Fear and Loathing in Ancient South Asia: Āyurveda and the Psychology of Crises

Abstract

“The most dreadful aspects of the whole affliction were the despair into which people fell when they realized they had contracted the disease (they were immediately convinced that they had no hope, and so were much more inclined to surrender themselves without a fight), and the cross-infection of those who cared for others: they died like sheep, and this was the greatest cause of mortality. When people were afraid to visit one another, the victims died in isolation, and many households were wiped out through the lack of anyone to care for them.”

Unfortunately, this attentive description of the details of a historic epidemic is not a quote from an ancient Sanskrit text, but from “The Peloponnesian War”, written by Thucydides, who documented the so-called plague of Athens which took place in 430 BC (Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. Tr. by Martin Hammond. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 98). For ancient South Asia, we lack such precise dating and descriptions, although we can be sure that epidemics took place repeatedly and had a devastating effect on the people. Nevertheless, there are a few sources that can tell us something about how people felt in the face of downfall and disaster. In this talk, I want to focus on the emotional aspects of widespread crises as depicted in early pre-modern South Asian literature. What comes closest to the account of the plague of Athens is the legend of the plague of Vaiśālī, dated to a similar period and transmitted in several Buddhist (Pāli and Sanskrit) sources. The foundational texts of Āyurveda, composed in the first centuries of the common era, do not describe historical outbreaks like Thucydides, but they occasionally discuss epidemics, their causes and possible countermeasures. These descriptions also mention certain mental aspects of such events and describe how negative emotions can lead to widespread suffering. From these two literary vantage points – legendary tales and medical disquisitions –, I will investigate the attitudes towards epidemics and similar events and show how emotions were connected with their origins, their presence and their overcoming. The focal term in these examinations will be bhaya, usually simply translated as fear, but often also denoting a danger or a threat. It features not only in the accounts on epidemics in both the examined literary genres, but it is also used in literature on state theory to designate large-scale calamities, like fires, floods and epidemics, which can affect the subjects of a king. Here, bhaya is specified by the prefix mahā– (great), apparently referring to the scale and the high amount of affected people, rather than the intensity of the fear triggered by the event.