The Ayurvedic tradition's foundational surgical text, attributed to Sushruta, cataloguing over a hundred instruments and describing procedures including early reconstructive surgery.
लगभग ६ठी शताब्दी ई.पू. · circa 6th century BCE
Organized across six sthanas, the Samhita covers surgical training methods, including practice incisions on vegetables and dead animals before live procedures, over 300 surgical procedures, and detailed pre- and post-operative care.
Its forehead-flap technique for nasal reconstruction remains recognizable in the surgical literature as one of the text's most distinctive contributions, alongside its detailed classification of wound types and its insistence, unusual for its era, that a surgeon's training include supervised hands-on practice before treating a live patient.