“The seventh day, feast of Merodach and Zir: Panibu, a great feast, a day of rest. The prince of the people will eat neither the flesh of birds nor cooked fruits. He will not change his clothing. He will put on no white robe. He will bring no offering. The king will not ascend into his chariot. He will not perform his duties as royal law-giver. In a garrison city the commander will permit no proclamations to his soldiers. The art of the physician will not be practised.” This is another proof that the Jews derived many of their religious customs from the Assyrians and Accadians. The Assyrian Sabbath was evidently observed as strictly as under the Mosaic code. It is curious to note that the physician was not permitted to exercise his merciful calling on that day, and it throws light on the objection of the Jews to Christ that it was not lawful to heal on the Sabbath-day. CHAPTER IV. THE MEDICINE OF THE HINDUS. The Aryans.—Hindu Philosophy.—The Vedas.—The Shastres of Charaka and Susruta.—Code of Menu.—The Brahmans.—Medical Practitioners.—Strabo on the Hindu Philosophers.—Charms.—Buddhism and Medicine.—Jíwaka, Buddha’s Physician.—The Pulse.—Knowledge of Anatomy and Surgery in Ancient Times.—Surgical Instruments.—Decadence of Hindu Medical Science.—Goddesses of Disease.—Origin of Hospitals in India. The Hindus are considered by Max Müller to be much older even as regards their civilization than the Egyptians. This belief is based on his study of their language, which he says existed “before there was a single Greek statue, a single Babylonian bull, or a single Egyptian sphinx.” According to him, the noble Indo-Germanic or Aryan people, from whom have descended the Brahman, the Rájput, and the Englishman, had their earliest home, not in Hindustan, but in Central Asia. (Max Müller’s theory is now superseded by anthropological researches so far as the Europeans are concerned.) This splendid race drove before them into the mountains or reduced to slavery the _Dasyus_, the obscure aborigines, the non-Aryan primæval peoples. The earliest Aryan poets composed the _Rig-Veda_ at least three thousand, perhaps even four thousand years ago. The handsome Aryan fair-complexioned conquerors spoke with the utmost contempt of “the noseless” or “flat-nosed” Mongolian aborigines, who, in the Vedic poems, from being “gross feeders on flesh,” “lawless,” “non-sacrificing” tribes, were afterwards described as “monsters” and “demons.”[224]