 The mythical origin of Ayurveda.
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| Harappa |
Once upon a time, somewhere around 5000 BC, the people lead a happy and content life on the banks of rivers and mountain sides. Hardly any kind of serious ailments existed. But nonetheless some dewellers decided to build cities and lead a life of comfort and luxury. With that, civilisationīs diseases and disorders began to appear. Even Rishis (the wise ) as well as Ayurveda doctors were effected. Consequently in a large gathering which took place in the Himalayas, the holy council of saints and Ayurveda doctors decided to meet and consult on how the people could be helped to overcome this malady. The doctors began to study and document the diseases of the well-to-do citizens.
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| Sarasvati-script |
The saga could be true, because virtually around 3.500 BC the Dravidian city-cultures of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro began to grow. They are reckoned as the cultural precursor of modern civilisation. The Indus-script (also known as Sarasvati-script) of the Harappa civilisation is probably the oldest existing known script. It was used in ancient India. In its matured form one can retrace it to as far back as 2600 till 1900 BC and in its earlier form even as far back as 3300 BC. After 1900 BC the usage of this script began to dwindle and around the first year thousand of Christ it vanished into antiquity and was completely lost.
A decipherment of this script which could be generally accepted has not yet been achieved. It is also not known if the characters actually represent a script or if they at all deal with the embodiment of non-spoken symbols. In case the script were pure ideographic they do not enclose any form of information about the language of those who used it. If the script containes linguistic information or not it is not possible for us to define the underlying language.
Many authors who have dealt with the History of Ayurveda find a close connection between the ancient holy vedic texts of India and Ayurveda. This is due to the fact that the first documented lists of healing plants are in Sanskrit the language of the vedas, the classical language of ancient India. Nonetheless one could assume that the root of Ayurveda is much older and
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| Aryans |
that its origin lies in the Dravidian civilisation. Around 1.500 BC the so called Aryans began to conquer northern parts of India. Their ancestral source rests in darkness but the definition Aryan(the high born) in itself points to a certain kind of haughtiness. With modern techniques of warfare they managed to conquer the north of India. The Dravidians, the original inhabitants of India were forced or driven out under the Aryan pressure to move to the southern part of India. One can presume that the Aryans not only waged wars but adopted certain knowledge like mathematical or medical systems taught and practised by the Dravidians. So the conquerer took over certain aspects of the conquered and adapted this to their own system of life. Due to the lack of historical documents one can understandably turn to the vedas for reference or information on Ayurveda. Thus for knowledge on Ayurveda one is dependant on the vedic texts of ancient India.
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| Vedas |
Already in the first book of Vedas, the Rigveda a collection of 1028 verses there is a list of healing plants as well as verses describing operations and the use of prosthesis. The Rigveda existed around 1.500 till about 1.000 BC.
In Atharva Veda there was already a documentation of 290 Healing plants, diverse forms of therapautic methods practised and verses on different kinds of diseases.
Another story tells the tale of the origin of Ayurveda. One thought that such great knowledge which Ayurveda incorporated cannot be human but must have a divine origin so one constructed a legend based on mythlogy.
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| Brahma |
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| Prajapati, |
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| Asvins |
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| Indra |
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| Dhanvantari |
Brahma, the primodial substance of all existence handed over the knowledge of Ayurveda to Prajapati, the Lord of Creation.
He in turn handed over this wisdom to the Asvins, Ayurveda physicians who gave this knowledge further on to Indra the King of gods. Indra presented this wisdom on Dhanvantari the physician of the gods. He brewed the drink/nectar of immortality for the gods (Amrita) and the most decisive battle between the good gods and their adversorys /demons took place. Sushruta who is considered to be the founder of Ayurveda as it exists today visited Dhanvantari with six other learned and requested him to present the knowledge of healing power to them.
Dhanvantari granted him this wish.
The three pillars of Ayurveda
Six talented scholars worked on this medical knowledge and documented this in Agnivesha Samita (collection). The collective work Agnivesha Samhita, named after Agnivesha is the only complete work that exists and later became the basic background on which the Caraka Samhita was founded. Caraka Samihita is considered to be one amongst the three main pillars of Ayurveda medicine.
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| Caraka |
Caraka was a physician who lived in the era between 1000 and 700 BC and we are indebted to him for the great compilation of the collection he made of earlier art of medical practises. In his works we find a systematic presentation/account of diseases and a detailed portrayal of diagnosis, descriptions of 500 healing plants including the principial effect of these healing plants on diverse indications.
The second pillar of Ayurveda was created by Sushruta about 200 years after Caraka, a physician who became famous due to his surgical knowledge specialised in treating wounds accquired in battles.
Sushruta Samhita, the collection that he compiled drew its attention chiefly on the surgical aspect of medicine. He developed 121 medical instruments, described the clamping of wounds with women-hair, horse -hair and ant -heads. Surgery can be described as the ligitimate child of Ayurvedic medicine. We can assume today that even Hippokrates who lived 200 year after Susruta had general access to the medical works of other cultures and perhaps even roughly profited from it. The similarity between the Three- Juices -Theory of Ayurveda and the Theory of Humours in antiquity with its slime/mucus, blood and gall as the basis of health and disorders are closely related and quite obvious.
About 5 century BC. , due to the attempts made by Persian conquests and later by Alexander the Great an exchange of ideas took place between cultures. This exchange between various cultures played a significant role in the history of medicine. From Alexander the Great it is handed down that he let his physicians instruct from Indian specialists. So one sees that an inter- exchange of medicinal knowledge occurred in antiquity.
The third pillar in Ayurveda, the Astangahrdaya (heart of 8 limbs) can be designated to the phycisian Vagbhates. According to the opinion of many authors he was the last teacher in the old school of Ayurveda to have written a collected compilation on Ayurvedic medicine. He lived around the era 7 century AC.
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| Gandhi |
Till the conquest of India around 13 century by Islanic invaders, Ayurveda maintained an uninterrupted Tradition. Considering that period of time, it is astonishing that Ayurveda had developed such a high standard of scientific knowledge in the field of medical sciences. Admittedly after that Ayurveda went through a period of repression under the Islamic rule and then under the colonial times when the British rulled over India. The British rullers decided to close all Ayurvedic-schools and introduced universities that taught the western scool of medicine. So Ayurvedic medicine was replaced by the western orthodox medicine. However family organisations practised Ayurveda further in closer units and valuable knowledge was safe guarded and kept till modern times. With the independence of India a new consciousness began to grew, a consciousness of its own cultural heritage and Ayurveda ascended once again like pheonix out of the ashes.
The so called poor-manīs-medicine advanced to an Indian school of medicine of which one could be proud off. In 1921 Gandhi oppened officially an Ayurveda School after a long period of activity which took place underground since the colonial rullers had officially forbidden the practice and teaching of Ayurveda.
 One estimates today that there are about 350 000 practising Ayurveda doctors in India. To become an Ayurveda doctor, the complete education of Ayurvedic medicine takes 11 semester till the final exam. After that one needs to have 3 years of clinical experience to achieve the tittle of Ayurveda doctor.
Since a couple of years Ayurveda is gaining due recognition amongst western medicine. Ayurveda experts along with western therapists are researching together the source of this given knowledge in the ancient texts/scripts and are attempting to find new interpretations so that the valid universal rules applicable to western standard of medicine can find an acess in a language that the western mind understands.
Translated by Paramita Lahiri |
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