Indian Medicine An Online Bibliographic

Oxford Bibliographies Online - Indian Medicine http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com/vie...
Indian Medicine
BY DOMINIK WUJASTYK
INTRODUCTION
Contemporary India has what anthropologists such as Charles Leslie have termed a “pluralistic medical
system” (see Ayurveda in the Modern World). This expression captures the idea that a person
experiencing illness may have recourse to multiple therapeutic resources. For nondangerous illnesses,
an ill person is quite likely to be treated at home by friends or family members, perhaps using
therapies and ideas that have been passed down from earlier generations through family traditions.
Other ill persons may turn to temple healers, herbalists, village healers, ascetics, exorcists,
practitioners of modern establishment medicine, unani tibb, ayurveda, siddha, or a host of other
diverse forms of healing (see, for example, The Human Body). Forms of medicine are often combined,
in spite of having different explanatory models. An important distinction exists between forms of
medicine sanctioned and financially supported by the government (establishment medicine) and
others. The Indian government’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare devotes most of its budget to
modern establishment medicine (MEM). But it also has a Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and
Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy (AYUSH). Thus, in India, the latter forms of medicine
can also be considered “establishment” medicine. Outside South Asia, these forms of medicine are
normally part of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and this different status gives them a
different historical and social trajectory. “Indian medicine” is commonly understood to refer to medical
systems that have their historical origins in South Asia. The present bibliography will focus especially
on ayurveda, the most ancient and widespread of theses systems and the one with the longest
continuous literary history. The Sanskrit word āyurveda, meaning “knowledge for long life” has now
entered the English language and routinely appears in English dictionaries. It can therefore be used,
without the diacritical mark, as an English word signifying classical Indian medicine.
INTRODUCTORY WORKS
The foundational works on Indian medical history that are still important and useful include Jolly 1977
(original German edition 1901) and Filliozat 1964 (original French edition 1949). Jolly 1977, first
translated and updated in the 1950s, is still valuable, though we now know more details about a wider
range of Sanskrit medical literature. Filliozat 1964 is also still valuable, although some of his
arguments concerning the strong historical connection between Vedic and ayurvedic medicine have
been superseded. His comparisons between ayurveda and Plato’s Timaeus are suggestive, although
research in the decades since his work was done has not produced any conclusive historical data on
connections between Greek and Indian medicine. Kutumbiah 1962, originally the author’s lectures for
medical school students, shows a modern establishment medicine (MEM) doctor wrestling with the
history and interpretation of ayurvedic medicine from the point of view of real medical theory and
1 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
practice. Besides being an original and informative historical essay, Majumdar 1971 usefully locates
historical information about ayurveda in the framework of the history of science in India. Basham
1967 and Basham 1976 are essays on ayurveda and have introduced many academic readers to the
history of Indian medicine. They locate information about ayurveda carefully in a sociohistorical
framework that helps the reader transcend trite images of ayurveda as a timeless, unchanging ancient
wisdom. Wujastyk 2003 was written in order to make foundational ayurvedic texts available in a
translation into contemporary British English that would be accessible to readers without a
background in Sanskrit or Hindi literature. It also presented a concise introduction to the latest
historical discoveries about ayurveda and its contemporary interpretation. Mazars 2006 provides a
valuable, short introduction to Indian medicine in a historical framework, with attention to the place of
ayurveda in contemporary India.
Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India. 3d ed. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1967.
This remains a classic work and still probably the best general introduction to the history and
culture of India up to 1000 ce. Appendix VI on ayurveda has been, for many readers, their first
introduction to ayurveda as an academic subject.
Basham, A. L. “The Practice of Medicine in Ancient and Medieval India.” In Asian Medical Systems:
A Comparative Study. Edited by Charles Leslie, 18–43. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976.
This essay, along with Basham 1967, remains important and original, and both are still valuable
introductory reading, with a slant toward social history and the patient’s experience. Reprinted
in 1998.
Filliozat, Jean. The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal,
1964.
A foundational classic. Filliozat discusses Greek and Indian medical parallels. His remarks on
medical ideas and vocabulary in Vedic and Avestan literature remain valuable. Filliozat proposed
that ayurvedic prognostication may owe much to treatises of Mesopotamian origin that
circulated when the Persian Achaemenids ruled northwest India, between the 6th and the 4th
century bce.
Jolly, Julius. Indian Medicine: Translated from German and Supplemented with Notes by C. G.
Kashikar; with a Foreword by J. Filliozat. 2d ed. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1977.
First published in German in 1901 and substantially updated by the translator in 1951, this
extraordinarily informative book is still an important reference work and offers a clear,
well-referenced survey of many fundamental topics in ayurveda.
Kutumbiah, Pudipeddy. Ancient Indian Medicine. Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1962.
A classic work written by a professor of medicine. Shows attention to the details of early
ayurvedic anatomy, physiology, and surgery. Approaches ayurveda from the angle of a working
2 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
physician. Often reprinted.
Majumdar, R. C. “Medicine.” In A Concise History of Science in India. Edited by D. M. Bose, S. N.

Sen, and B. V. Subbarayappa, 213–273. New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy, 1971.
A concise but comprehensive introduction to the history of ayurveda and other forms of Indian
medicine from a professional historian. A chapter in a larger collection of worthwhile materials
on the history of science in India.
Mazars, Guy. A Concise Introduction to Indian Medicine. Indian Medical Tradition 8. Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 2006.
A more modern short introduction aimed at beginning students.
Wujastyk, Dominik. The Roots of Āyurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings. 3d ed.
New York: Penguin, 2003.
Selected ayurvedic texts from different periods of history in a contemporary translation, with a
general introduction and historical introductions to each text.
GENERAL OVERVIEWS
Meulenbeld 1999–2002 (A History of Indian Medical Literature, henceforth “HIML”) has been a
milestone in the study of ayurveda and the history of medicine in India. It summarizes and evaluates
the contents of thousands of ayurvedic works, most of which are not available in translation, and also
evaluates all serious scholarship on Indian medical literature published before 2002. Meulenbeld
notes in his introduction that his work is a kind of prolegomenon to any future history of Indian
medicine, and that it does not aim to provide a “a continuous history of Indian medical literature, nor
a history of Indian medicine that, in a chronological order, sketches progressive and regressive lines
of development . . . ” (vol. IA, p. 4). Using the formidable resources of HIML, there nevertheless
remains much to be done in understanding Indian medical history. The huge bibliography of HIML has
also been converted to an online resource (Meulenbeld 2002–). The two standard histories of
ayurvedic literature, Sharma 1975 and Vidyalankara 1976, are excellent and extensively cited in HIML.
Leslie 1977 and Leslie and Young 1992 contain important basic readings from an ethnographical and
anthropological viewpoint, while Sigaléa 1995 (in French) provides more popular presentations with
good illustrations. Comba 1990 is a particularly good book, with a philosophical bent, for Italian
readers.
Comba, Antonella. La medicina Indiana (Āyurveda). Turin, Italy: Promolibri, 1990.
Excellent, medium-length introduction to the history of ayurveda, with a focus on philosophy.

An appendix on the tantrayuktis, or formal rules of interpretation in medicine. In Italian.
Leslie, Charles, ed. Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977.
3 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Classic work that launched the theoretically, historically, and anthropologically informed study
of Asian medical systems. Includes landmark papers on India by Basham (general introduction),
Beals (curers in South India), Obeyesekere (impact in Sri Lanka), Montgomery (medical
practitioners in South India), Taylor (tradition and modernization), Leslie (ambiguities of medical
revivalism), and Gupta (kaviraj traditions in Bengal).
Leslie, Charles, and Allan Young, eds. Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge: A Comparative Study.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
A second classic collection of essays, following Leslie 1977, including writings by Trawick (on
death), Obeyesekere (on science and clinical practice in ayurveda), Leslie (on syncretism),
Zimmermann (on the reinterpretation of ayurveda in the West as a gentle medicine), and Nichter
(anthropological study of Kyasanur forest disease in South India). Also papers on Islamic
humoral traditions.
Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. A History of Indian Medical Literature. 5 vols. Groningen, The
Netherlands: E. Forsten, 1999–2002.
A general survey of Sanskrit medical literature. Also covers alchemical, veterinary and culinary
literature, and the medieval transmission of Indian medical literature to Tibet and the Middle
East. Includes the most authoritative account of the identity and date of Caraka (pp. 105–115),
Suśruta (pp. 333–357), and Vāgbhaṭa (pp. 597–656).
Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. ABIM: An Annotated Bibliography of Indian Medicine. 2002–.
Meulenbeld has converted the bibliography of HIML into an online resource. In its online form,
the bibliography is keyword-searchable, and Meulenbeld continues actively to update the
bibliography.
Sigaléa, Robert. La médecine traditionnelle de l’Inde: doctrines prévedique, védique,

âyurvedique, yogique et tantrique, les empereurs Moghols, leurs maladies et leurs médecins.
Geneva, Switzerland: Olizane, 1995.
A valuable history, especially good on the Mughal period. Noteworthy for its judicious selection
of illustrations. In French.
Vidyalankara, Atrideva. Āyurved kā Bṛhat Itihās. 2d ed. Lucknow, India: Hindi Samiti, 1976.
An important and comprehensive history of ayurvedic literature written in Hindi. Includes a

history of early ayurvedic book publishing. First published in 1960.
Sharma, Priya Vrat. Āyurved kā Vaijñānik Itihās. Jayakṛṣṇadāsa Āyurveda Granthamālā 1.

Varanasi, India: Caukhamba Orientalia, 1975.
A major history of ayurveda, in Hindi, by the great scholar P. V. Sharma, whose contribution to
the serious study of ayurveda has been significant.
4 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Zysk, Kenneth G. Religious Healing in the Veda, with Translations and Annotations of Medical
Hymns from the Rgveda and the Atharvaveda and Renderings from the Corresponding Ritual
Texts. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 75. Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society, 1985.
Appendix 2 contains a bibliographical essay on the history of scholarship on ayurveda.
SOURCE LITERATURE
The secondary literature on the theory, background, and history of ayurveda is largely based on the
original medical classics written in Sanskrit. There are English translations of many of these, and
selections in modern “mid-Atlantic” English are presented in Wujastyk 2003 (cited under Introductory
Works). If you wish to consult the full text of the works, or sections not included in Wujastyk 2003, the
following are given in approximate chronological order of composition. Few of the following
translations are fully satisfactory from the point of view either of philological and scientific accuracy,
or idiom, but they are the best (and sometimes the only) complete translations currently available. At
least they allow the English-language reader to follow up the textual citations in the secondary works
and glean a general idea of what the texts say. But if precision and deep understanding is sought,
there is still no alternative to learning Sanskrit and reading the originals. This is a slow but
exhilarating and fascinating journey. One of the issues affecting the translations is that few are by
native speakers of British/American standard English. Those published in India, for example, include
many untranslated words that are understandable by native Hindi speakers (although some of these
words are so-called false friends) but unfamiliar to other readers. Some translations are simply not
idiomatic for native speakers of any form of English, or they do not take into account contemporary
usage. Very few translators show sensitivity to the boundaries between scientific and colloquial usage
of English vocabulary. By contrast, several translators are on a mission to prove that ancient Indian
texts show an awareness of modern scientific discoveries, and they attempt to support this belief by
using modern technical terminology in translating old Sanskrit words. For background on the dates
and historical contexts of these works, and alternative translations of selections from them, see
Wujastyk 2003. For a listing of other translations, see Zysk 1985 (cited under General Overviews). For
the fullest survey of scholarship on the history of these and many other works, Meulenbeld
1999–2002 (cited under General Overviews) is the ultimate authority.
Carakasaṃhitā
The Carakasaṃhitā is one of the foundational texts of ayurveda. Rich in philosophy of medicine, and
generally reflective in tone, it also presents a large catalogue of herbal therapies. We know that these
were very influential, because they are repeated in many later works, and several were even carved
into the wall of a South Indian temple in the 11th century. Its contents have been summarized by
Meulenbeld 1999–2002.
Sharma, Ram Karan, and Vaidya Bhagwan Dash. Agniveśa’s Caraka Saṃhitā (Text with English
Translation and Critical Exposition Based on Cakrapāṇi Datta’s Āyurveda Dīpikā). 7 vols.
Varanasi, India: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1976–2002.
This excellent translation also includes a paraphrase of Cakrapāṇidatta, integrated with the
5 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
translation.
Sharma, Priya Vrat. Caraka-Saṃhitā: Agniveśa’s Treatise Refined and Annotated by Caraka and
Redacted by Dṛḍhabala (Text with English Translation). 4 vols. Varanasi, Delhi: Chaukhambha
Orientalia, 1981–1994.
A generally good translation by a scholar with excellent Sanskrit. Volumes 3 and 4 give a
paraphrase of Cakrapāṇidatta, the major commentator on Caraka.
Suśrutasaṃhitā
The Suśrutasaṃhitā is the second great classic of ayurveda that survives from ancient times. It is often
treated as a treatise on surgery, and indeed it contains detailed chapters on the training of surgeons
and on various surgical procedures. This material is unique in the ancient world. But this is only a part
of what the Suśrutasaṃhitā contains. There is also much material on general medicine paralleling that
of the Carakasaṃhitā, but with various differences of theory or interpretation. Its contents have been
summarized by Meulenbeld 1999–2002.
Bhishagratna, Kaviraj Kunjalal. An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita Based on Original
Sanskrit Text. 4th ed. Varanasi, India: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1991.
First published in 1918. Very old fashioned and mentioned only because it is still widely used.
But reference to it should be deprecated in favor of Sharma 1999–2001.
Sharma, Priya Vrat. Suśruta-Saṃhitā, with English Translation of Text and Ḍalhaṇa’s
Commentary Alongwith [sic] Critical Notes. 3 vols. Haridas Ayurveda Series 9. Varanasi, India:
Chaukhambha Visvabharati, 1999–2001.
Another translation from P. V. Sharma, mostly reliable.
Singhal, G. D., L. M. Singh, and K. P. Singh. Diagnostic (and Other) Considerations in Ancient
Indian Surgery. 10 vols. Varanasi, India: Singhal, 1972–1982.
A more accurate translation of the Suśrutasaṃhitā than Bhishagratna 1991, but this is published
in ten volumes, all with slightly different titles and coauthors, and much accompanying
advertisement, so it can be hard finding one’s way around the text.
Bhelasaṃhitā
An extremely ancient text, containing materials of roughly the same antiquity as the Carakasaṃhitā
and the Suśrutasaṃhitā, that survived to present times in a single palm-leaf manuscript today kept in
the Saraswati Mahal Library of Thanjavur in South India and a manuscript fragment found in Central
Asia. The translation of the entire work in Krishnamurthy 2000 is helpful in getting an overview of the
subject matter, but the critical philological and text-historical work of reediting and translating the
work is being done by Tsutomu Yamashita (Yamashita 1997).
Krishnamurthy, K. H. Bhela-Saṃhitā: Text with English Translation, Commentary, and Critical
6 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Notes. Haridas Ayurveda Series 8. Varanasi, India: Chaukhambha Visvabharati, 2000.
The only translation of this text available as of 2010. The Sanskrit text of the Bhelasaṃhitā is not
yet critically edited, and even the best translator often has trouble.
Yamashita, Tsutomu. “Towards a Critical Edition of the Bhelasaṃhitā.” Journal of the European
Āyurvedic Society 5 (1997): 19–24.
Early results from Yamashita’s important research on the Bhelasaṃhitā. Yamashita’s text will
become the standard edition of the work because of the critical methodology he applies and
because of his use of Central Asian manuscript evidence to supplement the Thanjavur codex
unicus.
Kāśyapasaṃhitā
Another ancient work surviving in only one or two manuscripts, this is a treatise focusing on the
medical care of women and children.
Tewari, Premvati. Kāśyapa-saṃhitā, or Vṛddhajīvakīyam Tantra: Text with English Translation

and Commentary. Varanasi, India: Chaukhambha Visvabharati, 1996.
The only available English translation of the entire text. The Sanskrit text in Tewari’s book is
copied from the edition by Hemarāja Śarman in 1938 that was accompanied by his Hindi
translation.
Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā
The Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā (The heart of medicine compendium) by Vāgbhaṭa is probably the most
widely read, translated, and influential ayurvedic work in history. Composed c. 600 ce, it became the
standard school text for learning ayurveda, and the thousands of manuscript copies still found in
libraries across India and the world testify to its great popularity. It was translated in premodern times
into Tibetan and Persian and also reached the Islamic world. The text is a model of clarity and good
organization, and it presents a reasoned synthesis of the earlier great classics of Caraka and Suśruta.
However, there are two key historical problems regarding the work. First, there is the relationship of
the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā to another work called the Aṣṭāṅgasaṃgraha (The treatise on medicine) that
is ascribed to a Vāgbhaṭa. Secondly, are these Vāgbhaṭas one person or two? The learned introduction
to Hilgenberg and Kirfel 1941 made important arguments about these issues, reversing the current
wisdom of the time and arguing that the “Treatise” was a rewritten expansion of the “Heart,” probably
by one person. These arguments were summarized in English and given important scrutiny in Vogel
1965. More recently, the issues have again been discussed at length by Meulenbeld 1999–2002 (cited
under General Overviews), which does not agree with the one-author theory. Meulenbeld holds
complicated views about the gradual evolution of both works and the participation of many authors in
this evolution. He considers the whole matter still unresolved.
Hilgenberg, Luise, and Willibald Kirfel. Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā, ein altindisches

Lehrbuch der Heilkunde, aus dem Sanskrit ins Deutsche übertragen mit Einleitung,
Anmerkungen und Indices. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1941.
7 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
The most scholarly translation of Vāgbhaṭa’s classic work into a European language. In German.
Srikantha Murthy, K. R. Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāñga Hṛdayam: Text, English Translation, Notes,

Appendix, and Indices. 3 vols. Varanasi, India: Krishnadas Academy, 1991–1995.
The translator, formerly a professor at the Government Ayurveda College at Bangalore, has
published workmanlike translations of many major ayurvedic works.
Vogel, Claus. Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā: The First Five Chapters of Its Tibetan Version
Edited and Rendered into English along with the Original Sanskrit; Accompanied by Literary
Introduction and a Running Commentary on the Tibetan Translating-Technique. Abhandlungen
für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 37.2. Wiesbaden, Germany: Steiner, 1965.
A partial translation, but nevertheless extremely valuable for its deep scholarship, valuable
introduction, and many insightful notes comparing the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions of the
work.
Mādhavanidāna
Composed by Mādhava in about 700 ce, this work describes 120 diseases and their symptoms. It
became the most authoritative treatise on nosology in premodern India, and its arrangement of
diseases was copied by most later authors.
Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. The Mādhavanidāna and its Chief Commentary, Chapters 1–10:
Introduction, Translation, and Notes. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1974.
This is a more careful translation and includes a translation of the main commentary, but it
covers only chapters 1–10 of the work. It includes several extremely useful appendices on
ayurvedic authors, works, dates, plants, and a glossary of technical terms. Use it for these
appendices if nothing else. A reprint appeared in 2008 (Delhi, Motlilal Banarsidass).
Srikantha Murthy, K. R. Mādhava Nidānam (Roga Viniscaya) of Madhavakara (a Treatise on

Āyurveda): Text with English Translation, Critical Introduction, and Appendices. Delhi:
Chaukhambha Orientalia, 1993.
Another workmanlike translation from Srikantha Murthy.
Śārṅgadharasaṃhitā
Composed in the 14th century, this work became enormously popular across South Asia, functioning
as a physicians’ vade-mecum. Its herbal recipes are still used in the ayurvedic pharmaceutical industry
today.
Srikantha Murthy, K. R. Śārṅgadhara-saṃhitā by Śārṅgadhara, Translated into English. Delhi:

Chaukhambha Orientalia, 1984.
A workmanlike translation that gives general access to English-language readers but is still
8 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
peppered with untranslated Hindi and Sanskrit vocabulary, making it hard to use for readers
without Indian-language skills.
Bhāvaprakāśa
The Bhāvaprakāśa was written by one of the leading scholars of Varanasi in the 16th century, and it
has gone on to become one of the major encyclopedic textbooks of ayurveda. Still in print and widely
circulated, it consists of two parts: a large materia medica and a textbook of medicine that
summarizes all the best authors. In a few instances, and unusual for an ayurvedic work, it also shows
an awareness of the diseases and therapies of the Muslim and European communities.
Srikantha Murthy, K. R. Bhāvaprakāśa of Bhāvamiśra (Text, English Translation, Notes,

Appendeces [sic], and Index). 2 vols. Varanasi, India: Krishnadas Academy, 1998–2000.
This translation suffers from the same limitations as Srikantha Murthy 1984, but at least it offers
an English translation of the entire work for the first time.
THE HUMAN BODY
The potential for exploring this topic within ayurveda is almost endless. “Body studies” has been a
very productive area in humanities scholarship, especially since the advent of postmodernism.
Contemporary theoretical approaches have been slow to be applied to the South Asian case, and many
interesting insights in this area can still be expected. Underlying the selected readings below is the
idea that there are many conceptual bodies in early South Asia and that they do not necessarily
overlap. Meditating yogins, for example, experienced their bodies in terms quite distinct from
surgeons or doctors, and they used different language and terminology in their body discourses.
These different conceptualizations were not merely terminological variants for some unified
underlying reality: they were different bodies. Cakras, for example, were not part of the reality of the
human body for physicians and were neither discussed nor even recognized.
In South Asian Religion and Culture
The studies collected in Bouillier and Tarabout 2002 and Michaels and Wulf 2009 represent the
current state of the field from several perspectives, including the specifically medical. They are
essential reading.
Bouillier, Véronique, and Gilles Tarabout, eds. Images du corps dans le monde hindou.
Collection Monde Indien, Sciences sociales, 15e–20e siècle. Paris: CNRS, 2002.
A valuable collection on the interpretation of the human body. The four sections include
“Logiques descriptives” (papers by Zimmermann, Wujastyk, Angot, and Tarabout); “Univers
ésotériques” (papers by Padoux, White, Darmon, and Bhattacharya); “Mises en scène” (papers by
Colas, Joshi, Racine, and Grimaud); and “Constructions sociales” (papers by Saglio-Yatzimirsky,
Bouillier, Sorrentino-Holden, Filippo and Caroline Osella, and Grévin).
Michaels, Axel, and Christoph Wulf, eds. The Body in India: Ritual, Transgression, Performativity,
9 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Paragrana. Internationale Zeitschrift fur Historische Anthropologie 18. Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
2009.
Another important collection, overlapping to some extent with Bouillier and Tarabout 2002,
includes papers on the body in religious and philosophical texts by Zimmermann, Malamoud,
Colas, White, Flood, Baldissera, Pernau, and Böhler. Also papers on the body in narratives and
ritual performance by Freeman, Sax, Schnepel, Hüsken, and John and on the body in
visualizations and images by Juneja, Brosius, Menon, and Clemens.
Anatomy
An important point concerning the ayurvedic discourse on the body is that it does not reference the
cakras, the kuṇḍalinī, ṇāḍīs, or other features familiar from the tantric and yogic discourses on the
body. Hoernle 1907 is a classic of the genre that revealed for the first time the detailed and accurate
physical anatomical knowledge that was present in ancient India. In the classical literature, the
ayurvedic body is described in recognizably anatomical terms and includes ducts and tubes that carry
fluids such as blood and urine between receptacles such as the bladder and intestines (Wujastyk
2003, Wujastyk 2008). Zimmermann 1978 and Wujastyk 2009 reflect in different ways on the culture
clash of the 19th- and 20th-century ayurvedic encounter with European anatomical concepts. Das
2003 focuses specifically on the ayurvedic metabolic processes related to sex and reproduction. Zysk
1986 is a classic paper on early anatomical considerations in medical texts that is philologically
precise, stays close to the source texts, and makes interesting comparisons with surgery in modern
Europe.
Das, Rahul Peter. The Origin of the Life of a Human Being. Conception and the Female According
to Ancient Indian Medical and Sexological Literature. Indian Medical Tradition 6. Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 2003.
Das sets out to answer the question, “What happens in a woman’s body at the time of
conception?” It investigates ayurvedic thinking about conception, gestation, and birth while
closely adhering to the original Sanskrit texts. It touches on many topics related to the
functioning of the human body. Appendix 2 (pp. 511–593) is a valuable dictionary of ayurvedic
concepts.
Hoernle, A. F. R. Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India: Osteology or the Bones of the Human
Body. Oxford: Clarendon, 1907.
A pioneering work that studied the earliest lists of bones in Sanskrit medical literature, with
many important reflections and digressions. Very scholarly, still relevant, and still available in
reprint editions.
Wujastyk, Dominik. “The Science of Medicine.” In The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism. Edited
by Gavin Flood, 393–409. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
An overview of early Indian medicine that includes a careful account of the tubes, pipes, and
conduits in the human body according to ayurveda, together with their physiological functions.
10 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Wujastyk, Dominik. “A Body of Knowledge: The Wellcome Ayurvedic Anatomical Man and His
Sanskrit Context.” Asian Medicine: Tradition & Modernity 4 (2008): 201–248.
Examines a well-known painting of an ayurvedic human male body, from the Wellcome Library in
London, and analyses the textual passages that accompany and comment on the image, naming
various organs and receptacles in the body.
Wujastyk, Dominik. “Interpreting the Image of the Human Body in Premodern India.” International
Journal of Hindu Studies 13 (2009): 189–228.
Makes the point that the concept of a body is metaphorical and draws attention to several quite
different historical body-related discourses that arose in premodern India. Ends with a section
on 19th- and 20th-century attempts to integrate the ayurvedic and non-Indian anatomical
descriptions of the body.
Zimmermann, Francis. “Introducing Western Anatomy to the Practitioners of Classical Indian

Medicine: An Ethno-historical Analysis of the Treatises by P. S. Varier in the 1920s.” In Asie du
Sud, traditions et changements: Sixth European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies,
Sèvres 8–13 juillet 1978. Edited by Marc Gaborieau and Alice ThornerAlice Thorner, 1–3. Paris:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1978.
This paper studies ayurvedic physiology and its reinterpretation during the early 20th century as
a result of the encounter with European anatomical treatises.
Zysk, Kenneth G. “The Evolution of Anatomical Knowledge in Ancient India with Special
Reference to Cross-cultural Influences.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 106 (1986):
687–705.
Describes Vedic observations on the body’s construction and the early dissection of the body for
teaching purposes described by Suśruta. Explores some possible links with Greek anatomical
traditions.
Yoga, Karma, and the Medical Body
Yoga and karma are both broad topics of research in themselves and overlap with medical and
ayurvedic studies at many points. Zysk 1993 examines the history of ideas concerning respiration,
which became a major topic for both medical and yogic thinkers, in spite of the absence of the
identification of the lungs as connected with the process. Weiss 1980 and Leslie 1999 specifically
discuss karma in relation to medicine, while Leslie 1999 extends the discussion to show the sharp
contrast that exists between Sanskrit medical and religious forms of body discourse. Alter 2004 treats
medical topics throughout, including important chapters on Gandhi’s health politics, on the Indian
uptake of German naturopathy, and on the history of auto-urine therapy. Alter 2005 places modern
yoga practice in an historical context, examining the processes of reinvention that have led to it being
perceived a contemporary component of complementary medicine.
Alter, Joseph S. Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy. Princeton, NJ:
11 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Princeton University Press, 2004.
A major anthropological enquiry into how the human body is interpreted and manipulated within
the various yoga traditions in contemporary India.
Alter, Joseph S. “Modern Medical Yoga: Struggling with a History of Magic, Alchemy, and Sex.”
Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 1 (2005): 119–146.
Early Indian yoga practice is profoundly implicated in magical and alchemy belief and in
processes aimed at the control of semen. Alter traces the pathway by which modern yoga, as a
form of practice centered on physical fitness, wellness, and holistic health, emerged directly out
of the early-20th-century yoga renaissance, purging itself of its more ancient associations.
Leslie, Julia. “The Implications of the Physical Body: Health, Suffering, and Karma.” In Religion,
Health, and Suffering. Edited by Roy Porter and John Hinnells, 23–45. London: Kegan Paul
International, 1999.
Explores attitudes to the body and karma in three traditions—Jainism, Dharmaśāstra, and
ayurveda—showing how very differently the concept of the body was processed by religious,
moral, and medical thinkers.
Weiss, Mitchell G. “Caraka Saṃhitā on the Doctrine of Karma.” In Karma and Rebirth in Classical
Indian Traditions. Edited by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, 90–115. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1980.
A clear account of the ideas on karma found in the Carakasaṃhitā.
Zysk, Kenneth G. “The Science of Respiration and the Doctrine of the Bodily Winds in Ancient
India.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (1993): 198–213.
A classic paper on the history of breath and breathing (prāṇa) in premodern Indian literature. It
traces the notion of breath from early Vedic sources into the divergent conceptual universes of
yoga and the medicine.
Medicine and the Tantric Body
The following studies all offer descriptions of the body from the tantric point of view, which is, as
mentioned above, entirely distinct in its history and preconceptions from the body known to ayurvedic
medicine. Kakar 1982 is a charming introduction to tantra and the body, insightfully describing the
author’s encounters with several contemporary healers. Briggs 1938 is learned and draws on years of
experience living in India and paying attention to ascetic traditions. It contains an appendix
specifically describing the body known to these renunciates and described in the literature of the
Gorakṣanātha tradition. Ganapathy 1993 provides an insight into the views of the body held by Siddha
medicine, the indigenous healing tradition of South India, including descriptions of tantric channels in
the body, the cakra system, and the superimposition of mantras on the body. Treating the body in this
way, as a series of locations in which divinities and mantras are invested is a widespread tantric
12 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
practice: Padoux 1990 is a rare scholarly study of this body-visualization technique. White 1996 is a
study of the Gorakṣanātha siddha tradition is a modern classic, one that also presents rare
information about the traditions of body perfection that were current among medieval Indian
alchemists.
Briggs, George Weston. Gorakhnāth and the Kānphaṭa Yogīs. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1938.
Long a classic of the history of Indian renunciation. Much of what these yogis practice revolves
around their understandings and manipulations of their bodies, and Briggs gives the background
necessary to understand this cultural history. Reprinted in 1982 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass).
Ganapathy, T. N. “The Siddha Conception of the Human Body.” In The Philosophy of the Tamil
Siddhas. By T. N. Ganapahty, 115–140. New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research,
1993.
It can be hard to find scholarly information on the body as understood in the siddha tradition of
South India. Ganapathy steers clear of the wilder forms of narrative and gives a careful account
closely following the original Tamil sources.
Kakar, Sudhir. Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and its Healing
Traditions. New York: Knopf, 1982.
Kakar’s brilliant and amusing book surveys several pathways to healing that are available in
contemporary India.
Padoux, André. “The Body in Tantric Ritual: The Case of the Mudrās.” In Panels of the VIIth World
Sanskrit Conference. Vol. 1, The Sanskrit Tradition and Tantrism. Edited by Teun Goudriaan,
66–75. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1990.
A careful study of tantric mudrās and the body by the doyen of tantric studies.
White, David Gordon. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996.
An important study of the human body as understood by medieval Indian alchemists and
siddhas.
The Medical Body in Buddhist Thought
The understanding and interpretation of embodiment could be said to be one of the central concerns
of Buddhism and as such has attracted a large literature from the time of the formation of the
Buddhist canon onward. Zysk 1998, Hamilton 1995, and Hamilton 1996 explore the body very
specifically as a medical entity within the framework of Buddhist doctrine. Zysk 1998 is a
sociohistorical exploration of the ascetic milieu out of which Buddhism arose, arguing that this same
milieu created the form of medicine later known as ayurveda. Hamilton 1996 is a deep and subtle
13 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
study of the Buddha’s teaching about the five so-called aggregates that make up the human body
according to early Buddhist doctrine. One of Hamilton’s central arguments is that these aggregates
are more appropriately understood as subjective experiences located in personal consciousness rather
than as descriptions of objective physical entities. Hamilton’s works are hard to find and hard to read,
but they are among the best writings available on the Buddhist view of the body.
Hamilton, Sue. “From the Buddha to Buddhaghosa: Changing Attitudes toward the Human Body
in Theravāda Buddhism.” In Religious Reflections on the Human Body. Edited by Jane Marie Law,
46–63. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Charts the changing attitude to the body of Theravada Buddhist authors from an earlier balanced
and detached neutrality to a much more negative view that Hamilton attributes especially to
Buddhaghosa (c. 400 ce).
Hamilton, Sue. Identity and Experience: The Constitution of the Human Being According to Early
Buddhism. London: Luzac Oriental, 1996.
Along with Hamilton 1995, this offers sophisticated analyses of the human body as understood
in the context of the five Buddhist aggregates (Skt skandha; Pali khandha) that constitute the
person and their experiences.
Zysk, Kenneth G. Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India: Medicine in the Buddhist Monastery.
2d ed. Indian Medical Tradition 2. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998.
Outlines the knowledge of the human body that was current among ascetics at the time of the
Buddha. First published in 1991 (New York: Oxford University Press). See especially pp. 34–37.
The Body in its Environment
Zimmermann 1987 has rightly achieved classic status. It applies French structuralist methods to the
study of classical ayurvedic notions of different types of physical environments, and to the lists of
fauna that may be eaten, drawing out the implications of various fundamental binary oppositions in
ayurvedic thinking. Dove 1992 is a unique study in that it takes issue with Zimmermann’s
assumptions, asserting that Zimmermann’s focus on structural and social arguments at the expense
of a diachronic approach to the history of actual land use leads him to misunderstand the significance
of land classifications that can be explained more plausibly as evolutionary changes arising from
farming usage. Dove argues that the change in the meaning of jaṅgala from “luxuriant forest” to
“savanna” accurately reflects a fundamental, historical alteration of relations between culture and
nature. Wujastyk 2004 explores further a theme referred to by Zimmermann that amounts to a giant
classificatory system for the universe.
Dove, Michael R. “The Dialectical History of Jungle in Pakistan: Relationship between Nature and
Culture.” Journal of Anthropological Research 48 (1992): 231–253.
Argues that the economy of the early pastoral societies was based on transforming the region’s
natural thorn forest into an anthropogenic savanna, through the historical intensification of
land-use patterns in response to demographic and political pressures. Reversals in land
14 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
productivity led to the semantic reversal in the meaning of jaṅgala.
Wujastyk, Dominik. “Agni and Soma: A Universal Classification.” Studia Asiatica: International
Journal for Asian Studies 4–5 (2004): 347–370.
A pervasive theme in Indian medicine is the opposition between fire and water, hot and cold, red
and white, parched and nourished, symbolized by the Vedic deities Agni and Soma. This duality
is extended from explaining bodily functions and diet to characterizations of the external
environment, the seasons of the year, and the world as a whole.
Zimmermann, Francis. The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987.
Deals with the conundrum that the word “jungle”—meaning, in English and modern Indian
languages, a lush, overgrown environment—is derived from the Sanskrit jaṅgala, meaning a
sterile, arid desert. In the process of exploring this semantic shift, which he considers to be the
result of a historical misunderstanding, the work reveals several deep structures and patterns in
ayurvedic thinking. First published as La jungle et le fumet des viandes (Paris: Gallimard, 1982).
CONCEPTS OF DISEASE
These studies specifically address the causes of illness as understood from the ayurvedic doctor’s
viewpoint. Kutumbiah 1999 presents a positivist view of ayurvedic pathology, attempting to make
sense from a modern doctor’s point of view of what ayurvedic theories are saying about the genesis of
illness. Kutumbiah stays close to the earliest ayurvedic writings and describes their classification of
diseases and the details of the humoral theory of pathology. Tabor 1981 is an early but still important
field report based on work in Gujarat, especially with the much-respected ayurvedic physician Dr.
Bāpālāljī Vaidya. Tabor points out that although Gujarati vaidyas in the 1970s and 1980s respected
the Carakasaṃhitā, the texts they actually read and referred to in practice were the much later
Mādhavanidāna (8th century) and Bhāvaprakāśa (16th century). The concept of āma, or the “unripe,”
with its effect on digestion and metabolism, was central to their understanding of pathology. Close
readers of the ayurvedic literature will notice an ambivalence concerning blood. There are three
humors—wind, bile, and phlegm—and blood is not one of them. But sometimes, especially in the
Suśrutasaṃhitā, it is treated as a humor, interestingly bringing ayurvedic pathological doctrine a step
closer to ancient Greek theory. Meulenbeld 1991 explores this ambivalence in detail and points out
that while human ayurvedic medicine normally rejected blood as a humor, veterinary medicine
normally accepted it. Meulenbeld 1992 takes an insider view of the humors, or doṣas, and considers
their workings in detail. Scharfe 1999 extends the historical exploration of the doṣa “humor,” and
dhātu “element” concepts. One of Scharfe’s findings is that the doṣa terminology is used somewhat
differently in the Carakasaṃhitā and the Suśrutasaṃhitā, suggesting the possibility of an early
conceptual scheme visible in Buddhist literature and the Carakasaṃhitā in which bodily components
(dhātus) become contaminated (dūṣita), to a historically later scheme in which humors (doṣa) are
themselves bodily components that may be normal, depressed, or inflamed. Many important historical
questions raised in this paper require further research. Maas 2007–2008 compares medical ideas
15 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
occurring in the early yoga literature with those of ayurveda, and his close examination of the concept
of the dhātus in the Carakasaṃhitā shows that the concept and number are still fluid and evolving in
that text, whereas in the Suśrutasaṃhitā a list of seven dhātus is standardized and becomes canonical
in later ayurveda.
Kutumbiah, Pudipeddy. Ancient Indian Medicine. Hyderabad, India: Orient Longmans, 1999.
First published in 1962 (Bombay: Orient Longmans). An account of what makes one ill, and how
the metabolic processes of the body can fail, according to ayurveda. Closely adheres to the
original ayurvedic source texts.
Maas, Philipp A. “The Concepts of the Human Body and Disease in Classical Yoga and Āyurveda.”
Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 51 (2007–2008): 123–162.
Comparison of disease concepts in classical yoga with those of ayurveda, revealing unexpected
inconsistencies in the evolution of the concepts of doṣa and dhātu.
Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. “The Constraints of Theory in the Evolution of Nosological

Classifications: A Study on the Position of Blood in Indian Medicine (Āyurveda).” In Medical
Literature from India, Sri Lanka, and Tibet. Edited by Gerrit Jan Meulenbeld, 91–106. Leiden, The
Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1991.
Discusses the special place of blood in ayurvedic thought and how it may be implicated in
causing disease.
Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. “The Characteristics of a Doṣa.” Journal of the European Āyurvedic
Society 2 (1992): 1–5.
Short but important paper exploring the internal contradictions and difficulties of the ayurvedic
theory of the doṣa.
Scharfe, Hartmut. “The Doctrine of the Three Humors in Traditional Indian Medicine and the
Alleged Antiquity of Tamil Siddha Medicine.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 119
(1999): 609–629.
Sketches out the history of the concept of doṣa, “humor” and compares it with that of dhātu,
“element.”
Tabor, Daniel C. “Ripe and Unripe: Concepts of Health and Sickness in Ayurvedic Medicine.”
Social Science and Medicine 15 (1981): 439–455.
An important paper based on fieldwork in Gujarat that documents the contemporary practice of
ayurvedic physicians, and especially their conceptual frameworks concerning digestion and the
ripe/unripe axis of foodstuffs (though Tabor’s discussion is curiously without reference to
Lévi-Strauss’s Le Cru et le cuit of 1964). Tabor points out that although Gujarati vaidyas in the
1970s and 1980s respected the Carakasaṃhitā, the texts they actually read and referred to in
practice were the much later Mādhavanidāna (8th century) and Bhāvaprakāśa (16th century). The
16 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
concept of āma, or the “unripe,” and its effect on digestion and metabolism were central to their
understanding of pathology.
BUDDHISM AND MEDICINE
This is an important topic on which much fundamental research remains to be done. A useful
bibliography of studies is given in HIML, pp. 830–831. Zysk 1998 is an excellent introduction to the
place of medicine in early Buddhism, with a social-history focus on the role of the monastic
community and the background of classical Indian medicine within the ascetic communities of the 4th
and 5th century bce. Mazars 2008 is an accessible yet careful survey of the historical and ethical
issues that appear in the Pali canonical writing and related medical sources. Granoff 1998 also focuses
closely on the early Buddhist literature, with a more analytical approach to the medical events and
situations that are narrated in the literature of the Buddhist birth stories. Birnbaum 1989 is a popular
book that focuses on Mahayana Buddhist traditions, especially the figure of the Medicine Buddha or
healing master, Bhaiṣajyaguru, that emerged in Tibet and became a prominent representation of the
Buddha in China and Japan. Scholars who focus on ayurveda in India can sometimes forget that
ayurvedic medicine is a major tradition in Sri Lanka as well, with government support and control not
to mention a long literary and practical tradition. Uragoda 1987 is a valuable general history of
medicine in Sri Lanka, while Liyanaratne 1999 presents an important collection of detailed studies on
literature, manuscripts, and materia medica.
Birnbaum, Raoul. The Healing Buddha. Rev. ed. Boston: Shambhala, 1989.
Discusses the Healing Buddha concept particular to the Buddhist traditions of Tibet, China, and
Japan. Also outlines the history of healing in the development of Buddhism from the earliest
texts, including the Lotus Sutra. First published in 1979 (Boulder, CO: Shambhala).
Granoff, Phyllis. “Cures and Karma II: Some Miraculous Healings in the Indian Buddhist Story
Tradition.” Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient 85 (1998): 285–304.
A close reading of several Buddhist sources in their original languages, especially from avadāna
literature, with attention to miraculous cures, epidemic disease, and several other medical
topics. Granoff finds that a distinction can be made between the Buddha’s miraculous cures for
plagues and his cures for all other types of ailments.
Liyanaratne, Jinadasa. Buddhism and Traditional Medicine in Sri Lanka. Keleniya, Sri Lanka:
University of Keleniya Press, 1999.
Ayurveda has long been a major part of the healthcare system in Sri Lanka. There exist many
early Sinhalese-language translations and adaptations of Sanskrit medical works. This volume
collects important studies about medical manuscripts and literature, plant names, nosology, and
the relationship between early Sri Lankan and Indian medical literature, by the doyen of
scholarship on Buddhism and traditional medicine in Sri Lanka.
Mazars, Sylvain. Le bouddhisme et la médecine traditionnelle de l’Inde. Paris: Springer, 2008.
17 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
A study, in French, dedicated to the question of medicine and Buddhism. A carefully researched
and well-written book. Covers ancient Buddhism, medicine in premodern India, Buddhist ethics,
medicine in Buddhist literature, the question of whether Buddhism is essentially a kind of
medicalized soteriology, medicine, and Buddhism’s attitude to suffering. Also covers Buddhist
ethics to medical practice and the social dimension of medical practice.
Uragoda, C. G. A History of Medicine in Sri Lanka, from the Earliest Times to 1948. Colombo: Sri
Lanka Medical Association, 1987.
The earliest history of hospitals in South Asia includes the evidence from textual and
archaeological sources in Sri Lanka. These are usefully summarized here. See especially pp.
23–35.
The standard work on this topic, in which Zysk argues that the origins of ayurveda as a formal
system of medicine are to be found in the practices and floating oral traditions of the ascetic
communities of the 5th century bce, including the Buddhists. Zysk finds strong parallels between
passages in the Buddhist Pali Canon and the Carakasaṃhitā. First published in 1991 (New York:
Oxford University Press).
JAINISM AND MEDICINE
There is still much research to be done into specifically Jaina traditions of healing. The Jaina
dedication to vegetarianism and ahiṃsā led the 8th-century Jaina author Ugrāditya to write a complete
textbook on ayurveda that removed all use of meats from medicinal recipes (Shastri 1940). Granoff
1998 is a fascinating account of the illness and healing narratives that occur in many rare, often
untranslated Jaina biographies and stories. Granoff discusses tales in which a holy person’s body has
the power of healing through touch. She also investigates leprosy, which appears frequently in these
narratives, as of course does karma-fruition as a cause of disease. A bibliography of secondary
literature on Jaina medical thought is provided in HIML (see General Overviews).
Granoff, Phyllis. “Cures and Karma: Healing and Being Healed in the Jain Religious Literature.” In
Self, Soul, and Body in Religious Experience. Edited by Albert I. Baumgarten, Jan Assmann, and
Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, 218–255. Studies in the History of Religions 78. Leiden, The
Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1998.
An invaluable survey of healing narratives in many Jaina literary and religious texts. Full of
original insights based on the original reading of generally inaccessible texts in Sanskrit and
Prakrit.
Shastri, Vardhaman Parshwanath, ed. The Kalyāṇa-kārakam of Ugrādityacharya, Edited with

Introduction, Translation, Notes, Indexes, and Dictionary. Sakharam Nemchand Granthamala
129. Sholapur, India: Śrī Seṭh Goviṃdajī Rāvajī Dośī, 1940.
18 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
The second pariśiṣṭādhyaya, after the last chapter, is a prose discourse defending the vegetarian
diet, delivered by Ugrāditya at the South Indian court of King Nṛpatuṅgavallabha. Couching for
cataract is described, and the work includes important early references to alchemical
procedures. The work is discussed and summarized in HIML.
EVOLUTION OF MEDICAL LITERATURE
There are quite literally tens of thousands of Sanskrit and other Indian-language treatises on
medicine. Until recently, there was no general guide to this literature. Jolly 1977 was for quite some
time the best guide available, and although accurate, it was too short and outdated. Partly as a result
of this hole in the secondary literature, ayurveda was often treated as if its literary base consisted of
just the ancient compendia of Caraka and Suśruta. All that has changed dramatically with the
publication of Meulenbeld 1999–2002 (HIML). This work surveys thousands of ayurvedic treatises,
giving summaries of their contents, evaluating their innovations, and profiling their medical and
medicinal content. The publication of HIML is nothing less than a revolution in ayurvedic studies,
although it does not seek to provide an overarching narrative that would “tell the story” of ayurveda in
India. Wujastyk 2003 provides selected translations from key ayurvedic works, together with a
historical narrative outlining the literary and social background to the chosen texts. Zysk 1996 is the
best source for information on the medical information that can be gleaned from the Vedic saṃhitās,
the earliest surviving literature in Sanskrit. The medical milieu discernible in these religious hymns
mainly involves spirit possession, prayers, and herbal medicine. The key features of ayurveda humoral
medicine, a systematic theoretical base, and observational and evaluative approach are absent.
Dasgupta 1969 unexpectedly, perhaps, contains a rather rich account of early medicine in India,
including ayurveda, as a result of his conviction that the accounts of formal debate given in the
Carakasaṃhitā were the origin of early Nyāya or Indian logic. Dasgupta particularly connects ayurveda
with the Atharvaveda, in line with common opinion at that time. Chattopadhyaya 1979 remains one of
the few books that proposes a theory about the early evolution of medical literature, and it repudiates
this Vedic connection, seeing rather an orthodox grab for originally empirical medicine. This thesis is
probably too crude in the form Chattopadhyaya proposed it, but it remains interesting and
provocative. Zysk 1998 develops the argument in an important way, demonstrating a tight connection
between Buddhist canonical texts and early ayurvedic literature. The principal ayurvedic treatises
begin with slightly differing narrative accounts of their own composition that connect them with a
divine or Vedic source. These passages are sometimes taken literally by contemporary commentators.
Zysk 1999 analyzes these passages, treating them as examples of brahmanization, the process of
superimposing orthodox ideas on material that is largely heterodox by the use of mythology.
Ramacandra Rao and Sudarshan 1985–2005 is a valuable collection of historical and literary
information, with sensitivity to historical issues and to the actual content of the sources.
Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad. Science and Society in Ancient India. Calcutta: Research India,
1979.
This work makes a strong argument against the orthodox position that classical ayurveda is an
organic development from earlier Vedic precursors. Reprint of the original 1977 edition.
19 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Dasgupta, Surendranath. A History of Indian Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press, 1969.
A well-informed discussion of the history of medical literature in India, with a focus on Vedic
and Atharva-vedic materials. Reprint of the 1922 edition, Volume 2, chapter 13.
Jolly, Julius. Indian Medicine: Translated from German and Supplemented with Notes by C. G.
Kashikar; with a Foreword by J. Filliozat. 2d ed. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1977.
First written in 1901, but with much new material added in the 1951 translation. Old but still
very valuable. Note, however, that it is written backward, in the sense that it starts with the
literature that was contemporary to Jolly and describes the history of ayurvedic literature going
backward in time to the earliest sources.
Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. A History of Indian Medical Literature. 5 vols. Groningen, The
Netherlands: E. Forsten, 1999–2002.
A general survey of Sanskrit medical literature. Also covers alchemical, veterinary, and culinary
literature, and the medieval transmission of Indian medical literature to Tibet and the Middle
East. Includes the most authoritative account of the identity and date of Caraka (pp. 105–115),
Suśruta (pp. 333–357), and Vāgbhaṭa (pp. 597–656).
Ramachandra Rao, S. K., and S. R. Sudarshan. Encylopaedia of Indian Medicine. 6 vols. Bombay:
Popular Prakashan, 1985–2005.
As a whole, these volumes are a valuable and generally trustworthy resource. Volume 1 contains
a survey of the history of ayurvedic literature.
Discusses the history and reception of ayurvedic texts (pp. xxiv–xxxv, and individual chapter
introductions), and provides contemporary translations in Mid-Atlantic English from Sanskrit
texts on hospitals, epidemic disease, humoral medicine, anatomy, the uses of garlic, medical
philosophy, and general medicine.
Zysk, Kenneth G. Medicine in the Veda: Religious Healing in the Veda with Translations and
Annotations of Medical Hymns from the Rgveda and the Atharvaveda and Renderings from the
Corresponding Ritual Texts. 3d ed. Indian Medical Tradition 1. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1996.
The standard study of the history of the earliest documented medicine in South Asia. First
published in 1985 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society).
20 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Makes a well-argued case for a similar view to Chattopadhyaya 1979 and considers the social
history of early ascetic communities as critical to the birth of classical ayurveda. Originally
published in 1991.
Zysk, Kenneth G. “Mythology and the Brāhmaṇization of Indian medicine: Transforming

Heterodoxy into Orthodoxy.” In Categorisation and Interpretation: Indological and Comparative
Studies from an International Indological Meeting at the Department of Comparative Philology,
Goteborg University. Edited by Folke Josephson, 125–145. Gothenburg, Sweden: University of
Gothenburg, 1999.
A discussion of the narratives of the descent of ayurveda from the gods that preface most early
ayurvedic works.
HOSPITALS
The history of hospitals in South and Southeast Asia remains a fascinating story and is an important
part of global medical history. It appears that hospitals—recognizable institutions with nurses,
doctors, equipment, and purpose-built premises—were known in South Asia earlier than anywhere
else in the world. A comprehensive account remains to be written. Mukhopādhyāya 1994 includes a
survey of the materials from the Carakasaṃhitā, the Buddhist Pali canon, and other early sources that
refer to hospitals. Nikam and McKeon 1978 provides a readable translation of the 3rd-century bce
inscriptions of Aśoka, in which the king describes, among other things, his measures to provide
medicinal herbs, wells, and shade trees for his population. While not providing hospitals per se, Aśoka
may have instigated the concept that a sovereign could take some responsibility for the health of the
population. Wujastyk 2003 provides a translation and discussion of perhaps the earliest historical
description in the world of a hospital’s design and construction. Zysk 1998 argues plausibly that early
Buddhist monasteries in South Asia included special rooms that could be called clinics and may have
foreshadowed more elaborate healthcare provision. Gurumurthy 1970 describes an inscription from a
temple in the South Indian village of Tirumukkudal, which describes the visit of a king in the late 11th
century and his donation of land and money for founding a hospital, college, and student hostel. The
inscription gives great detail about the salaries and costs of the institutions and describes many
medicinal recipes that are to be used, which can be traced to the Carakasaṃhitā. Rama Rao
1995–1996 gives further analysis of this inscription and about donations to physicians and surgeons
that are recorded in South Indian inscriptions. Hospitals or hospital-like structures were built at least
as early as the late first millennium in South and Southeast Asia, including Cambodia and Sri Lanka,
and probably much earlier. Uragoda 1987 gives a valuable summary of the Sri Lankan evidence, much
of which needs to be revisited and developed.
Mukhopādhyāya, Girindranāth. The Surgical Instruments of the Hindus, with a Comparative Study
of the Surgical Instruments of the Greek, Roman, Arab, and the Modern Eouropean [sic]
Surgeons. New Delhi: Cosmo, 1994.
The author offers a useful discussion of the history of hospitals in early South Asia and provides
translations of several medieval Sanskrit texts that mention the value of founding hospitals as an
act of religious and social merit. Note, however, that Mukhopādhyāya repeats the common error
21 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
of asserting that King Aśoka built hospitals. First published as two volumes in 1913 (Calcutta:
Calcutta University).
Gurumurthy, S. “Medical Science and Dispensaries in Ancient South India as Gleaned from
Epigraphy.” Indian Journal of History of Medicine 5 (1970): 76–79.
A useful overview of the references to early hospitals and clinics mentioned in South Indian
epigraphical records. Available online.
Nikam, N. A., and Richard McKeon, eds. The Edicts of Asoka, Edited and Translated. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978.
An accessible English translation of Aśoka’s inscriptions. The critical passages about his
healthcare contributions are on p. 60. There is no evidence for hospitals, and the Aśokan
inscriptions usually invoked to prove the case do not, in fact, mention or even suggest hospitals
or clinics of any kind. Originally published in 1959.
Rama Rao, B. “Interesting Aspects of Health Care in Tamilnadu History.” Studies in History of
Medicine and Science 14 (1995–1996): 67–73.
Both the above works discuss important epigraphical evidence from South India that refer to the
founding of medieval hospitals.
Uragoda, C. G. A History of Medicine in Sri Lanka, from the Earliest Times to 1948. Colombo: Sri
Lanka Medical Association, 1987.
The earliest history of hospitals in South Asia includes the evidence from textual and
archaeological sources in Sri Lanka. These are usefully summarized here. See especially pp.
23–35.
Discusses hospitals in ancient India and translates the description of how to build and equip a
hospital from the Carakasaṃhitā. See especially pp. 10–11, 35–38.
The author collects the evidence for early infirmaries in South Asia, especially in the context of
Buddhist monasteries. Reference is made to important inscriptional evidence.
EPIDEMIC DISEASE
A great deal of good scholarship has been devoted to the history of epidemic disease in South Asia.
22 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
However, most studies focus on the colonial and modern periods, for which documentary evidence,
including government statistics, is available in English. Thus, for example, cholera in India is
commonly treated as disease originating in the 19th century, because that is when it first affected the
troops of the British Army. However, cholera is clearly documented by Gaspar Correa and Garcia da
Orta in 16th-century Goa. And the earlier history of cholera and cholera-like dysenteric diseases may
be traced to even earlier periods in the medical literature of ayurveda. In general, for the period before
about 1800, evidence about epidemic disease is usually to be found in Persian, Hindi, Tamil, Sanskrit,
or the regional languages of India. The early accounts of epidemic disease found in the writings of
Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British colonial authors from about 1500 onward segues into the more
general narrative of the historic encounter between European medicine and South Asian medicine. No
account of epidemic disease can omit McNeill 1976, which has quite a lot to say about epidemics in
India. McNeill shows how epidemics as social phenomena shape history. Kohn 2008 is a general
overview that includes detailed information on the history of epidemics in South Asia. Arnold 1993 is
a classic work in medical history, taking smallpox, cholera, and plague as case studies through which
to study the relationship between medicine and state power. Jaggi 2000 is a valuable modern survey
of sources concerning epidemic diseases in India.
Arnold, David. Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century
India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Studies the colonial government’s responses to epidemics in India and develops the argument
that the colonial state used medical services as a tool of power and state control.
Jaggi, O. P. History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization. Vol. 9, Part 1,
Medicine in India: Modern Period. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
A useful survey, based mainly on European-language sources. Cholera, plague, smallpox,

malaria and other fevers, kala-azar, typhoid, tuberculosis, leprosy, and venereal diseases are
covered here in a 19th-century context.
Kohn, George Childs, ed. Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence: From Ancient Times to the
Present. 3d ed. New York: Facts on File, 2008.
A particularly clear general survey, with many entries relevant to epidemics in India. Also gives a
useful tabular presentation of all the epidemic outbreaks known to have affected India
specifically.
McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1976.
Compulsory reading for anyone exploring epidemic disease in history. It includes a plausible
epidemiologically based theory for the origin of the Indian caste system.
Premodern and Indigenous Epidemiology
Epidemic disease is described and analyzed in Sanskrit texts from the 1st or 2nd century ce. Further
accounts are found in the writings of Portuguese authors arriving in India after 1500. While lacking
23 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
the detail and statistical underpinning of colonial accounts, they provide often vivid firsthand accounts
of epidemic disease. Wujastyk 2003 translates one of the earliest descriptions of epidemic disease in
South Asia. The text develops a theory for epidemic outbreaks in terms of corruptions affecting air,
water, land, and time. In this sense, there are strong parallels with the famous Hippocratic treatise,
“Airs, Waters, Places.” The Portuguese observers Correa (fl. 1495–1561, Goa) and Da Orta (fl.
1502–1568, Goa) both provided eyewitness accounts of cholera in Goa during the 16th century.
Gaskoin 1867 is an old but still valuable collection of these and other observations, in translation.
Pearson 1996 surveys the 16th-century Portuguese medical encounter in India, highlighting the
cultural parity that existed in medical matters and the initial openness of Portuguese physicians and
patients to indigenous Indian physicians and their medicine. Walker 2002 explores this theme more
explicitly, through the Portuguese colonial archives that still remain in Goa, finding great permeability
in medical matters between Portuguese and Indian physicians. Nicholas 1981 is a classic paper on
smallpox in India that surveys the early Sanskrit literature on the topic, the early history of Indian
variolation, and the cultural history of the smallpox goddess, Śītalā, and the associated religious
responses to smallpox in Bengal, especially in the 18th century. Stewart 1995 continues this theme,
with translations of original Bengali hymns and prayers.
Gaskoin, George. “Contributions to the Current Literature of Cholera.” The British and Foreign
Medico-Chirurgical Review or Quarterly Journal of Practical Medicine and Surgery 40 (1867):
217–232.
Many valuable observations on the history of cholera in India, with translations from early
Portuguese sources.
Nicholas, Ralph. “The Goddess Śītalā and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal.” Journal of Asian Studies
41 (1981): 21–44.
Classic paper on the religious dimensions of smallpox epidemics in Bengal.
Pearson, Michael N. “First Contacts between Indian and European Medical Systems: Goa in the
Sixteenth Century.” In Warm Climates and Western Medicine: The Emergence of Tropical
Medicine, 1500–1900. Edited by David Arnold, 20–41. Wellcome Institute Series in the History of
Medicine. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996.
Fascinating account of the first Portuguese experiences with Indian medicine.
Stewart, Tony K. “Encountering the Smallpox Goddess: The Auspicious Song of Śītalā.” In
Religions of India in Practice. Edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 389–397. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1995.
Provides a translation from the “The Auspicious Song of Śītalā,” a collection of hymns and oral
tales related to the goddess of smallpox, by the late-17th-century Bengali author Kṛṣṇarāma
Dāsa. Also includes an introduction and bibliography of further reading.
Walker, Timothy. “Evidence of the Use of Ayurvedic Medicine in the Medical Institutions of
Portuguese India, 1680–1830.” In Āyurveda at the Crossroads of Care and Cure: Proceedings of
24 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
the Indo-European Seminar on Ayurveda held at Arrábida, Portugal, in November 2001. Edited
by Ana Salema, 74–104. Lisbon, Portugal: Centro de História del Além-Mar, Universidade Nova
de Lisboa, 2002.
Describes how several Malabar healers worked with the Portuguese. One in particular, Ignácio
Caetano Afonso Pão, became chief physician in the 1790s. He wrote Discripçoens e Virtudes das
Raizes Medicinaes (Descriptions and virtues of medicinal roots), which discussed five
fundamental medicinal roots of the Indian Ocean basin, with notes on use and medical efficacy
of their plants and seeds.
Presents a discussion and translation of the earliest indigenous account of epidemics in India,
from the 2nd-century Sanskrit of the Carakasaṃhitā. See especially pp. 11–13, 38–50.
TRADITIONAL SURGERY
The Suśrutasaṃhitā (Compendium of Suśruta) reached its present form in approximately the 4th
century ce, after about five hundred years of evolution as a text. Some of what may be its earliest
layers consist of detailed chapters on surgery. These describe the training of students,
characterizations of surgical instruments, and descriptions of actual surgical procedures. All these
materials are extremely impressive given their early date, and in many cases appear more developed
than the surgical procedures available in Greece or elsewhere in the ancient world. Majno 1975 is a
lively description of early Indian surgical practice, using excellent illustrations and historical fiction to
convey a vivid sense of the past. Majno also tried out some techniques in the lab, using rats, showing
that they indeed worked. The descriptions of repairs to torn earlobes, cleft palate, and the rebuilding
of a severed nose are particularly important historically and have a connection to the barber-surgeon
practice of these skills that was witnessed by British physicians in the late 18th century. Wujastyk
2003 translates the Suśruta passage on nose repair and describes how the derived barber-surgeon
practice was reported in British publications and led to a 19th-century revolution in European surgical
technique that some have called the birth of plastic surgery. A broad range of surgery was once
practiced by ayurvedic healers, as is described in the medical literature and exemplified in the
narrative literature collected by Haldar 1977. But curiously, it had passed out of use by the late 1st
millennium ce, with the exception of a limited number of techniques that were continued by barber-
surgeons. Mukhopādhyāya 1994 is an in-depth study of the surgical instruments described by
Suśruta, with illustrations created for the book, but almost no premodern Indian surgical instruments
have survived in the archaeological record or elsewhere. Deshpande 1999 and Deshpande 2000
discusses the descriptions of a form of cataract eye surgery described in the Suśrutasaṃhitā that
became popular in China in the 6th and 7th centuries and still survives in village-level practice today.
Deshpande, Vijaya. “Indian Influences on Early Chinese Ophthalmology: Glaucoma as a Case

Study.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 62 (1999): 306–322.
Discusses the transmission of Indian ophthalmological surgery to China.
25 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Deshpande, Vijaya. “Ophthalmic Surgery: A Chapter in the History of Sino-Indian Medical

Contacts.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 63 (2000):
370–388.
Continues the narrative of Deshpande 1999, exploring the reception of Indian ophthalmological
surgery in China and its later history there.
Haldar, J. R. Medical Science in Pali Literature. Calcutta: Indian Museum, 1977.
Describes the evidence for early surgery to be found in the Buddhist canonical literature.
Majno, Guido. The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
An engaging and well-illustrated account of premodern Indian surgery and wound healing
techniques. Includes imaginative narratives of what it might have felt like to be a surgical patient
in premodern India. The author performed some of the surgical procedures on lab rats: for
example, the use of ants with strong mandibles to close a wound. He illustrates and describes
his experimental findings.
Mukhopādhyāya, Girindranāth. The Surgical Instruments of the Hindus, with a Comparative Study
of the Surgical Instruments of the Greek, Roman, Arab, and the Modern Eouropean [sic]
Surgeons. New Delhi: Cosmo, 1994.
A classical work that gives a good account of the actual instruments described in the
Suśrutasaṃhitā, with artists’ impressions of what they might actually have looked like and
comparisons with instruments from ancient Greece and medieval Europe. Originally published in
two volumes in 1913 (Calcutta: Calcutta University).
A translation of the Suśrutasaṃhitā passages on the use of knives, studentship, early surgical
career, plastic surgery on ear and nose, and the diagnosis and extraction of foreign bodies. With
an introduction discussing the history of nose repair and its reception in Europe. See especially
pp. 65–72, 83–109.
DEMONS OF FEVER AND POSSESSION
The ayurvedic classics include various accounts of supernatural beings that can influence a person’s
health. One subgenre of these accounts specifically addresses the illnesses of women and children.
Another subgenre is connected with supernatural causes for insanity. Smith 2006 is a major
contribution to all aspects of this subject. Filliozat 1937 is a translation and study of a key Sanskrit
text about demons that cause illness in children, and the appeasement of these demons, that was
translated into many languages and traveled far beyond the borders of India. Wujastyk 1999 and
26 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Wujastyk 2003 offer translation and discussion of other Sanskrit texts about demonic attacks on
women and children. There is a large literature on demons and illness written by anthropologists and
ethnographers, much of it referenced in Smith 2006. Freed and Freed 1967 is an early classic of the
genre, still well worth reading.
Filliozat, Jean. Étude de démonologie indienne: le Kumāratantra de Rāvaṇa et les textes

parallèles Indiens, Tibétains, Chinois, Cambodgien et Arabe. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1937.
A classic study of the most famous Sanskrit text on the demons that attack young children.
Compares the Sanskrit original with other Sanskrit texts, including those of the Mahābhārata.
The work was of such general interest that it was widely translated and circulated in throughout
Asia. Filliozat compares the versions in Tibetan, Chinese, Cambodian, and Arabic.
Freed, Stanley A., and Ruth S. Freed. “Spirit Possession as Illness in a North Indian Village.” In
Magic, Witchcraft, and Curing. Edited by John Middleton, 295–320. Texas Press Sourcebooks in
Anthropology. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.
A pioneering anthropological study of spirit possession (viewed as a form of hysteria) that the
authors found to be widespread and standardized in form across North India.
Kapferer, Bruce. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
An anthropological account of possession, disease, and healing in Sri Lanka during the 20th
century.
Smith, Frederick M. The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and
Civilization. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
A major survey of the theme of possession in Indian cultural history. Chapter 12, “The
Medicalization of Possession in Ayurveda and Tantra,” is specifically devoted to concepts of
possession and madness in Sanskrit medical literature.
Thite, G. U. Medicine: Its Magico-Religious Aspects According to the Vedic and Later Literature.
Pune, India: Continental Prakashan, 1982.
Collects information on medical possession from some unusual sources, especially from the
karma-fruition (karmavipāka) literature.
Wujastyk, Dominik. “Miscarriages of Justice: Demonic Vengeance in Classical Indian Medicine.” In

Religion, Health, and Suffering. Edited by John Hinnells and Roy Porter, 256–275. London: Kegan
Paul International, 1999.
A further discussion of the materials above, with reference to the Sanskrit literature on karma-
fruition (karmavipāka) and the causes of miscarriage.
27 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Wujastyk, Dominik. The Roots of Āyurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings, 3d ed.
Translation and discussion of materials from the Kāśyapasaṃhitā, a medical work of perhaps the
7th century that focuses on pediatrics. The materials excerpted here concern women whose
children are possessed by disease demons. See especially pp. 161–189.
INSANITY
Three very different scholarly communities have interests in the topic of insanity in premodern India:
Indologists, anthropologists, and historians (including psychiatrists with historical interests). Studies
by contemporary anthropologists often find that the categories of ayurvedic medicine are still at work
in the subjective understandings of mental-health issues found among village patients.
Indological Studies
Within the Sanskrit sources on ayurveda, two rather different approaches are taken to treating the
causes and treatment of mental illness. On the one hand, it is treated physiologically as a disturbance
of the bodily humors and the blockage of certain pathways in the body that are critical to mental
function. On the other, it is treated as the result of possession by various divine or demonic
supernatural beings (see previous section). Meulenbeld 1997 is a unique study by a Sanskritist who is
also a practicing psychiatrist. Bhugra 1992, also written by a senior psychiatrist, gives a good
overview of the texts and some past studies. Wujastyk 2003 provides a translation of an original
Sanskrit text on madness and its treatment from the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā. Ramachandra Rao 1990 is
an anthology of translations from earlier literature. Weiss 1977 is a foundational study of madness in
ayurvedic, providing original texts, translation and interpretation. Nanal 1998 is an account of mental
illness written by an eminent practitioner of ayurveda. Roşu 1978 (in French) is perhaps the fullest
treatment of the mind in ayurveda, with reference to philosophical as well as medical views. Gupta
1977 is a slightly shapeless but nevertheless useful collection of materials from medical and
philosophical literature.
Bhugra, Dinesh. “Psychiatry in Ancient Indian Texts: A Review.” History of Psychiatry 3 (1992):
167–186.
An overview based on ayurvedic literature with a keen eye to realities of mental health
deterioration and treatment. Notes that, for ayurveda, observation of the patient is more
important that the subjective experience of the patient. Concludes that the philosophy and
practice of ayurveda have much to offer, and modern clinicians should take up the challenge.
Gupta, Satya Pal. Psychopathology in Indian Medicine (with Special Reference to Its Philosophical
Bases). Chaukhamba Ayurvijnan Studies 8. Delhi: Chaukhamba Sanskrit Pratishthan, 1977.
A useful overview based on the author’s doctoral thesis, which examines philosophical as well as
medical bases for ayurvedic views of mental illness.
Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. “Aspects of Indian Psychiatry.” In History of Psychiatric Diagnoses:
28 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on the Comparative History of Medicine—East

and West September 1–8, 1991, Susono-shi, Shizuoka, Japan. Edited by Yosio Kawakita, Shizu
Sakai, and Yasuo Otsuka, 183–237. Tokyo and Brentwood, MO: Ishiyaku EuroAmerica, 1997.
An excellent overview, giving an insiders’ view of the Sanskrit sources.
Nanal, Vilas M. Mental Health in Traditional Medicine. Chennai, India: Centre for Indian
Knowledge Systems, 1998.
An overview written by a practicing ayurvedic physician. Appendix 2 on the domestic healing

traditions at Poonkudil Mana is particularly interesting for comparison with the more
anthropologically oriented research on Poonkudil Mana found in texts such as Tarabout 1999
(cited under Anthropologically Oriented Studies).
Rao, S. K. Ramachandra. Mental Health in Āyurveda: Source Book of Charaka and Sushruta
Samhita. Bangalore, India: National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, 1990.
The author was trained in psychology and presents selected translations of texts on mental
illness and health from the early ayurvedic classics.
Roşu, Arion. Les conceptions psychologiques dans les textes médicaux indiens. Publications de
l’Institut de Civilisation Indienne, Série in-8, fasc. 43. Paris: Institut de Civilisation Indienne,
1978.
One of the fullest studies of Indian notions of the mind, with reference to ayurveda and other
sources.
Roşu, Arion. “Medicine and Psychology in Ancient India.” Curare 4 (1981): 205–210.
A brief English-language summary of Roşu 1978, giving an overview of the psychological

conceptions found in ancient and medieval Indian medical texts.
Weiss, Mitchell G. “Critical Study of Unmāda in the Early Sanskrit Medical Literature: An Analysis
of Ayurvedic Psychiatry with Reference to Present-Day Diagnostic Concepts.” PhD diss.,
University of Pennsylvania, 1977.
An important study that remains very close to the original sources and provides translations of
many key Sanskrit texts relating to mental illness. Available only through UMI microfilms. The
classification of ayurvedic categories with those of modern diagnosis (DSM) has perhaps been
superseded by more intracultural evaluations, but the study remains valuable.
Provides a brief discussion of insanity in ayurveda, and provides selected translations of original
texts on insanity and its treatment. See especially pp. 244–251.
29 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Anthropologically Oriented Studies
Carstairs 1955 represents the earliest professional anthropological work on this topic and remains an
influential and insightful contribution, highlighting the importance of therapeutic success entering
sympathetically into the lives and worldviews of patients. Obeyesekere 1977 focuses on ayurvedic
theory and its practice in Sri Lanka. Tarabout 1999 describes the ayurvedic mental-health work done
at the healing shrine of Poonkudil Mana, Kerala, whose claim to fame rests on the notion that
traditional ayurvedic methods of therapy are applied. Nichter 1981a and Nichter 1981b offer insight
into the narratives used by patients when communicating with psychiatric and other health workers.
Nichter brings out the profound differences in understanding that exist between these two views,
differences that are not just matters of nomenclature but that deeply affect the epistemology of the
healing encounter. Pakaslahti 2009, a study of language usage at a healing shrine in Rajasthan, is
based on careful transcripts and recordings of actual dialogue and breaks new ground in penetrating
the cultural presuppositions of patients and healers.
Carstairs, G. Morris. “Medicine and Faith in Rural Rajasthan.” In Health, Culture, and Community:
Case Studies. Edited by Benjamin D. Paul, 107–136. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1955.
A participant-observer study by the renowned anthropologist. Carstairs addresses “the gulf of

misunderstanding between the Western doctor and the Indian villager” and emphasizes the
importance of the healthcare worker meeting rural patients’ local concepts of disease.
Nabokov, Isabelle. Religion Against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals. New York: Oxford
An insightful study of healing temple practices in Tamil Nadu, where families consult spirit
mediums for the expulsion of negative spirits and for reconnection with benign spirits of their
deceased family members. Includes biographical studies of practicing mediums and explores
subjective experiences of dealing with grief in personal and family contexts.
Nichter, Mark. “Idioms of Distress: Alternatives in the Expression of Psychosocial Distress; a Case
Study from South India.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 5 (1981a): 379–408.
A careful study of the ways in which Brahman women from Karnataka express what modern
observers would call psychosocial distress. Such distress is often reported by these patients in
terms of bodily pain or dizziness. It is suggested that such modes of expression are an
adaptation to a situation in which the expression of more inward states of distress would be
socially unacceptable or ineffective.
Nichter, Mark. “Negotiation of the Illness Experience: Ayurvedic Therapy and the Psychosocial
Dimension of Illness.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 5 (1981b): 5–24.
Explores how the use of familiar categories of Indian ayurveda and astrology can help patients
express their illness experiences more cogently and to have a more meaningful and productive
experience with the physician.
30 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Obeyesekere, Gananath. “The Theory and Practice of Psychological Medicine in the Ayurvedic
Tradition.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 1 (1977): 151–181.
The author elucidates the internal logic and the consistency in both theory and practice of
ayurvedic psychological medicine. He describes the classical Indian metaphysical base ayurvedic
concept of mind rests and the manner in which the classic theory is implemented in
contemporary practice in Sri Lanka.
Pakaslahti, Antti. “Terminology of Spirit Illness: An Empirical Study of a Living Healing Tradition.”
In Mathematics and Medicine in Sanskrit. Edited by Dominik Wujastyk, 155–192. Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 2009.
An innovative analysis of language-use at the healing shrine of Balaji, where mentally disturbed
patients are treated through rituals of exorcism as well as with ayurvedic medicines.
Tarabout, Gilles. “‘Psycho-religious Therapy’ in Kerala as a Form of Interaction Between Local

Traditions and (Perceived) Scientific Discourse.” Paper presented at the 13th European
Conference of Modern South Asian Studies in Toulouse, France, 31 August to 3 September 1994.
In Managing Distress: Possession and Therapeutic Cults in South Asia = La prise en charge de
l’affliction: possession et cultes therapeutiques en Asie du Sud. Edited by Marine Carrin,
133–154. New Delhi: Manohar, 1999.
An important study of a healing-shrine in Kerala where ayurvedic and religious healing methods
are used to help patients with mental disorders.
Historical Approaches
Ernst 1987 was the first study dedicated to the government’s incarceration of Indian subjects in
19th-century India, a topic developed in at greater length by Mills 2000, where greater attention is
given to indigenous voices. Fabrega 2009 is unique in being written by a psychiatrist and gives a
global overview from the Vedas to the present day.
Ernst, Waltraud. “The Establishment of ‘Native Lunatic Asylums’ in Early Nineteenth-Century

British India.” In Studies on Indian Medical History. Edited by Gerrit Jan Meulenbeld and Dominik
Wujastyk, 169–204. Groningen, The Netherlands: Forsten, 1987.
Discusses the treatment of the Indian insane by British establishment medicine.
Fabrega, Horacio. History of Mental Illness in India: A Cultural Psychiatry Retrospective. Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 2009.
A global history of mental illness in South Asia by a cultural historian. Studies the Sanskrit
religious and medical literatures as well as some anthropological literature; the book also
develops a general thematic view of the topic.
Mills, James H. Madness, Cannabis, and Colonialism: The “Native Only” Lunatic Asylums of British
31 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
India, 1857–1900. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.
Examines the lunatic asylums of colonial India between the war of 1857 and the end of the 19th
century, with a focus on the incarceration and treatment of Indians.
PHARMACOLOGY
The ayurvedic literature abounds in herbal recipes: in a sense, it is the heart of the healing tradition.
Sooner or later, working with ayurveda inevitably raises questions about plant nomenclature and
identification. Furthermore, the methods of gathering, manufacturing and distributing traditional
Indian medicines went through a revolution in the 20th century, with the application of modern
factory methods and the application of business models.
Plant History and Identification
The Sanskrit texts themselves display an impressive attempt to classify the plant world. A great deal
of time has passed since the ayurvedic medical texts were composed, and it is inevitable that some
plants fell out of common usage and were hard to find in new settlements, mistaken for similar
species, or were deliberately switched by opportunist suppliers in the bazaar. When researching Indian
medicinal plant identities, must-have books include the five volumes of Warrier, et al. 1993–1996,
which arrange plants by Latin name and give botanical and medical notes and valuable extracts from
the nighaṇtu literature. Also important is Sivarajan and Balachandran 1994, with much historical and
practical information as well as careful botanical analysis. Both these books come from Keralan
traditions but are sensitive to north-south variations in practice. Also essential are Kirtikar and Basu
1987 for its information on indigenous medicine and botany, Meulenbeld 1974 for its accurate
appendices on materia medica, Nadkarni 1954 for its diversity and wide coverage, and Singh and
Chunekar 1972 for its careful and informed analysis of all the plants listed in the earliest surviving
ayurvedic works. At about the turn of the 20th century, ayurvedic innovators such as P. S. Varier in
Kerala and S. K. Burman in Calcutta founded companies that applied modern methods of drug
manufacture, packaging, distribution, and sale to ayurvedic medicines. This was a revolution in
traditional medicine and became an enormous commercial success. Today, pharmaceutical companies
specializing in ayurvedic, unani, and siddha medicines are among the most successful in India. Bode
2008 and Banerjee 2009 are both innovative studies exploring traditional pharmacology as it
modernizes.
Banerjee, Madhulika. Power, Knowledge, Medicine: Ayurvedic Pharmaceuticals at Home and in

the World. Hyderabad, India, and London: Orient BlackSwan, 2009.
A sociologically and politically sophisticated analysis of the circulation, distribution, and

meaning of ayurvedic pharmaceutical substances in the modern global market.
Bode, Maarten. Taking Traditional Knowledge to the Market: The Modern Image and of the
Ayurvedic and Unani Industry, 1980–2000. New Perspectives in South Asian History 21.
Hyderabad, India: Orient Longman, 2008.
An important study of the ayurvedic pharmaceutical marketplace, the commodification of
32 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
traditional medical products, and the modernization and identity of ayurvedic medicine in the
contemporary world.
Kirtikar, K. R., and Baman Das Basu. Indian Medicinal Plants. 2d ed. Dehradun, India:
International Book Distributors, 1987.
Major survey of ayurvedic plants. Four volumes of text and another four volumes of line
drawings of plants. Particularly valuable for the serious effort to collect synonyms for plants in
many languages of India and the world. Regrettably, diacritical marks were not used, so some
imagination is often required in understanding these synonyms. First published in 1918
(Allahabad, India: Suhindra Nath Basu).
Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. The Mādhavanidāna and Its Chief Commentary, Chapters 1–10:
Introduction, Translation, and Notes. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1974.
An appendix contains a very important index of ayurvedic plant names and the literature in
which they are studied. Supplemented by Gerrit Jan Meulenbeld’s “G. J. Meulenbeld’s Additions
to his ‘Sanskrit Names of Plants and their Botanical Equivalents,’” in R. P. Das, Das Wissen von
der Lebensspanne der Bäume: Surapālas Vṛkṣāyurveda (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1988).
Nadkarni, A. K. Dr. K. M. Nadkarni’s Indian Materia Medica, with Ayurvedic, Unani-tibbi, Siddha,
Allopathic, Homeopathic, Naturopathic & Home Remedies, Appendices & Notes. 2 vols. Bombay:
Popular Prakashan, 1954.
A curious, systematic collection of information that is always surprisingly rewarding despite its
rough edges. Hampered by the lack of scientific transcription for Indian words.
Singh, Thakur Balwant, and K. C. Chunekar. Glossary of Vegetable Drugs in Brhattrayī. Varanasi,
India: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1972.
A still-valuable index of all the plant names occurring in the basic ayurvedic source texts, with
thoughtful botanical identifications and detailed references to the original texts.
Sivarajan, V. V., and Indira Balachandran. Ayurvedic Drugs and Their Plant Sources. New Delhi:
Oxford & IBH, 1994.
An exceptionally valuable study of ayurvedic plants and their sometimes multiple botanical
identifications, with important reflections on difficult cases. Special attention is given to
geographical variation between plants used in North and South India. Arranged by Sanskrit plant
names and contains illustrations.
Warrier, P. K., V. P. K. Nambiar, and C. Ramankutty, eds. Indian Medicinal Plants: A Compendium
of 500 Species. 5 vols. Madras: Orient Longman, 1993–1996.
Originally the shop-floor manual of the manager of the Arya Vaidya Sala pharmaceutical factory,
this multivolume study is richly illustrated and arranged by Latin botanical classification and
33 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
includes illustrations. Also very valuable for providing excerpts from the nighaṇṭu literature for
all plants.
EUROPEAN DISCOVERY OF INDIAN MEDICINE
Desmond 1992 is the best and most enjoyable starting point for exploring the early European
discovery of Indian materia medica. Desmond describes, among other things, how Garcia da Orta (c.
1502–1568) was the first European author to write systematically on Indian materia medica (see
Premodern and Indigenous Epidemiology). A century later, the Dutch governor of Malabar, Henricus
van Rheede (1636–1691) produced the next great overview of Indian medicinal plants, the Hortus
Malabaricus (van Rheede 1678–1703). He was aided by ayurvedic physicians in identifying and naming
the plants he drew and described (Figueiredo 1984, Pearson 1995). Grove 1996 is an insightful study
of how the Portuguese, Dutch, and Indian physicians interacted and contributed to each others’
medical practice. O’Shaughnessy 1841 is a key text marking the birth of professional pharmacology in
India as well as being an interesting crossover between Indian and European materia medica. The
“numerous special experiments” referred to in the title include historically important clinical trials of
cannabis as an anesthetic for terminally ill tetanus patients.
Desmond, Ray. The European Discovery of the Indian Flora. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992.
A brilliant and accessible study of the European encounter with the flora of South Asia, giving
biographical accounts of the earliest European botanists to grapple with the startling new world
of Indian plant life that they entered.
Figueiredo, John M. P. de. “Ayurvedic Medicine in Goa According to the European Sources in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 58 (1984): 225–235.
Studies the early Portuguese and Dutch perceptions of ayurveda.
Grove, Richard. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of
Environmentalism, 1600–1860. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Chapter 2, “Indigenous Knowledge and the significance of South-West India for Portuguese and
Dutch Constructions of Tropical Nature,” is a brilliant study of the medical encounter between
Portuguese and Indian physicians, which points to the strong influences on the Europeans of
ayurvedic vaidyas and other social groups in Kerala who had significant medical skills and
knowledge, such as the Ezhavas.
O’Shaughnessy, W. B. The Bengal Dispensatory and Pharmacopoeia, Chiefly Compiled from the
Works of Roxburgh, Wallich, Ainslie, Wight and Arnot, Royle, Pereira, Lindley, Richard, and Fee,
and Including the Results of Numerous Special Experiments. Calcutta: Bishop’s College Press,
1841.
The first published pharmacopoeia in India, aimed at European doctors practicing in India, but
34 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
introducing many items of local Indian materia medica due to the high cost of importing drugs
from Britain.
Pearson, Michael N. “The Thin End of the Wedge: Medical Relativities as a Paradigm of Early
Modern Indian-European Relations.” Modern Asian Studies 29 (1995): 141–170.
Excellent study of the medical encounter between Indian and European medicine in the 16th and
17th centuries.
van Rheede, Henricus. Hortus Indicus Malabaricus, Amstelaedami: Joannis van Someren and
Joannis van Dyck. 12 vols. 1678–1703.
Twelve astoundingly beautiful folio volumes with large illustrations of Keralan plants, together
with a Latin narrative on their properties, names, uses and healing powers. Now digitized and
freely available online.
AYURVEDA IN THE MODERN WORLD
The anthropological, ethnographic, and historical study of indigenous Indian medicine since
independence has grown strongly since the 1970s, giving rise to a large literature that can only be
sampled here. In recent years, the popularity of Indian medicine, especially ayurveda, has grown
enormously, leading to the phenomena of globalization and further radical forms of modernization
and commercialization.
Modernization, Professionalization, and Self-Representation
Singer 1972 is one of the first works of modern anthropology to take ayurveda seriously, and it
stimulated much later work, including the many critically important studies on ayurvedic
modernization and professionalization published by Charles Leslie between the 1960s and 1990s,
represented here by Leslie 1976 and Leslie 1992. In the post-Independence era, government attitudes
to ayurveda fluctuated from initial all-out rejection, to cautious acceptance and centralized
monitoring and support. Ram Nath Chopra was a major medical figure who, in the 1950s and 1960s,
argued that ayurveda could function as a source of medicines for assimilation into modern
establishment medical pharmacology. In the course of making this argument, publications such as
Chopra, et al. 1958 gathered and organized a great deal of information about ayurvedic materia
medica and its uses. Wujastyk 2008 describes Chopra’s work in the context of the numerous
government committees that struggled to integrate Indian systems of medicine into the new nation’s
state healthcare provision.
Chopra, R. N., I. C. Chopra, K. L. Handa, and L. D. Kapur. Chopra’s Indigenous Drugs of India.
Calcutta: Dhur & Sons, 1958.
The result of R. N. Chopra’s vision of ayurveda as an ethnopharmacological source for

therapeutic chemicals that could be synthesized and assimilated into modern establishment
medicine, the volume nevertheless retains a valuable function as a scientific survey of mainly
ayurvedic medicines.
35 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
Leslie, Charles. “The Ambiguities of Medical Revivalism in Modern India.” In Asian Medical
Systems. By Charles Leslie, 356–367. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Points out that contemporary ayurvedic practice owes as much to syncretic patterns of medicine
developed since the 16th century as to the thousand-year-old Sanskrit treatises and explores
the modernization of ayurveda in postindependence India.
Leslie, Charles. “Interpretations of Illness: Syncretism in Modern Āyurveda.” In Paths to Asian

Medical Knowledge. Edited by Charles Leslie and Allan Young, 177–208. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992.
Explores the roles of such pioneers as Pandit Shiv Sharma (1906–1982), Dr. Chandragiri
Dwarkanath (1906–1976), and Kaviraj Gananath Sen (1877–1944) on the formation of modern
ayurveda. Also discusses the several attempts to produce a syncretic synthesis of ayurvedic
ideas in terms of “modern Western medicine.”
Singer, Milton. When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian

Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
A classic early anthropological study of ayurveda in South India. Strongly influenced by the
author’s contact with the great scholar V. Raghavan. Describes the practice of ayurveda in
Madras. See especially pp. 104–108, 140–141.
Wujastyk, Dominik. “The Evolution of Indian Government Policy on Ayurveda in the Twentieth
Century.” In Modern and Global Ayurveda: Pluralism and Paradigms. Edited by Dagmar Wujastyk
and Frederick M. Smith, 43–76. New York: State University of New York Press, 2008.
Assesses the Indian government’s multiple attempts to come to terms with ayurveda as heritage
and as modern medicine.
Understanding Ayurveda Today
A large anthropological and ethnographic literature contains much extremely fine analytical work on
modern ayurvedic practice. Langford 2002 gives an anthropologist’s participant-observer view of
contemporary ayurvedic practice, including interviews with practitioners in Kerala who report on their
subjective experiences of treating patients from the United States and Europe. Zimmermann 1989 (in
French) is a superb ethnographical study of traditional ayurveda in 20th-century Kerala. Recent
sociologically aware studies, such as those collected in Alter 2005 and in Wujastyk and Smith 2008,
are bringing a new sophistication and insight to our understanding of ayurveda’s place in the
contemporary international world. Zimmermann 1992 explores the changes taking place in ayurvedic
practice as it leaves India and is taken up in Europe and the United States. Wujastyk 2005 studies the
attempts of the British government to classify ayurveda as part of Complementary and Alternative
Medicine, in preparation for new regulatory legislation. Although not centrally concerned with
ayurveda, Weiss 2009 and Attewell 2007 are sophisticated and important contemporary studies of
Tamil and Unani traditions respectively: they show how important other systematized forms of
premodern medicine are in contemporary South Asia and how they have often shared ayurveda’s
36 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
struggles and strategies for modernization.
Alter, Joseph S., ed. Asian Medicine and Globalization. Encounters with Asia. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Theoretically sophisticated and insightful collection including papers by Alter (ayurvedic

acupuncture), Habib and Raina (drug manufacture in late colonial India), Kumar (compares
British India and Dutch Indies), van Hollen (ayurveda and HIV/AIDS), and Selby (New Age
discourses on women’s health).
Attewell, Guy. Refiguring Unani Tibb: Plural Healing in Late Colonial India. New Delhi: Orient
Longman, 2007.
Drawing on a range of material in Urdu, Arabic, and Persian, Attewell shows how Islamic
medicine in India reconfigured itself radically during the 19th and 20th centuries, adapting to
biomedical concepts, various languages, nationalist and community-based politics, changing
social and moral norms, and forms of legitimacy inspired by colonial models.
Langford, Jean M. Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance (Body,
Commodity, Text). Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.
An anthropologist’s account of contemporary ayurvedic practice, especially in Kerala. A probing

and readable book, theorizing ayurvedic encounters in the idiom of contemporary American
anthropology.
Weiss, Richard S. Recipes for Immortality: Medicine, Religion, and Community in South India.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Discusses the medical pluralism of South Asia and in particular evaluates the strategies for
success employed by siddha practitioners in Tamil South India, strategies that depend partly on
deep-seated nationalist concepts of Tamil identity and mythic history.
Wujastyk, Dominik. “Policy Formation and Debate Concerning the Government Regulation of
Ayurveda in Great Britain in the 21st Century.” Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 1 (2005):
162–184.
Analysis and critique of the British government’s attempts to understand and regulate ayurveda.
Wujastyk, Dagmar, and Frederick M. Smith, eds. Modern and Global Ayurveda: Pluralism and
Paradigms. New York: State University of New York Press, 2008.
A collection of essays examining many facets of ayurveda in the modern world, including
Maharshi Ayurveda, the formation of Indian government policy on ayurveda after independence,
forms of modern ayurvedic educational, ayurvedic epistemology, and many other critical topics.
Zimmermann, Francis. Le discours des remèdes au pays des épices: Enquête sur la médecine
37 of 38 05/05/11 14:09
hindoue. Paris: Payot, 1989.
A profoundly insightful treatment of the ayurvedic practice of Kerala, written after an

apprenticeship with the great Aṣṭavaidya physician, N. S. Vayaskara Mooss (1912–1986).
Zimmermann, Francis. “Gentle Purge: The Flower Power of Āyurveda.” In Paths to Asian Medical
Knowledge. Edited by Charles Leslie and Allan Young, 209–223. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992.
Points out how the transition of ayurveda from an indigenous healthcare system in premodern
India to a component of global alternative medicine has been accompanied by the removal from
ayurvedic practice and thought of all its violent and unpleasant components.
LAST MODIFIED: 01/27/2011
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195399318-0035
BACK TO TOP
Oxford University Press
You are browsing courtesy of: OUP - OBO Editorial Board

Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved.
38 of 38 05/05/11 14:09

Indian Medicine An Online Bibliographic

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Indian Medicine An Online Bibliographic

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Oxford Bibliographies Online - Indian Medicine http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com/vie...

Kutumbiah, Pudipeddy. Ancient Indian Medicine. Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1962.

physician. Often reprinted.

Majumdar, R. C. “Medicine.” In A Concise History of Science in India. Edited by D. M. Bose, S. N.

A more modern short introduction aimed at beginning students.

Comba, Antonella. La medicina Indiana (Āyurveda). Turin, Italy: Promolibri, 1990.

Excellent, medium-length introduction to the history of ayurveda, with a focus on philosophy.

Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. ABIM: An Annotated Bibliography of Indian Medicine. 2002–.

Sigaléa, Robert. La médecine traditionnelle de l’Inde: doctrines prévedique, védique,

An important and comprehensive history of ayurvedic literature written in Hindi. Includes a

Sharma, Priya Vrat. Āyurved kā Vaijñānik Itihās. Jayakṛṣṇadāsa Āyurveda Granthamālā 1.

Appendix 2 contains a bibliographical essay on the history of scholarship on ayurveda.

Another translation from P. V. Sharma, mostly reliable.

Krishnamurthy, K. H. Bhela-Saṃhitā: Text with English Translation, Commentary, and Critical

Notes. Haridas Ayurveda Series 8. Varanasi, India: Chaukhambha Visvabharati, 2000.

Tewari, Premvati. Kāśyapa-saṃhitā, or Vṛddhajīvakīyam Tantra: Text with English Translation

Hilgenberg, Luise, and Willibald Kirfel. Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā, ein altindisches

Srikantha Murthy, K. R. Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāñga Hṛdayam: Text, English Translation, Notes,

Srikantha Murthy, K. R. Mādhava Nidānam (Roga Viniscaya) of Madhavakara (a Treatise on

Another workmanlike translation from Srikantha Murthy.

Srikantha Murthy, K. R. Śārṅgadhara-saṃhitā by Śārṅgadhara, Translated into English. Delhi:

Srikantha Murthy, K. R. Bhāvaprakāśa of Bhāvamiśra (Text, English Translation, Notes,

THE HUMAN BODY

In South Asian Religion and Culture

Zimmermann, Francis. “Introducing Western Anatomy to the Practitioners of Classical Indian

Yoga, Karma, and the Medical Body

Princeton University Press, 2004.

A clear account of the ideas on karma found in the Carakasaṃhitā.

Medicine and the Tantric Body

The Medical Body in Buddhist Thought

The Body in its Environment

productivity led to the semantic reversal in the meaning of jaṅgala.

Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. “The Constraints of Theory in the Evolution of Nosological

BUDDHISM AND MEDICINE

Mazars, Sylvain. Le bouddhisme et la médecine traditionnelle de l’Inde. Paris: Springer, 2008.

JAINISM AND MEDICINE

Shastri, Vardhaman Parshwanath, ed. The Kalyāṇa-kārakam of Ugrādityacharya, Edited with

EVOLUTION OF MEDICAL LITERATURE

Dasgupta, Surendranath. A History of Indian Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Zysk, Kenneth G. “Mythology and the Brāhmaṇization of Indian medicine: Transforming

A useful survey, based mainly on European-language sources. Cholera, plague, smallpox,

McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1976.

Premodern and Indigenous Epidemiology

Classic paper on the religious dimensions of smallpox epidemics in Bengal.

Fascinating account of the first Portuguese experiences with Indian medicine.

Deshpande, Vijaya. “Indian Influences on Early Chinese Ophthalmology: Glaucoma as a Case

Discusses the transmission of Indian ophthalmological surgery to China.

Deshpande, Vijaya. “Ophthalmic Surgery: A Chapter in the History of Sino-Indian Medical

Haldar, J. R. Medical Science in Pali Literature. Calcutta: Indian Museum, 1977.

DEMONS OF FEVER AND POSSESSION

Filliozat, Jean. Étude de démonologie indienne: le Kumāratantra de Rāvaṇa et les textes

Wujastyk, Dominik. “Miscarriages of Justice: Demonic Vengeance in Classical Indian Medicine.” In

Meulenbeld, Gerrit Jan. “Aspects of Indian Psychiatry.” In History of Psychiatric Diagnoses:

Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on the Comparative History of Medicine—East

An excellent overview, giving an insiders’ view of the Sanskrit sources.

An overview written by a practicing ayurvedic physician. Appendix 2 on the domestic healing

A brief English-language summary of Roşu 1978, giving an overview of the psychological

Anthropologically Oriented Studies

A participant-observer study by the renowned anthropologist. Carstairs addresses “the gulf of

Tarabout, Gilles. “‘Psycho-religious Therapy’ in Kerala as a Form of Interaction Between Local

Ernst, Waltraud. “The Establishment of ‘Native Lunatic Asylums’ in Early Nineteenth-Century

Discusses the treatment of the Indian insane by British establishment medicine.