Shalihotra
Encyclopedia
Sravasti
Śrāvastī or Sāvatthī , a city of ancient India, was one of the six largest cities in India during Gautama Buddha's lifetime. The city was located in the fertile Gangetic plains in the present day Gonda District of Uttar Pradesh near Balrampur some 120 km north of Lucknow...
(modern Sahet-Mahet on the borders of Gonda
Gonda District
Gonda is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh, India. Gonda is the district headquarters, and also the administrative centre for the Devipatan Division....
and Bahraich
Bahraich District
Bahraich District is one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and Bahraich town is the district headquarters. Bahraich District is a part of Devipatan Division.-History:...
districts in Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...
), a place associated with Buddha
Gautama Buddha
Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...
and Mahavira
Mahavira
Mahāvīra is the name most commonly used to refer to the Indian sage Vardhamāna who established what are today considered to be the central tenets of Jainism. According to Jain tradition, he was the 24th and the last Tirthankara. In Tamil, he is referred to as Arukaṉ or Arukadevan...
in the sixth century B.C.E. Others say Shalihotra lived in Salatur, a place near Kandahar
Kandahar
Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan, with a population of about 512,200 as of 2011. It is the capital of Kandahar Province, located in the south of the country at about 1,005 m above sea level...
.
Shalihotra and the sage Agnivesa
Agnivesa
Agnivesha was an ancient Indian rishi , and myths of his birth associate his parentage to Agni. He was one of the earliest writers on ayurveda, the ancient Indian science of health and medicine. He was a pupil of Punarvasu Atreya.-References:...
may have been pupils of the same teacher; according to tradition, Bharadwaja
Bharadwaja
Bharadwaja was one of the greatest Hindu Arya sages descendant of rishi Angirasa, whose accomplishments are detailed in the Puranas. He was one of the Saptarshis in the present Manvantara; with others being Atri, Vashishtha, Vishvamitra, Gautama, Jamadagni, Kashyapa.Bhardwaj Rishi was father of...
's Ayurveda
Ayurveda
Ayurveda or ayurvedic medicine is a system of traditional medicine native to India and a form of alternative medicine. In Sanskrit, words , meaning "longevity", and , meaning "knowledge" or "science". The earliest literature on Indian medical practice appeared during the Vedic period in India,...
, the science of life, was first presented in text form by Agnivesa
Agnivesa
Agnivesha was an ancient Indian rishi , and myths of his birth associate his parentage to Agni. He was one of the earliest writers on ayurveda, the ancient Indian science of health and medicine. He was a pupil of Punarvasu Atreya.-References:...
, in his book the Agnivesh tantra
Agnivesh tantra
Agnivesha tantra is a compilation of the teachings of Ayurveda as given by the Sage Bharadwaja by Agnivesa.Later Charaka modified the Agnivesha tantra in his own way with a new collection of thoughts and material regarding Ayurveda, available at that time...
and later by Charaka
Charaka Samhita
The ' is an early Ayurvedic text on internal medicine. It is believed to be the oldest of the three ancient treatises of Ayurveda...
(Charaka Samhita, encyclopedia of the physician Charaka). Others assert the great surgeon Acharya Sushruta (c. 600 B.C.E.?), author of 'Sushruta Samhita
Sushruta Samhita
The Sushruta Samhita is a Sanskrit text, attributed to one Sushruta, foundational to Ayurvedic medicine , with innovative chapters on surgery....
' (encyclopedia of the physician Sushruta), may have been Shalihotra's pupil.
Horses and elephants were vital assets in the never ending war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
fare of the ancient world. Physicians treating human beings were also trained in the care of animals. Ancient Indian medical treatises like those of Charaka, Sushruta and Harita contain chapters or references about the care of diseased as well as healthy animals.
Shalihotra's principal work was a large treatise on the care and management of horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
s, the 'Shalihotra Samhita' (encyclopedia of the physician Shalihotra) having some 12,000 shloka
Shloka
A ' is a category of verse line developed from the Vedic Anuṣṭubh. It is the basis for Indian Epic verse, and may be considered the Indian verse form par excellence, occurring, as it does, far more frequently than any other meter in classical Sanskrit poetry. The Mahabharata and Ramayana, for...
s in Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
. It has been translated into Persian, Arabic, Tibetan and English languages. This work described equine
Horse anatomy
Equine anatomy refers to the gross and microscopic anatomy of horses and other equids, including donkeys, and zebras. While all anatomical features of equids are described in the same terms as for other animals by the International Committee on Veterinary Gross Anatomical Nomenclature in the book...
and elephant
Elephant
Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
anatomy
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...
, physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
, surgery
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...
and diseases with their curative and preventive measures
Preventive medicine
Preventive medicine or preventive care refers to measures taken to prevent diseases, rather than curing them or treating their symptoms...
. It elaborated on the body structures of different races of horses, and identified the structural details by which one can determine the age of a horse. Two other works, namely Asva-prashnsa and Asva-lakshana sastram are also attributed to Shalihotra.
Some of the later authors have named their veterinary works after Shalihotra and others have based their work on his Samhita. Subsequent generations copied, revised and added to Shalihotra's text—one of these later texts is shown in the illustration above. Hence the term Shalihotra refers to similar texts in a tradition. In the year 1800 B.C.E. 'Muni Palkapya' wrote 'Hasti Ayurveda' covering all aspects of elephant medicine. This book has four sections and 152 chapters including the anatomy of elephants. During Mahabharat period (1000-900 B.C.E.) Nakul, author of the Ashva-chikitsa, was considered an equine expert while Sahdev was a specialist in cattle management.
See also
- AyurvedaAyurvedaAyurveda or ayurvedic medicine is a system of traditional medicine native to India and a form of alternative medicine. In Sanskrit, words , meaning "longevity", and , meaning "knowledge" or "science". The earliest literature on Indian medical practice appeared during the Vedic period in India,...
- History of MedicineHistory of medicineAll human societies have medical beliefs that provide explanations for birth, death, and disease. Throughout history, illness has been attributed to witchcraft, demons, astral influence, or the will of the gods...
- History of ScienceHistory of scienceThe history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
- Horses
- History of the horse in South AsiaHistory of the horse in South AsiaThe horse has been present in South Asia from at least the mid 2nd millennium BC, more than two millennia after its domestication in Central Asia. The earliest uncontroversial evidence of horse remains on the Indian Subcontinent date to the early Swat culture...
- Veterinary MedicineVeterinary medicineVeterinary Medicine is the branch of science that deals with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, disorder and injury in non-human animals...
Literature
- Apte, M. S. "Selected articles from Salihotra's Asvasastra." Indian veterinary journal 15 (1938): 415-420.
- Froehner, R. "Salihotra." Veterinärhistorische Mitteilungen 2, no. 1 (1922): 1-2.