The Persian translation of the tridoṣa: Lexical analogies and conceptual incongruities
Résumé
This article examines the way in which Ayurvedic theory of the tridoṣa is translated and interpreted in Persian treatises on Indian medicine such as the Dastūr al-aṭibbā’ of the historian Muḥammad Qāsim Firišta (born ca. 978/1570) and the Takmila-yi hindī of Šāh Ahl Allāh (d. 1190/1776), the brother of the theologian of Delhi, Šāh Walī Allāh. The epistemic approach of Indian Muslim authors, based on the conceptual categories of the Greco-Arabic scientific thought, do not aim to extend the existing Persian technical lexicon. Muslim authors describe and comment upon the fundamental concepts of the Ayurvedic physiological doctrine by using few Sanskrit technical terms. The concept of doṣa is rendered through the Arabic term ḫilṭ (humour) and the three substances of the tridoṣa are reduced to the analogous categories of the Greco-Arabic school. This is only apparently a congruous and compatible translation between these two lexica. The translation of the humoral notions by using homologous terms is a delicate hermeneutical action that leads to redefining the conceptual value of some of the terms and the categories involved in the translation.
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