"Āyurveda"

Encyclopedia entry on Āyurveda

The Practice of Texts

The Practice of Texts examines the uses of the Sanskrit medical classics in two educational institutions of India’s classical life science, Ayurveda: the college and the gurukula. In this interdisciplinary study, Anthony Cerulli probes late- and postcolonial reforms in ayurvedic education, the development of the ayurvedic college, and the impacts of the college curriculum on ways that ayurvedic physicians understand and use the Sanskrit classics in their professional work today. His fieldwork in south India illuminates the nature of philology and ritual in the ayurvedic gurukula and showcases how knowledge is exchanged among students, teachers, and patients. The result, Cerulli shows, is that the Sanskrit classics are presented and applied differently in the college and gurukula, producing a variety of relationships with these texts among practitioners. By interrogating the politics surrounding the place of the Sanskrit classics in ayurvedic curricula, this book reveals a spectrum of views about the history and tradition of Ayurveda in modern India

The Practice of Texts

The Practice of Texts examines the uses of the Sanskrit medical classics in two educational institutions of India’s classical life science, Ayurveda: the college and the gurukula. In this interdisciplinary study, Anthony Cerulli probes late- and postcolonial reforms in ayurvedic education, the development of the ayurvedic college, and the impacts of the college curriculum on ways that ayurvedic physicians understand and use the Sanskrit classics in their professional work today. His fieldwork in south India illuminates the nature of philology and ritual in the ayurvedic gurukula and showcases how knowledge is exchanged among students, teachers, and patients. The result, Cerulli shows, is that the Sanskrit classics are presented and applied differently in the college and gurukula, producing a variety of relationships with these texts among practitioners. By interrogating the politics surrounding the place of the Sanskrit classics in ayurvedic curricula, this book reveals a spectrum of views about the history and tradition of Ayurveda in modern India

“Know Thy Body, Know Thyself: Decoding Knowledge of the Ātman in Sanskrit Medical Literature”

A study of mental disease in Cakrapāṇidatta's commentary on the Carakasaṃhitā

"Nathaniel Hawthorne's Warring Doctors and Meddling Ministers"

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories “The Rejected Blessing” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” dramatize ideological com-petition among doctors and clergymen from Renaissance Italy to colonial Boston over care of the body. In the context of Hawthorne’s life, these stories show his foresighted theorizing of medical hegemony and its dangers to public and individual health

"Mad Scientists, Narrative, and Social Power: A Collaborative Learning Activity"

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories “The Birthmark” (1843) and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844) encourage critical thinking about science and scientific research as forms of social power. In this collaborative activity, students work in small groups to discuss the ways in which these stories address questions of human experimentation, gender, manipulation of bodies, and the role of narrative in mediating perceptions about bodies. Students collectively adduce textual evidence from the stories to construct claims and present a mini-argument to the class, thereby strengthening their skills in communication and cooperative interpretation of ethical dilemmas. This exercise is adaptable to shorter and longer periods of instruction, and it is ideal for instructors who collaborate across areas of expertise

"Unpuzzling an Aporia: Theorizing Acts of Ritual and Medicine in South India"

Examining a procedure at a clinic of traditionally trained physicians of Ayurveda in Kerala, south India, this article unpuzzles the ostensible aporia separating ritual activity and medical activity

“Epilogue: Healing Concerns in South Asian Texts, Histories, and Societies.”

This epilogue reflects on scholarship in the study of South Asian medicines and healing traditions at the end of the twentieth century and in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It underscores the growing multidisciplinarity of this field, and it suggests that the contributions to this special issue signal this development and speak to the theoretical richness and importance of this research

"Gifting Knowledge for Long Life"

During nonemergency appointments at traditional sites of āyurvedic healthcare in Kerala, South India, classically trained Brāhmaṇa physicians and their patients seldom exchange anything of substance (whether medicinal or monetary). The physician-patient interface instead routinely involves an exchange of knowledge. Interactions between physicians and patients in these meetings evoke the highly theorized notion of the “Indian gift” and the question of prestation in South Indian societies. This article explores the nature of exchange in the supply and reception of healthcare among physicians and patients at traditional sites of āyurvedic treatment (that is, sites not affiliated with governmental or private hospitals or clinics) in contemporary Kerala. Drawing on classical treatises about the dharma of gifts (dānadharma) and the Sanskrit medical classics of Āyurveda, it examines reciprocity, ideal preconditions of givers and receivers of gifts, and the possibility of a “pure gift” in the appraisal and production of wellbeing

"Politicking Ayurvedic Education"

As the Indian population’s interest in biomedicine increased at the end of the nineteenth century, public confidence in India’s indigenous medicines flagged. Physicians of Ayurveda and officials of Indian medical organizations responded with discussions about and plans for reconfiguring the āyurveda (“life science”) of the Sanskrit medical classics of Caraka, Suśruta, and Vāgbhaṭa to be compatible with the anatomical, physiological, and pharmacological frameworks of biomedicine. This article considers some of the negotiations that shaped Ayurveda in late colonial and postcolonial India, paying special attention to how these debates affected the history of ayurvedic education. Reflecting on how the presence of biomedicine in India prompted ayurvedic practitioners to reimagine the history of their profession, it examines the revitalization of Ayurveda through the reinvention of ayurvedic education. It probes the historical move away from the gurukula as the seat of education and the institutionalization and standardization of education in the ayurvedic college. The historical record is expanded periodically with ethnographic data collected at gurukulas in South India to offer contemporary views on changes in ayurvedic education over the past 130 years