INTRODUCTION.

topics that legitimately belong to, or are only incidentally mentioned in, those subdivisions. Hence, it is more like an appendix or supplement, arising from the requirements of the original subdivisions. It is probable that Nāgārjuna might have edited this part of the Samhitā along with its other portions.Mahāmahopādhyāya Kavirāj Dvārakā Nāth Sen Kaviratna of Calcutta agrees with this opinion —Translator.

Western opinions on the subject:—The consensus of Western opinions places Nāgārjuna in the first quarter of the third century B.C.Beal's Buddhistic Records of the Western World, Vol. II, p. 212. Stein's Rājataranginī. and identifies Sushruta as a contemporary of Shakyasinha Buddha. It is argued that the era immediately preceding Shakya Muni was a period of decline in Hindu thought; and the Sushruta Samhitā must have been the result of a revived intellectual activity that usually follows the arrival of a new creed—an assumption that supports the hypothesis of Greek influence on the Hindu system of medicine. But there were great men in India before Buddha. The age that immediately preceded the age of Buddha was by no means an age of decline; properly speaking, the age that followed the downfall of Buddhism shows, on the contrary, signs of true decline. India had eminent philosophers and scientists living almost at the same time as the great Buddha. The chronological facts collected above from the Mahābhāratam and the Garuda Purānam could have been interpreted to prove that the age of Sushruta was earlier than that of the Mahābhāratam, if not for the internal evidence provided by the Samhitā itself regarding the probable date of its composition, which we shall have occasion to address later on.Lalita-Vistara—Raja R. L. Mitra's Edition, Chapter I.

Extraneous Evidence:—Sushruta is mentioned in the