Title: A Brief History of Ayurveda
Author: M R Raghava Varier
Publisher: Oxford University Press,
2020 (First)
ISBN: 9780190121082
Pages: 172
Modern
medicine is complemented by two main streams of alternate therapies in India –
Ayurveda and homeopathy. Concerns have been raised by rationalists on the
efficacy of homeopathic medicine as it is suggested that the underlying logic
of their formulation is that dilution of a serum with water makes it more
potent. Leaving aside the controversy for the time being, the point to note is
that Ayurveda is not subject to attacks on such fundamental levels. In fact,
there is a bias to the contrary. Since most Ayurvedic drugs are herbal products
and hence ‘natural’, there is a tendency to consume much more than required and
that too without the proper guidance of a physician. Even though it is an
alternative medicine now, Ayurveda has been the mainstream healthcare program
in the subcontinent for roughly 2500 years. This book is a brief history of it
from Vedic times to the classical age that ended by about seventh century CE.
Then comes a yawning chasm in medical knowledge in India which is at last
intellectually crossed only in the nineteenth century by determined pioneers
who put in place revival programs to repackage Ayurveda to the modern world. M
R Raghava Varier is director general at the Centre for Heritage Studies of the
government of Kerala. Prior to this assignment he was a consultant at the
Museum of Ayurveda at Kottakkal. He is basically a historian and epigraphist.
Ayurveda
derives its authority and status from the Atharvaveda tradition of Vedic
culture and society. The Veda prescribes the essential qualities of herbs
available and the uses it can be put to. The earliest source of information to
trace the history of indigenous knowledge of healing and healthcare is the
corpus of the Rig Vedic hymns. Vedic medicine is generally described as
‘magico-religious’, implying that the art of healing and healthcare involved
the use of medicine as well as ritualistic chanting of hymns. The author
remarks that the incantations and chants were to follow a psychosomatic
approach to healing which may be more lucidly described as ‘placebo effect’.
Vedic medicine also included a form of surgery. In the treatment of the
retention of urine, a reed was used as a catheter.
Varier
handles the Hindu and Buddhist streams of medicinal study as something quite
distinct and mutually exclusive. By the middle of the first millennium BCE,
medical knowledge was developed in the Buddhist monastic institutions as the
ascetic physicians travelled from place to place treating sick monks, lay
devotees and common people. People who heal others were entitled to a
respectable position in any society, but surprisingly in India, the early texts
treated a physician as impure and forbade Brahmins from practicing it. Unlike
this, surgery was done by barbers both in India and the west. Ayurveda attained
maturity in the classical texts of the samhitas. There are several samhitas and
each of them is attached to the name of a preceptor such as Charaka, Sushruta,
Kashyapa and so forth. Not only humans, Ayurvedic prescriptions are available
to horses, elephants and trees too. The author warns against accepting the
ancient texts at their literal meaning by giving a list of hyperboles. Sage
Dirghatamas was cut into pieces by his enemies but was restored to life by
Ashwinidevas by rejoining him. Visphala, wife of Khelaraja, lost her legs in
the battlefield and a metallic leg was grafted. Sage Atri’s severed limbs were
similarly grafted as also Dadhici’s severed head was replaced with that of a
horse. Modern practitioners should have the capacity to separate the wheat from
chaff.
The
book analyses Charaka Samhita in some detail. This treatise contains the basic
concepts of Ayurveda such as the theories of tridosha, panchabhuta and
so on. The human body falls into three major prakriti (natural groups) which are vata (wind), pitta (bile)
and kapha (phlegm). Treatment in the
Ayurveda system is for the prakriti of the patient and not for the symptom or
complaint of the disease. The philosophy of Charaka is autonomous and anterior
to others. It does not accept the existence of god. Two integral parts of the
programs of treatment in the Samhita is rasayana
(rejuvenation) and vajikarana (enhancement
of virility). Charaka proposes a comparatively higher marriageable age for men
and women. The practice in society had considerably fallen from the
recommendations in the medieval period. Child birth at an early age is not
countenanced in Charaka Samhita. It prescribes the period of sexual activity
from 16 to 70 years. The marriageable age for girls is 12 and for boys 21, but
reproductive age is set as 16 for girls and 25 for boys.
Ayurveda
also performed surgery for those in dire need of it. Mutilation of human
organs, especially of the nose, was a common form of corporal punishment then.
Sushruta Samhita deals with surgical procedures and instruments. Obviously,
anesthetics were not in use, but intoxicants were liberally used to ease pain.
The text mentions 100 blunt and 20 sharp instruments used for surgery. On this
point, the author accepts all traditional claims of Ayurveda at face value with
very little reservations. At the same time, he links progress in medicine to
societal relations in the characteristic way of left historians. He quotes
Romila Thapar for all references to ancient India. The author then assigns two
traditions to Ayurveda – the Indus civilization and the Vedic. This
unsubstantiated classification is a corollary to the Aryan invasion theory
which claims that the invading Aryans destroyed the Indus cities. The argument
for Indus origin of Ayurveda has no historical basis. Any information other
than gleaned from the still undeciphered Indus seals is pure conjecture.
Varrier goes one step further on the leftist path. There are true as well as
some false hypotheses in Ayurvedic theory. He assigns the true ones to have
originated from Indus culture and all the false ones from Vedic! Acharya Bhela
postulated the mind to be situated in the head, so he follows Indus tradition.
Charaka and Sushruta assigned it to the heart, so they are Vedic. The author
sounds illogical when he blindly follows the precepts of Marxian ideology.
The
book is tedious and absolutely uninteresting to read as it is structured like a
school or college text book. One positive aspect is that the author is
genuinely concerned about the growth and development of this traditional system
of healing in the current age. Throughout the text, he prefixes ‘science’
whenever he mentions Ayurveda so as to emphasize the relevance it seeks in
modern society. The book includes diagrams of very specific and peculiar
surgical instruments – 47 of them, to be precise – but these were taken from
the Ayurveda museum at Kottakkal and it’s not certain whether they were used in
ancient times. The ancient Greek medicinal system also used the concept of
peccant humours which cause diseases. This postulate is the same as Ayurveda,
but the author does not slow his pace to consider whether this similarity is
due to mutual influence or coincidental. A common health concern regarding some
Ayurvedic formulations is the high content of heavy metals such as mercury and
lead which adversely affect the well-being of the patient. This issue also is
not addressed in the book.
Rating:
2 Star
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