Kalpas

The ancient thoughts on medicine and surgery were perhaps confined to texts called Kalpas, small monographs. Early Indian medical literature was full of such monographs or handbooks. Agnivesa gave shape to such knowledge by gathering, pruning, enlarging and emphasising important aspects into text-books of medicine as early as 1200 B.C. The ancient Indian medical practitioners were divided into two classes: the Salya-cikitsakas (surgeons) and the Kaya-cikitsakas (physicians). Surgery had not yet been incorporated into the encyclopaedic tradition as represented by the Agnivesatantra. It was through the efforts of Susruta that surgery achieved a leading position in general medical training.

Susruta Samhita is the translation of what he learnt at the feet of his preceptor Divodasa Dhanvantari. We have seen that along with Susruta, Aupadhenava, Vaitarana and others too had their instruction from Divodasa and each in his turn prepared a treatise on Salyatantra. The present Samhita itself reveals that there existed many such works on surgery and the one belonging to Aupadhenava, Aurabhra, Pauskalavata and Susruta were the source books for the rest of the treatises. Amongst these compositions, only the Susrutasamhita is extant, and apart from the redactions by Nagarjuna, Candrata and the commentators, it has remained the only treatise for two of the eight branches of Ayurveda, namely Salya and Salakya.