Authorship and Chronology of Vagbhata's Astangasamgraha and Astangahridayasamhita: A Critical Review

Abstract

Background: The Astangasamgraha (AS) and the Astangahridayasamhita (AH) are jointly attributed to a physician named Vagbhata and are grouped, with the Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita, as the Brihat Trayi (greater triad) of classical Ayurveda. Whether the two texts were written by one author across a career, or by two individuals within a shared teaching lineage, has been contested for over a century.
Objective: This review re-examines the authorship and chronology (kala nirnaya) of the Vagbhata corpus through the primary philological record: the 1907 exchange between Jolly and Hoernle, Hoernle's 1909 Bower-manuscript study, Gode's 1944 analysis of Indu's commentary, Bhattacharyya's 1947 single-authorship defence, and a 1963 analytical article, read alongside secondary scholarship (Vogel, Wujastyk, Sharma, Meulenbeld).
Methods: Sources were identified through direct reading of primary journal literature and consultation of institutional digital archives. Claims are tiered throughout by how directly each was verified against its original source.
Results: Two defensible positions emerge. A two-author reading rests on stylistic, doctrinal, sectarian, and commentarial divergence, reinforced by Gode's finding that Indu cites the AH as a distinct authority in his own commentary on the AS. A single-author reading rests on the AH's own ‘nectar verse’ and on unity testimony from three eleventh- to twelfth-century commentators. However, the nectar verse's authenticity is independently questioned by two unrelated lines of textual criticism, weakening the single-author school's strongest evidence, while three independent citation chains converge on a terminus ante quem near 800 CE, against which Bhattacharyya's ninth-century chronology sits uneasily.
Conclusion: The cumulative evidence tilts, cautiously, toward two related authors rather than one, though the question remains open. Resolution most likely requires new manuscript evidence or stylometric analysis, for which India's expanding digital Ayurveda-text infrastructure now offers real opportunity.