From: Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 11:02 AM
Subject: Re: TO: vaccination historians FROM: Arthur Boylston
To: John Buder <johnbuder@gmail.com>
Dear John,
Many thanks for attaching the Boylston article.
Boylston says (2012: 4),
Conclusions
There are two unequivocal accounts of inoculation in the middle of the 16th century, one Chinese and one Indian, and each gives a specific place and name to the initial inoculators. Whether it was in use before about 1550 is entirely speculative.
The
account of Coult isn't "unequivocal" I'm afraid. Coult says that he
has been told that inoculation has been known in Bengal for 150 years,
"as near as I can learn." This is vague.
Then he says that Brahmana records give
the first Indian inoculator as "Dununtary."
This is a version of the Sanskrit name that is scientifically
transliterated as "Dhanvantari" or in Devanagari as "धन्वन्तरि". This
is the name of a mythological progenitor of the science of medicine.
This assertion is equivalent to claiming, say, that Aesclepius did
inoculation. It cannot be taken at face value as historical evidence, and should be treated as
an appeal to a mythological past age by someone who assumed that the ancient sages knew all of medical science.
Coult, writing in Calcutta, placed Dununtary in Champanagar: "a
physician of Champanager, a small town by the side of the Ganges about
half way to Cossimbazar." This can't be a place in Bihar. It has to be
somewhere north of Calcutta. Cossimbazar is in the northern outskirts of modern Berhampur. So
we're looking for a place that used to be called Champanagar, and is
somewhere round about Ranaghat, Santipur, Nabadwip or Plassey (as in,
"battle of"). Wherever this Champanagar is, if it's between Calcutta and Cossimbazar, it's in Bengal.
The trouble is, Campanagar (Campā, Campānagara, Campāpura, etc) is
normally a reference to the well-known place in Bihar, as Boylston
assumes. I think it's most likely that Coult is wrong about something.
Either he's wrong about the name "Champanagar" or he's wrong in
locating it between Calcutta and Cossimbazar. But the whole thing's
moot, really, since Dhanvantari is a mythical character.
With Robert Coult, in 1731, we apparently have a real witness, and a fairly
early one. But before relying on Coult's report, which we get through
Dharampal, I would feel more comfortable having eyes-on confirmation of
the Coult document. Years ago, I tried to follow Dharampal's references to
the Coult document,
Ralph W. Nicholas's book Fruits of Worship: Practical Religion in Bengal, (2003), pp. 172-177, gives a good survey of the early sources, and refers to the European accounts from the 18th century onwards, Coult's (again from Dharampal), Hollwell's, and others.
I would not say that we have historical evidence for inoculation in India before Coult, i.e., early 18th century.
I have a dim memory from the time I was writing "Pious Fraud" that there was some evidence that sounded worth investigating in early VOC accounts in Dutch. But I was not able to follow that up at the time.
I've addressed this to you directly; please circulate it as you see fit.
Best,
Dominik
