“From the Writings of an Indian Woman”

Abstract

This short article introduces eleven fragments of an Ayurvedic work on gynecological matters. The original Sanskrit version of this unnamed work is lost entirely, and there are also no references to it whatsoever in indigenous Indian literature; however, some extracts from it are preserved in the form of Arabic translations, dating to the first half of the ninth century CE. These samples are pharmaceutical in nature, and deal with uterine disorders, sexual hygiene, conception, and cosmetics. Their significance lies, moreover, in the fact that they are explicitly linked to a female author, whose identity remains uncertain but whose very evocation is an extremely rare phenomenon in both Sanskrit and Arabic medical literature. The fragments are presented here in both their English and Arabic forms.