Surgery in Ancient India & Ganesha

Ganesha, the anthropomorphic divinity with the elephant's head, is one of the most loved God-figures in Hinduism. Some persons have claimed that the Ganesha story is a sign of knowledge about advanced surgical skills in ancient India and that those ancient surgeons knew how to transplant an animal head on a human body. While such claims are laughable, I do believe that there can be some links between the myth of Ganesha and the knowledge of surgery in ancient India.

This post is about surgery in ancient India and how it could have given birth to the Ganesha myth.

The Ganesha Story

I love the figure of Ganesha. For me, it symbolises the omnipresent links between humans and different aspects of nature, which permeate different aspects of Hinduism. They teach us to look with respect at every aspect of nature - from the microscopic bacteria and ants to animals and plants, and even the snow covered mountains. If you have seen individuals in India offering flour or grains to ants and snakes and monks going around with a mask for their mouths, you can understand the vitality of this link between Indic religions and nature.

In the Indian mythology, Ganesha is the son of Shiva and Parvati, born while his father is away. Many years later, one day Shiva comes back home and is stopped by Ganesha, who does not know him and is guarding the door because his mother is taking bath. Angry, Shiva cuts his head. Later when he realises his mistake, it is too late, some animal has eaten his son's head. So Shiva sends his men to look for another head, and his men bring back the head of a baby elephant which is put on the boy's torso. This is how Ganesha's elephant head is explained in the mythology.

Transplanting An Animal Head

Some persons take the Ganesha story literally and believe that ancient Indians knew how to transplant an animal head on that of a human being. Even if it was possible to sew and transplant an animal head on a human body, and even if it was possible to avoid the inter-species transplant rejection, no real elephant's head, not even a baby elephant head, can fit the human body, unless we are talking of elephant-sized giant men from Gulliver's Travels. Thus, this story is only a story.

However, ancient Indians did develop surgical skills almost 2000 years ago, which were probably unique in the world at that time. Some of those techniques are still used in modern surgery. I wonder if the story of one such surgical operation could have given birth to the Ganesha myth. Let me explain.

Surgery in Ancient India

Mentions of surgery are found from Rigveda onwards in different texts of Hinduism and some of the well known ancient surgeons mentioned in these texts include Ashwini Kumaras, Chavana, Dhanvantari, Atereya Agnivesh and Sushruta. Sushruta from 600 BCE is called the father of Indian surgery, and his book known as Sushruta Samhita contains indications regarding cosmetic, plastic, and dental surgery ("Sandhan Karma").

Dr. Vibha Singh in an article published in the Journal of Maxillofacial Surgery in 2017 had written about it:

The ancient surgical science was known as Shalya Tantra. Shalya means broken arrow or a sharp part of a weapon and Tantra means maneuver. Shalya Tantra embraces all processes, aiming at the removal of factors responsible for producing pain or misery to the body or mind. Since warfare was common then, the injuries sustained led to the development of surgery as refined scientific skill ...Complicated surgeries such as cesarean, cataract, artificial limb, fractures, urinary stones plastic surgery, and procedures including per- and post-operative treatment along with complications written in Sushrutaa Samhita, which is considered to be a part of Atharva Veda, are surprisingly applicable even in the present time ...Even today, rhinoplasty described by Shushruta in 600 BC is referred to as the Indian flap and he is known as the originator of plastic surgery. Besides trauma involving general surgery, Sushruta gives an in-depth account and a description of the treatment of 12 varieties of fracture and six types of dislocation. This continues to spellbind orthopedic surgeons even today. He mentions the principles of traction, manipulation, apposition, stabilization, and postoperative physiotherapy ...

Knowledge about surgery travelled from India to the Arab World in the 8th CE and then to Europe. Prof. Thamburaj in his book Textbook of Contemporary Neurosurgery wrote that Sushruta Samhita was translated into Arabic as 'Kitab Shah Shun al–Hindi' and 'Kitab–I–Susurud'. There were Latin and German translations of this text in early 19th century but I think that there must have other translations of this text in the past and the knowledge about the Indian techniques had reached Europe much earlier.

Dr Frank McDowell in his 1977 book on Plastic Surgery had written: "Through all of Sushruta's flowery language, incantations and irrelevancies, there shines the unmistakable picture of a great surgeon. Undaunted by his failures and unimpressed by his successes, he sought the truth unceasingly and passed it on to those who followed. He attacked diseases and deformities definatively, with reasoned and logical methods. When the path did not exist, he made one."

The Skin Grafting Technique from India

Skin grafts are needed when the skin is destroyed, such as in burn and crush injuries. Broadly, there are two kinds of skin grafts - a partial skin graft and a full skin graft. The full skin grafts were described in Sushruta Samhita.

When wounds are big or deeper, and a thin strip of skin is not enough, we need a graft with the full depth of the skin and underlying tissues including blood vessels and nerves. For this, the surgeons cut a piece of full skin tissue from three sides, usually from abdomen, arms or thighs, while making sure that it remains attached on the 4th side to the original part of the body, from where it can continue to receive blood. This skin flap is used to cover the wound. This means, the surgeon needs to bring together the wound to the body part which is going to donate the skin, and they need to stay together for some weeks, till the grafted skin starts getting blood from the underlying tissues. Once the grafted skin is well fixed to the new area, the flap can be cut at the base and two parts can be separated.

The Origins of Ganesha Myth

Is it possible that the Ganesha myth started from a surgery in ancient India? Lets suppose that there was a young boy who was a priest at a Shiva or Shakti temple and he was attacked by someone who wanted to loot the temple. He was able to protect the temple but his nose was cut during the fight. He was operated by a surgeon who took a full skin flap from his upper arm and used it to construct a nose for him. After the operation, he was forced to keep his arm close to his face with his forearm hanging in front of his face like an elephant's trunk for a few weeks or months. Suppose, someone called him the boy with the elephant's head and over time, it gave rise to the Ganesha story?

Hinudism has a strong traditions of an oral culture, where old stories are made into songs, adapted to the local context and passed across generations. Over centuries, such a story could have become the Ganesha's mythical story and the sages incorporated that story in a sacred book, explaining him to be Shiva and Parvati's son.

Conclusions

Hinduism is a living tradition that has roots going back to antiquity. This living tradition is incredibly complex, where each story has innumerable versions, and some of them can be contradictory. Over centuries, stories which can have deep metaphorical meanings become widespread and find a place in one of its sacred texts.

My considerations about the origins of the Ganesha story are just speculations and can't be taken as truth. They build a story around the surgical skills about skin-grafting in ancient India. There is no way to prove this story and any way, that is not the purpose of this post.

Additional notes about this surgery in India are given below:  I think that this additional information is important because it shows that Ayurvedic operations based on the ancient techniques described in old books of Sushruta Samhita and Charaka Samhita, were being practiced in India in 18th century and were taken to west much more recently than has been claimed.

Additional Notes, 11 August 2020 (From @trueindologyorg on Instagram):

The above is the picture of world's first known modern plastic surgery. It is also the picture of world's first known modern nose job. It was performed by a traditional Indian surgeon named Kumar. The person in this picture was known as Cowasji. He was a Maratha bullock driver. He had been imprisoned by Tipu Sultan and his nose was cut off in prison. His nose was later restored by a traditional Surgeon named Kumar using "ancient Indian methods" in 1794 CE.

A Britisher named Lucas observed in action the traditional Indian surgery of Cowasji and documented every detail of this operation. This picture was a British portrait of Cowasji AFTER Rhinoplasty (c. 1795 CE). At that time, the Europeans lacked the scientific knowledge and expertise needed to perform plastic surgery. They were greatly intrigued by this method and found it was commonly performed in India. They also noted how Susruta Samhita described this procedure of Rhinoplasty in detail. These details were then accessed by a scientist named Joseph Constantine Carpue. Using these techniques, he performed world's "first" modern Rhinoplasty 20 years later.

Joseph Constantine Carpue is widely known as the father of Plastic Surgery. But in his book "An account of two successful operations" , he acknowledges that it was performed by "Indians from time immemorial". He learnt it through his friends who "copied from Hindoo practitioners" in his own words. Nasal reconstructions had been practiced as a relatively routine procedure in India for centuries. The procedures are described in two well-known early Indian medical works like the Suśruta Samhitā. By the nineteenth century, the technique had been handed down through families.

Traditional Indian sources recommend that Kumbhakaras (potters) perform the surgery owing to their skill. They performed it till 18th century. Source: "An account of two successful operations " by Joseph Constantine Carpue. Image source: https://blogs.bl.uk/science/2016/10/britains- first-nose-job.html

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#surgery #medicine #ayurveda #ancientindia #ganesha #hinduism

Our Black Gods

Some of the most popular deities of Hinduism are dark-skinned. Considering the Indian obsession with fair skins, I had often wondered, how did that come about and why did ancient Hindus imagined their Gods to be dark-skinned? I have thought a lot about it and I have not yet found any convincing explanation about it.

Over the past couple of centuries, it seems that we have started a whitening process of our dark-skinned Gods, much like our craze for the whitening creams. If not fair, they are shown as light blue or green coloured figures, as the figure of lord Ram in the picture above. In plays and films, light-skinned actors are taken to play their roles.

For the past 10 days we are closed in our homes because of the Corona virus epidemic. Schio, the tiny town at the foothills of Alps mountains in the north-east of Italy where we live, has been largely spared from this epidemic so far. Thus, I have a lot of time to think and write for my blog! This was how I started to think about the popular Gods of Hinduism and ask myself, why are they shown as dark-skinned?

Dominant Narratives

For the past couple of centuries, the dominant narrative about ancient Indians and Hindus in India has been that of lighter-skinned Aryans, who had come from central or west Asia, and who pushed the darker skinned original inhabitants of India to the south or in the forests. Some believe that they were invaders, who had destroyed the Indus Valley civilisation. However, that invasion theory is not considered now because no evidence had been found of widespread violence and war in the archaeological explorations in the Indus Valley. 

It sounds like a linear and clear explanation, and seems quite plausible. However, I find it difficult to place the black-skinned Gods of Hinduism in this narrative.

Why Did Aryans Choose Black Gods?

The question which I ask is this - if Vedic Hinduism was brought by light-skinned Aryans, who had come to dominate India and had pushed many indigenous groups to the margins of the societies, why did they choose so many dark-skinned Gods as their principle deities?

Two of the most popular deities of Hinduism - Ram and Krishna, both known as incarnations of Vishnu, are described as dark-skinned. Krishna's name, itself means black/dark. On the other hand, most of their consorts, the female deities, are described as fair skinned, except for Kali, one of the female deities associated with Shiva.

Possible Explanations

According to a Hindi article I found on the internet, the black colour of Hindu deities was a philosophical choice because the black colour is formed by mixing of all the colours and thus it has all shades of the Prakriti (nature) in itself. However, I find it difficult to accept this explanation, because it seems like a more cerebral answer and does not say anything about the ideas and attitudes of the common persons, who needed to pray to those deities.

Vedic culture has been characterised as a Patriarchal Society - why did a Patriarchal Society choose low-in-hierarchy black-skinned figures as their male deities? One explanation can be that ancient Indians who believed in Vedic culture were themselves dark-skinned persons (or were a mixed group, somewhat like today's Indians, and dark-skinned persons among them had high-prestige roles) and that is why they preferred dark-skinned deities. If we accept this idea, what does that mean for the Aryan-Dravidian theories, as well as, for the caste theories?

Another explanation can be that the ancient Vedic Indians believed in the mother-goddess and female deities, while the dark-skinned male deities belonged to Indus Valley people and indigenous people of the forests. When Aryans arrived and gradually assimilated with pre-existing Indian groups, they took over the pre-existing male deities. Thus, the dark-skinned deities came to Hinduism from the indigenous people of India, as the two groups assimilated and inter-mixed their deities.

Yet, another explanation can be that the principle deities of Hinduism arose as representations of the natural forces, and thus deities representing dark forces such as clouds and thunder, took on dark colours. But this logic does not seem to apply to the figures of Ram and Krishna.

Or, perhaps, there are different explanations for each of them and it is by coincidence that we ended up with many dark-skinned deities? It is also possible that when Aryans imagined their Gods in anthropomorphic forms, they did not imagine them to be similar to themselves, but as dark-skinned "others"? Or, can it be that the Aryan-Dravidian narrative is not so linear as has been implied?

Can you think of any other explanation about the dark-skinned deities of Hinduism?

Whitening of the Dark Gods

I am not sure when exactly did we start whitening our deities. One way can be to look at the Hindu deities in countries like Indonesia and Vietnam. Hinduism is supposed to have travelled to places like Bali in Indonesia and Champa in Vietnam in first-second century CE. Do they have any dark-skinned Hindu deities in these countries discovered in the archaeological excavations? If yes, that will help us in dating the choice of dark-skinned deities.

We can also look at the probable dates when our epics like Ramayan were written, because Ramayan describes Ram and his youngest brother Shatrughan as dark-skinned, while the two other brothers, Laxman and Bharat, are described as fair-skinned. However, the claims about probable dating of Ramayan are very variable.

According to David Kinsley, "The Vamana Purana has a different version of Kali's relationship with Parvati. When Shiva addresses Parvati as Kali, "the dark blue one," she is greatly offended. Parvati performs austerities to lose her dark complexion and becomes Gauri, the golden one. Her dark sheath becomes Kausiki, who while enraged, creates Kali."

Vamana Purana is a late text, it has been dated to 9-11th century. Thus, this could mean that by 9-11th centuries, Hindus had started whitening its deities or at least to make them seem less dark? Or perhaps the Kali-Parvati story has other origins and looking for explanations based on a predilection for fair skins is misplaced and over-simplification of this issue.

In the second half of 19th century, Raja Ravi Varma popularised the Indian deities through his calendar art, where all the dark-skinned deities were shown either in light blue or fair-skinned. Those calendars had a huge influence and continue to affect how we imagine our Gods even today.

Devdutt Pattnaik in his article - Black Gods and White Gods, had written about this Indian fascination for the fair skins, with the following words:

And so we had gods who were always pink, demons who were always brown and dark gods who were always blue. Indra, Brahma and Durga were pink, Asuras and Rakshasas were brown. Vishnu, Ram and Krishna were blue. Somehow, an unnaturally blue Krishna was preferred over a naturally dark Krishna. ‘Because blue is the color of the sky, of ether, of divinity,’ we were told. No one dared point out that Krishna and Shyam were both proper nouns and common nouns which referred to gods as well as the color black. We forgot to refer to traditional Patta chitras in Orissa where Krishna and Vishnu are always shown using black paint while Balarama and Shiva are always shown using white. When making Krishna blue, we forgot all folk songs, even Hindi film songs, where there is constant reference to Krishna’s dark complexion.

Shiva is the only one, who is described as Neelkanth, the one with the blue throat, because he had drunk the poison threatening to destroy the humanity. Thus, he has been imagined as a blue coloured God. In the past few years, while thinking of increasing pollution and the climate crisis, I have often thought of the blue-throated Shiva as a metaphor and the need for finding a way of "collecting" all the pollution-poison and saving the earth. At the same time, I have wondered, what kind of poisons could have been there in the environment in the antiquity which had necessitated Shiva's intervention, and the origins of this story? Can this mythological story be linked to a big volcano eruption or a meteorite impact which had covered the skies with dust or ash for months or years?

In the 20th century, the process of whitening of the dark skins of our Gods became even more prevalent. Now, Krishna and Ram are usually shown as light blue or green coloured, or sometimes even fair-skinned. In films and TV serials, often light-skinned persons are chosen to play the role of these deities. This has been coupled with an obsessive search for lightening the skin colour through different skin creams among the general population. India is one of the biggest markets in the world for such creams and its TV and magazines are full of advertisements for selling such products.

In 2017-18, Bhardwaj Sundar and Naresh Nil had launched a campaign to create awareness about this change by using dark skinned models to portray Indian gods and goddesses to recreate the paintings of Raja Ravi Roy. The series of images was named ‘Dark Is Divine’ and they had created 7 portraits, each featuring a different deity. The image above shows a dark-skinned Laxmi from this campaign. I don't know if this image makes you feel strange like it does to me - I think that it forces us to reflect on our colour-biases.

Conclusions

For a long time, I have wondered about the origin of dark-skinned deities of Hinduism, because they do not seem to fit in with the Indian fascination for the fair-skins. In fact, black-skin is seen almost as a synonym of ugly and inferior by many persons.

The dark-skinned deities also seem illogical in the context of dominant narratives of fair-skinned Aryans who came to India and brought the seeds of Vedic Hinduism with them. They also seem illogical in the context of caste sub-divisions, which were supposed to place dark-skinned persons in the lowest groups of the hierarchy.

Perhaps, the understanding of logic and rationale is not good for understanding Hinduism - because the roots of ancient Indian philosophy and its ways of understanding and interpreting the world are very different from the Western systems of logic. Thus, perhaps my questions about the dark-skinned Gods of Hinduism are wrong and need to be rephrased?

If you have some other ideas about this theme, do let me know!

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