Eternal India Encyclopedia

Eternal India encyclopedia

Ancient Concepts, Sciences & Systems

tine and conduct to rectify humoral balance, improve physical and mental health, ward off senility and promote longevity. The different tastes of all foods and drugs are given special importance for indicating their potentiality to augment or rectify the dosas. There are six specific tastes - sweet, sour, saline, bitter, pungent and astringent. Their combinations taking two, three, four, five and all at a time make 63 tastes in all. These tastes emerge in different substances which can augment, rectify or counterbalance the different humours. A judicious selection of substances from the different taste groups can maintain health and cure diseases. Indian medical knowledge influenced the Greeks considerably. The Hippocratic treatise on Breath discusses the concept of pneuma in more or less the same manner as the Indian concept of vata. The Roman, Celsius, (1st century A.D.) gave in his medical treatises a graphic account of lithotomy (cutting of the bladder to remove a stone) which was practised in India much earlier. Galen (2nd century A.D.) makes no secret of his borrowing from India the material relating to ointment for the eyes and the Indian plaster. But India also received medical knowledge. In the 12th century the examination of urine and the pulse was practised by Indian medical men perhaps learning the technique from China and the Arabs. In the 13-14th centuries, the Unani system of medicine from the Perso-Arabic culture area began to take root in India under the Muslim rulers and became popular with the advent of the Mughals. The Muslim rulers encouraged both the Ayurveda and the Unani Tibb and the Hakims and Vaidyas worked together in hospitals and medical schools in a testimony to the Islamic patronage of scientific tradition. At the instance of Mohammed Bin Tuglaq (14th century), Ha Kim Diya Muhammed compiled a treatise "Majmuai Diyaiyya" incorporating the Arabic, Persian and Ayurvedic medical knowl- edge. The physician was a respected member of society. The rules of professional behaviour were laid down and resembled those of Hippocrates. Charaka instructs a physician thus : “ If you want success in your practice, wealth and fame, and heaven after your death, you must pray every day on rising and going to bed for the welfare of all beings, especially of cows and brahmins, and you must strive with all your soul for the health of the sick. You must not betray your patients even at the cost of your own life. You must not get drunk, or commit evil or have evil companions... when you go to the home of a patient you should direct your words, mind, intellect and senses nowhere but to your patient and his treatment., nothing that happens in the house of the sick man must be told outside, nor must the patient’s condition be told to anyone who might do harm by that knowledge to the patient or to another”. Charaka laid more emphasis on prevention rather than cure. This is in line with the modem concept of health and the role of modem medicine. Ancient Indian doctors had no clear knowledge of the function of the brain and believed that the heart was the seat of intelligence. They realised however the importance of the spinal cord and knew of the existence of the nervous system.

2) Vimanasthana (specific determi- nation of taste etc), 4) Sarirasthana (anatomy, physiology and bi- ology), 5) Indiryasthana (prognosis of disease), 6) Chikitsasthana (treatment of diseases), 7) Kalpasthana (pharmaceutics), 8) Siddhisthana (administration of five elimination therapies). Charaka was aware of the germ theory of diseases but he rejected the theory that germs are the only causative factors of diseases. He advanced the theory that it is the imbalance of dosas or humours - vata (wind), pitta (gall) and kapha (mucus) - and vitiation of dhatus or tissue elements that are the primary causes of diseases and create a favourable environment for the growth of germs in the body. The etiology of disease as described by Charaka is a psychosomatic phenomenon, the somatic elements being closely connected with the psychic ones. This is a central principle of the Ayurvedic concept of the cure of diseases as enunciated by Charaka. The Charaka Samhita states:" Vata is the source of both structure and function. It is that which is represented by the five forms: prana, udana, samana, vyana and apana. It is the initiator of the upward and downward flow (of all internal processes such as circulation, metabolism, breath, etc.) the controller of the senses; the companion of the sensations; the organizer for the elements of the body; the principle of synthesis; the storage battery of speech; the cause of feelings and perception; the origin of excitement and stimulation. It fans the gastric fire, dries out harmful phlegm and expels excrement. It is the purifier of the coarse and fine channels of the body; the creator of fetal form; the principle of life preserva- tion. All these are normal functions of vata in our body." Disturbances in vata lead to illnesses such as hypertension and other metabolic and circulatory diseases, emotional or depressive states and everything related to tension, relaxation, expansion, contraction and so on. Pitta is literally translated as "gall", which implies tempera- ment. It is said to be derived from the word tap "to heat". Charaka states; "The results are digestion or indigestion, power of precep- tion and its loss, normal or abnormal body temperatures, healthy or unhealthy looks, fear or courage, joy or anger, clarity or confusion, and other such contrasting pairs." Diseases resulting from this are; inflammation, fever, pus, bad odour, itching and pain. Kapha is literally translated as ka which means "water" and pha which can be translated as "the process of biological evolu- tion". Thus it is "life-fluid", and has also been called "phlegm". The Charaka Samhita states : "Kapha is the nectar. It is fertile water for the play of life; it is living fluid, the protoplasm that sustains all processes; it is the scaffold of life. It binds all the limbs together and produces all the connecting, nourishing, developing and fortify- ing functions. It promotes the well being of the body by its lubricating process. Thus it supplies the water for the roots of life. In its physiological aspect kapha is the power and perserverance of man, which however, immediately becomes a disturbing impurity when its balance is disturbed." In disease it manifests as cold, swelling due to fluid, constipa- tion, diabetes and tumors. It is said that there is no pain unless vata is present, no inflammatory process without pitta, and no swellings can occur without kapha. Nidanasthana (diagnosis), 3)

SELECTED REFERENCES

Charaka by Bhagwan Das and Sushruta by P.S. Sankaran and

P.J. Deshpande in Cultural Leaders of India, Publications Division, New Delhi 1990

Ayurveda has formulated an extensive discipline of diets, rou-