Great exponents of the Atreya school of physicians were the six disciples of Sage Atreya – Agnivesha, Bhela, Jatukarna, Parasara, Harita and Ksharpani. Each of them wrote a comprehensive work on the practice of medicine. These works were passed on orally in the teacher-student lineage before being put down in text form. The knowledge was…
References to diseases, herbs and herbal cures can be seen in all the four Vedas. Atharvana Veda has many hymns eulogizing herbs. Aushadhi Sukta in Rig Veda is the oldest document available on medicinal plants in this region. Ayurvedic teachings were originally transmitted for thousands of years before being written down in melodious Sanskrit poetry.…
The Lineage The term Ayurveda is a combination of two Sanskrit words – ‘Ayush’ meaning health and longevity and ‘Veda’ meaning profound knowledge. Ayurvedic medicine originated in the early civilizations of India some 3000–6000 years ago. Reference to it in the form of verses is recorded in Vedas – the ancient religious and philosophical texts…
It seems necessary to appreciate the historical fact that various knowledge systems have had their genesis and basic evolution in specific cultural spaces in time and hence are bound to be different in their expression. The key to appreciating cultural plurality is an acceptance of the fact that cultures are guided by their own way of…
Ayurveda is one of the most ancient systems of medicine known today whose origin according to scholars of ancient Ayurvedic literature is around 6,000 BC. A complete medical system that has evolved over time integrating centuries of wisdom derived from experience, it is now undergoing a vigorous revival not only in the place of its…
Western medicine, in contrast, heavily delineates between mind and body, between doctor and patient and between healthy and diseased. Based on this philosophy of reductionism and mainly guided by science in which truth is derived from observation and empirically correct interpretation, faith – that which cannot be proven through scientific method – is seen as…
The world’s major healing traditions are commonly categorized as Eastern, influenced by Asian-Pacific philosophy or Western, molded by Greco-Roman philosophy and later the scientific revolution of the 16th or 17th century. While modern medicine in the west has developed quite independent of religion, Eastern healing traditions that developed in the East before the Christian era…
The beginnings of pharmacognosy as a branch of science are claimed to have happened in the early 20th century in Europe, though there are written records of the use of natural materials for healing since antiquity in several places in the world. Whatever ‘science’ in the form of organized systematic knowledge that happened in the…
In the early 20th century, pharmacognosy was basically concerned with the description and identification of drugs both in the whole state and in powder form. Today the subject has expanded enormously into other areas. Botanical aspects being still of fundamental importance for pharmacopoeial identification and quality control purposes, currently microbes and even marine organisms are…