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xx

travaux des médecins, d'Hippocrate à l'établissement de l'école d'Alexandrie, ceux de cette école même ont péri complétement, à part des citations et des passages conservés dans des écrivains postérieurs; de telle sorte que les écrits hippocratiques demeurent isolés au milieu des débris de I'antique littérature médicale.

and internal evidence.Of internal evidence the first notable, feature is the style.

The simple, unvarnished prose of the Charaka reminds one of the Bráhmanas of the Vedas. Thanks to the researches of Bühler and Fleet, we have now some idea of the prose Kábya style as it existed in the second century A. D. The literary prose inscriptions discovered at Girnár and Násik, although less ornate and artificial than the romances of Subandhu and na (seventh century A. D)., abound in long-winded metaphors and alliterations and thus stand in bold constrast with the simple prose of the Charaka.

Between the period of the A. V. and that of the Charaka there must have been com-