 1927-1930].
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It is necessary to pay attention to the special nature of the Ayurvedic texts themselves. The general principle of writing ancient Indian scientific treatises was to create a certain basic text containing the main provisions, usually in verse form, designed for listening and memorizing by heart. Detailed comments and comments to comments were then compiled for this basic text. This is how mathematical, grammatical, philosophical concepts, works on the theory of poetry, astronomy, etc. were created; this is also the main medical work of Vagbhata. A number of important points follow from this specific form, which is traditional for Indian culture as a whole.
Moment one. Such a multi-layered and semiotically heterogeneous text begins to enter into complex relationships both with the surrounding cultural context and with the audience to which it is addressed. "It ceases to be an elementary message sent from the addressee to the addressee. By discovering the ability to condense information, it gains memory. At the same time, he discovers the quality that Heraclitus defined as the "self-growing logos." At this stage of structural complexity, the text reveals the properties of an intelligent device: it not only transmits information embedded in it from the outside, but also transforms messages and develops new ones<...>. On the one hand, the text, like a cultural macrocosm, becomes more significant than itself and acquires the features of a cultural model, and, on the other, it tends to In the light of what has been said, the text appears to us not as the implementation of a message in any one language, but as a complex device that stores various codes, is able to transform the received messages and generate new ones, an information generator that has the features of an intellectual personality "[Lotman, 1997, p. 204-205].
Point two. Here it is already extremely important that the medical treatises were poetic texts - they were written in verse form. According to V. N. Toporov, in such cases we are dealing with the concealment of the semantic core of the text in the text itself and the need to find it and explicate it, which is one of the most important principles of poetry and creativity of the poet. "The very task of the poet is creativity - creation, doing (as with the demiurges), and the instrument of this creativity is Speech, the Word-there is a special creative force with the help of which a double creation takes place: the world is created in the word and the transubstantiation of the ordinary text into a poetic one takes place. And in this creation, language and word form the mediastinum that connects the divine and heavenly with the human and earthly... The word, first of all poetic, embodies the thought of people, which in itself belongs to the world of the gods... but it must be formed by the poet according to a well-known technology... The word (verse, text, etc.) is made, carved, forged, woven, spun, interwoven, etc.<...>. Just as the word connects gods and people, heaven and earth, inspiration and skill (craft skill), the creator of the word, the poet also acts as an intermediary, as the one who creates the word. it transforms the divine into the human and elevates the human to the level of the divine. Both of them help the poet to create an image of the world, which is revealed in the word " (Toporov, 1997, pp. 219-220).
The presentation of medical information by Hindus in a poetic form also led to the fact that many ancient Indian medical terms have a considerable number of synonyms, which is generally not typical for European medical terminology. But this was the requirement of the aesthetics of the text: it was important not only to convey the necessary information to the reader, but also to do it beautifully, without repeating yourself. So, the first names, as a rule, in addition to the main name, had a whole series of names: water looked either as (this is the most frequent variant); or as jala, udaka; fire was more often called by the word agni, but it could also be represented by other variants that carry in their internal form a certain idea, metaphor - as naming fire in the form of tejas (from *steig- "top"), i.e. "having a top, tending up" or in the form of anala (from * steig - "top").
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* al - "grow, increase; nourish" with a negative prefix), i.e. "insatiable"; air (wind) also had a number of names-as neutral as possible and (from prai. -e. "blow, breathe"), and more emotionally colored anila "air, breath "(from - "breathe"), pavana "fresh wind, air, breath" (from the verb "clean"), (less often marut), etc. Many synonyms had the names of the components of the human body and its various organs: blood was called as rakta, rudhira, the eye could be designated by a number of words- netra, nayana (the last two represent the eye in the form of a conductor sending the body in the right direction, directing the body-from * nei -, "lead"), etc.
Point three. Ancient Indian medical treatises are a complex multi-tiered structure, not only and not so much due to the fact that over time they have "overgrown" with various additions and commentaries (see note above), but mainly for the reason that Ayurveda itself is an organic fusion of medicine, philosophy, mythology. The philosophical concept of sankhya played a decisive role in the formation and development of the categorical apparatus and terminological system of Ayurveda as a whole and the above-mentioned treatise of Vagbhata. Many basic Ayurvedic terms have deep philosophical meanings, and the medical terms themselves are often ambiguous, metaphorical and expressive, they do not correspond to our European ideas about terminology in general and about medical terminology in particular. This is due both to the special nature of the terminology of Ayurveda, and to the entire cultural tradition that created it exactly like this-multi-faceted, multi-layered, voluminous and at the same time extremely harmonious. Ancient Indian medical terms were included in a number of semantic codes used by the creators of Ayurvedic treatises, so they carry very peculiar, specifically Indian meanings, and they are often based on metaphors that are quite unexpected for the European consciousness, and metaphors are not only linguistic, but those that represent a special form of thought and cognition.
In this connection, it is impossible not to recall the well-known cognitive theory of metaphor by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was developed by him since the late 1970s and brought him wide popularity far beyond linguistics proper. In the famous book by J. R. R. Tolkien, According to the work of J. Lakoff and M. Johnson "Metaphors that we live by", the point of view was substantiated, according to which metaphor is the most important mechanism for mastering the world by human thinking and plays an essential role in the formation of the human conceptual system and the structure of natural language. Studies conducted in this area of research have shown that language metaphors play not only an important role in poetic language, but they also structure our everyday perception and thinking, and such language metaphors come in at least two types: there are some metaphors that in a particular language are the embodiment of cultural and cultural values.There are some historical preferences of a given language community (which means that they reflect a certain linguistic picture of the world), and there are others - they reflect not specific, but universal physiological and psychological properties of a person.
In this connection, the word appears to us as "a certain form of thought, like a glazed frame that defines the circle of observations and colors the observed in a certain way" [Potebnya, 1989, p. 238]. It accumulates all the experience and knowledge (i.e., culture in the broad sense of the word) obtained during the development of mankind, this means that it reflects a certain fragment of the language picture ofthe world2. Thus, we have come to point number four: each language reflects a certain way of perception and structure of the world, or its linguistic picture. The totality of ideas about the world contained in the meanings of various words and expressions of the language is formed in a certain form.
2 In this context, we can also use the famous metaphor of colored glasses, through which we see the world around us: a word denoting the same phenomenon of non-linguistic reality, in one language "sees" this phenomenon conditionally through pink glasses, in another language - through green ones, etc.
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a single system of views and attitudes that is more or less shared by all speakers of a given language. As you know, the term language picture of the world (Weltbild der Sprache) was introduced into the scientific use of L. A. Kropotkin. By Weisgerber. Language-specific way of conceptualizing reality (world view) partly universal, partly national-specific. Naturally, the naive linguistic and scientific worldviews differ. But at the same time, many researchers (including L. Weisgerber himself) object to the view of scientific concepts as something objective: firstly, the formation of scientific concepts and terms is not complete without emotional components; and secondly, the means of a special sublanguage of science are drawn from the thinking means of a particular language (with its own special picture world). Therefore, Weisgerber even has doubts about the universality of scientific knowledge. It should be noted that this idea is not new: even Goethe believed that the world would have acquired a completely different scientific shape if Greek, and not Latin, had retained the dominance in scientific reasoning. In this case, the difference would manifest itself not so much in the terminology, but in the very method of concept genesis3.
It has already been said above that according to ancient Indian ideas, man (the microcosm) is arranged in the likeness of the Universe (the macrocosm) and that all physiological and mental processes in the human body are similar to those that occur in the macrocosm. Our tasks do not include a comprehensive substantive analysis of the concept of macro-/microcosmic parallelism, which is based on understanding not only the human being, but also the universe as a living body-spiritual multilevel organism. The universe, according to many Eastern systems of knowledge, is characterized by both anthropoid (i.e., an iconic similarity to man) and anthropomorphic (i.e., a structural correspondence to man). In Indian mythology, the anthropoid cosmos arises from the body of the primordial human Purusha, sacrificed by the gods. The description of how the dismembered Purusha became the universe (both the universe and human society) is presented in the most famous hymn of the Rig Veda (X, 90): Purusha is the universe that was and will be; it covers the earth from all sides. His mouth became a brahmana, His hands a rajanya, His thighs a vaisya, and his feet a sudra (thus describing the origin of the social structure). Out of his spirit was born the moon, out of his eyes the sun, out of his mouth Indra and Agni, out of his breath the wind, out of his navel the air, out of his head the sky, out of his feet the earth, out of his ear the cardinal directions (and this is already the formation of the macrocosm). In Chinese culture, the anthropoid macrocosm is represented in the myth of the cosmic giant Pan-gu, which originated in the fused, like the yolk and white in an egg, Sky and Earth and then spread them apart.
There are different points of view on the question of what is modeling and what is modeled in the relationship between the world and man (the first person is a model of the Universe, or the latter is a model of man), whether the anthropomorphic code with which the universe is described is primary, or the cosmological code with which the human body can be described. Most modern researchers come to the conclusion that the role of the source should be given to the person and his body. It is according to this model that mythopoetic consciousness originally constructed a description of the Universe. The human body and its functions in all the diversity of life (body and soul) experience form the basis of archaic classification (cf. the juxtaposition of right and left, top and bottom, even and odd, fire and water, etc., the distinction between the original three colors-red, white and black, corresponding to blood, milk and secretions)4. Thus, ideas about the external world and the universe in general are motivated by the physiological aspect of human life, namely, the human body as a kind of"small world". According to F. B. Ya. Kuiper, the basic scheme of the cosmogonic myth can even be correlated withprenatal life of the individual, i.e. the cosmogonic myth is interpreted in terms of cosmic conception. Apparently, at the most archaic stage, the body of Che-
3 See the works of O. A. Radchenko on this topic, in particular [Radchenko, 2006, pp. 242-249].
4 This problem is discussed in more detail in a number of works by V. N. Toporov: see, for example, his article "Space and Text" [Toporov, 1983, pp. 227-284].
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This concept was used as a universal model of the universe, which does not exclude the possibility that over time it was the cosmological code that was used as the basis for describing the human body.
So, for the ancient Indian picture of the world, one of the fundamental principles was the realization that man is arranged in the likeness of the Universe (or vice versa: the universe is arranged in the likeness of the human body). But this idea can also be formulated in a slightly different way, given that a person is only a part of the macrocosm: a part is arranged similarly to the whole. Knowing the structure of the part, you can imagine the structure of the whole. And this idea really permeates many ancient Eastern medical concepts. Ancient Indian teachings (primarily Ayurveda), as well as Chinese and Tibetan ones were created based on it. For the sake of justice, it should be noted that even in our time, a number of seemingly "non-traditional" medical areas (for example, iridodiagnostics), which have a centuries-old history, rely on this idea as fundamental.
Surprisingly, this worldview was also embodied in the Sanskrit vocabulary, which has common Indo-European roots. So, if you look at the semantics of many Sanskrit words, including Ayurvedic terms, you can see how often polysemous words combine exactly these semantic components - the whole and its part. It seems that this is not accidental: it is an essential feature of the ancient Indian worldview and worldview, which is also reflected in the language structures. Here are some examples of this type to illustrate.
A noun has several meanings that look like "matryoshka dolls" - one meaning is embedded in another, as it indicates a part of this whole, and the other is then "embedded" in the next, since the former whole turns out to be part of something larger. So, means: 1) the human body, the body; 2) part of the body; 3) a separate organ (i.e., the value 3 indicates what can be part of the value 2, and the value 2, in turn, indicates part of what is included in the value 1). Other nouns, which will be discussed below, also carry in themselves at the same time an indication of both something whole and some part of this whole. So, the word contains the values " mid-torso (i.e. chest and abdomen)" and "heart" (the heart is located in the area that is covered by the value 1 of this word). Vasti has the values "lower abdomen" and "bladder" (the latter is located in the lower abdomen). Upastha has a number of meanings, including " the middle part of the human body (including the abdominal area)", "safe place", " genitals (usually female)" and "anus". Mukha means both "face" as a whole and "mouth" as a part of it. It is usually used in the sense of "hand", but according to dictionary data [see: Monier-Williams, 1976] it also has the meaning of" part "of the hand, namely," the extreme point of the upper limb of a person".
Thus, in this article, an attempt was made to answer the question, due to which the common Indo-European vocabulary in Ayurvedic treatises "played" with unexpected, new and specifically Indian facets. Summing up the above, I would like to once again place special emphasis on the following. A crucial role in these changes was played by the fact that the ancient Proto-Indo-European vocabulary was not just included in a special system of linguistic and ideological values of the ancient Indian society, but was used to create Ayurvedic treatises, which are texts:
1) multi-layered and semiotically heterogeneous, storing a variety of semantic codes;
2) poetic (it is important not only what is said, but also how it is said);
3) containing a whole range of metaphorically presented concepts, and containing not so much language metaphors, but metaphors as forms of thought and forms of cognition of the surrounding world;
4) reflecting a special ancient Indian picture of the world.
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list of literature
Lotman Yu. M. Semiotika kul'tury i ponyatie teksta [Semiotics of culture and the concept of text]. From the theory of literature to the structure of the text. Anthology, Moscow: Academia Publ., 1997.
Potebnya A. A. From notes on the theory of literature // Potebnya A. A. Slovo i mif [Word and Myth]. Moscow: Pravda Publ., 1989.
Radchenko O. A. Yazyk kak mirosozidanie [Language as a world creation]. Lingvofilosofskaya kontseptsiya neogumboldtianstva [The linguophilosophical concept of neo-Columbianism]. Moscow: KomKniga Publ., 2006.
Toporov V. N. Prostranstvo i tekst [Space and text] / / Text: semantics and Structure, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1983.
Toporov V. N. Ob "ektropicheskom" prostranstve poezii (poet i tekst v ikh edinstvo) [On the "ectropical" space of poetry (the poet and the text in their unity)]. From the theory of literature to the structure of the text. Anthology, Moscow: Academia Publ., 1997.
Buck C.D. A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages. Chicago, 1949.
Cappeller C. Sanskrit-Wörterbuch. Straβburg, 1887.
Monier-Williams M.A. Sanskrit-English Dictionary. New Delhi, 1976.
Pokorny J. Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, Band 1 - 2. Bern-München, 1948 - 1959.
Hrdayam / Vagbhata's Text, English translation, Notes, Appendices and Indices. Vol. 1 - 3. Varanasi: Krishnadas Academy, 1995.
Walde A. Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen. Band 1 - 3. Berlin-Leipzig, 1927 - 1930.
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