Rediscovering Jain Medicine: An Aspect of Ancient Indian Medicine through the Embryology of the Taṇḍulaveyāliya
10.13081/kjmh.2025.34.645
- Author:
Youngsun YANG
1
Author Information
1. Senior Researcher, Asia Center, Seoul National University
- Publication Type:Article
- From:Korean Journal of Medical History
2025;34(3):645-674
- CountryRepublic of Korea
- Language:Korean
-
Abstract:
This study reexamines the position and significance of the Jain medical tradition, long marginalized in the history of Indian medicine, by analyzing the embryological discourse in the Jain text Taṇḍulaveyāliya. Existing narratives of Indian medical history have predominantly centered on Ayurveda, with Kenneth G. Zysk asserting that Jainism “failed to systematize medicine within its monastic tradition.” However, Mari J. Stuart demonstrated the institutionalization of Jain monastic medicine through her study of 6th-7th century Śvetāmbara commentaries. Building upon this foundation, the present study advances this scholarship by analyzing the specific content and characteristics of Jain medical knowledge, thereby contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the landscape of ancient Indian medical history.The Taṇḍulaveyāliya, a 7th-century text belonging to the prakīrṇaka (miscellaneous) section of the Jain canon, contains substantial material on embryology and anatomy. Drawing on Walther Schubring's critical edition (1969) and Colette Caillat's pioneering research (1974), this study examines the embryology section (Section A: verses 3-16, prose pp. 4,2-7,16), focusing on the anatomical structure of the female uterus, the three constitutive elements of conception (soul, oyā, and semen), monthly stages of fetal development, the dual vascular system and umbilical nutrition, and theories of sex determination.The analysis reveals that the Taṇḍulaveyāliya inherited the tradition of the early Jain canonical text Bhagavātisūtra(=Viyāhapannatti) while selectively incorporating and reworking theories from classical Ayurvedic texts (Carakasaṃhitā and Suśrutasaṃhitā). Particularly noteworthy is the systematization of fetal development by month and the addition of the umbilical cord (nābhi-rasa-haraṇī) as a nutritional mechanism, which demonstrates a strategic synthesis of the dual vascular theory from Jain scripture with the umbilical theory from Ayurveda. This reflects an intention to integrate more precise medical knowledge while respecting the authority of indigenous tradition.Furthermore, this text reinterprets the same medical knowledge within Jainism’s distinctive philosophical and ethical framework. While Ayurveda aims at health and healing, the Taṇḍulaveyāliya reconstructs the processes of fetal development and birth from the perspectives of suffering (duḥkha) and impurity (aśuci), utilizing them as instruments of religious awakening that encourage abandoning attachment to the body and pursuing liberation. Together with Jain medical ethics that excludes animal-derived medicines in accordance with the principle of non-violence (ahiṃsā) and employs only plant and mineral substances, this constitutes the unique religio-medical character of Jain medicine.This study directly refutes Zysk’s thesis of Jain medical “non-systematization,” demonstrating that Jainism not only possessed medical knowledge but systematically compiled and reinterpreted it in ways consonant with its religious worldview. Through this analysis, the study proposes that the history of ancient Indian medicine should be reconstructed not as a “linear narrative centered on Ayurveda,” but as a “complex of plural medical traditions” in which Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism shared a common foundation of medical knowledge while differentially recontextualizing it within their respective worldviews.
