Ayurveda

Ancient Indian Medicine

Ayurveda, meaning the science of longevity, was an indigenous system of medicine in ancient India with historical roots in the Indian subcontinent only. The oldest known Ayurvedic texts are the Suśruta Saṃhitā and the Charaka Saṃhitā.  It contains information about diseases, their diagnosis and expected cures.

Ayurveda as an art of healing was treated with respect in ancient India. The knowledge systemized as Ayurveda was considered at par with the Vedas. The   knowledge of Ayurveda was passed from generations to generations and was spread among sages, hermits and other religious men who moved from one place to another. Those who solely practiced this form of medicine were known as Vaidyas and they belonged to the Brahmin caste.

In classical Sanskrit literature, Ayurveda was called the science of eight components: 

1- Kāya-chikitsā  (General Medicine)

2 –Kaumāra-bhṛtya (Paediatrics)

3 - Śhalya-chikitsā (Surgery)

4- Śālākya-tantra (ophthalmology/ENT)

5- Bhūta vidyā ((demonology / exorcism/psychiatry)

6- Agada-tantra (toxicology)

7 - Rasayana-tantra (elixirs)

8- Vājīkaraṇa tantra ( Aphrodisiacs)

The main medical practitioners of Ayurveda were Atraya, Agnivesa, Charaka and Shusruta.

History

Medicine got an early start in India, where even in the Stone Age, about 5000 BC, dentists at Mehrgahr, in the Indus River Valley (now in Pakistan), were drilling people's teeth to try to fix their cavities.

About 1000 BC, doctors in northern India wrote theAtharva veda, a medical textbook explaining how to treat diseases. Like Egyptian medical texts a little earlier, the Atharva veda says that diseases are caused by bad spirits, and you treat the disease by killing the spirits with poisons or spells. One example is the treatment of leprosy with a kind of lichen, which might have worked as an antibiotic. Another example is the treatment ofsnakebite by reciting charms. Possibly Yamnaya people brought marijuana with them when they came to India, about this time.

The surgeon Sushruta may have lived about 500 BC. Sushruta left a book, the Samhita, explaining his surgical methods. Sushruta described how to pull teeth, how to fix broken bones, and how to fix blockages of the intestines. He did operations on people's eyes to remove cataracts which sometimes worked a little, though more often they left the patient completely blind. He didn't have any anesthesia other than wine, though he recommendedbhang (probably marijuana) to treat coughs and dysentery. Sushruta also describedtuberculosis. About the same time, Indian people were using sand and charcoal filters to get clean water, which probably saved many lives.

By about 200 AD, Indian doctors, like Chinese doctors and Greek doctors, had abandoned the idea of bad spirits in favor of the somewhat less wrong idea of dosha or humors. The doctor Charaka wrote perhaps about this time. Charaka recognized that prevention was the best cure for many diseases, and he recommended keeping your humors in balance in order to stay healthy. Charaka recognized three humors - bile, phlegm (snot), and air. If your humors got out of balance, you should take medicines to rebalance them. But he also knew some medicines that worked: doctors recommended citrons to cure scurvy (Vitamin C deficiency). Indian doctors were so much respected that Indian traders got rich selling Indian medicines to people in the Roman Empire, Iran, Sogdiana, East Africa, and China.

By this time, Indian doctors also knew more about how your body worked: Charaka knew, probably from the work of earlier Egyptian doctors, that blood vessels both brought food to various parts of your body and also carried wastes away, and that your brain was for thinking.

Charaka also made the earliest Indian reference to smallpox, and this is just around the time that smallpox first devastated the Roman Empire, coming from the East. Under theGuptan kings, in the 300s AD, Chinese visitors praised India's hospitals.

Several hundred years later, Indian doctors were the first to invent a way to inoculate people against smallpox. In the 700s AD, a doctor called Madhav wrote about inoculation. Madhav knew that you could keep people from catching smallpox by scraping a little pus or scabs from someone who had smallpox, letting it sit around for a while, and then giving a small amount as an inoculation, either by sticking it into their skin on a needle, or by blowing the powder up their nose.

When Muslims conquered northern India about 1000 AD, many Iranian doctors came to India from West Asia to work for Muslim kings there. These doctors realized that the Indian list of humors didn't match the Islamic list of humors, and tried to find out what was right. For example, some Muslim doctors began to include air as one of the humors, and to combine black bile and yellow bile as one humor.

These Muslim doctors also brought opium and henbane (another anesthetic) with them to northern India, and by the 1200s AD, Indian doctors as far south as the Chola kingdom (as we know from the Sarangdhara Samhita) had learned to use opium both as an anesthetic and for diarrhea. The doctor Lakshmana Pandita wrote in the early 1400s AD in theVijayanagara Empire, under Imadi Bukka, the son of Hari Hari II. Lakshmana Pandita wrote about the different types of fevers, dysentery, miscarriages and fistulas, cancer, epilepsy, and kidney stones, among other things. Like doctors everywhere in Afro-Eurasia at this time, he thought you could tell what was wrong with patients by taking their pulse.

Basic principles

Ayurvedic medicinal plants are gate way miracles, if way of treatment and basic principles of is correct. Vata, pitta & kapha are the three elements which have definite properties to keep our body, mind and everything normal. Ayurvedic medicinal plants have been classified according to their properties like Rasa, Guna, Virya, Vipaka. This classification help us how to manage/ work medicinal plants to cure diseases. Ayurveda says vitiation/abnormal increase in Vata, pitta & kapha are main cause of disease. Vitiation is due to increase or decrease of similar properties. All the Dravya/ substance has properties (guna), Vata, pitta & kapha have also similar properties. Properties similar to Vata, pitta & kapha, do considerably increase in related Doshas, opposite properties decreases the qualities of related Doshas. So proper identification of Ayurvedic medicinal plants is important in the field of treatment. Medicinal plants used in South India & North India are different, even though Sanskrit names are similar, but they show same action. We have classified Ayurvedic medicinal plants according to their synonyms which give exact idea or colourful pictures about medicinal plants.

Susrutha has defined Ayurveda as a science in which the knowledge of life exists or which deals with the knowledge or science of longevity. Dalhana, an authoritauthoritative commentator of Susrutha, has clarified this definition, as Ayus (life) is a combination of Sarira (body / soma), Indriyas (sense organs), Sattva (manas / psychic) and Atma (soul / spirit). Ayurveda is therefore a science in which knowledge of Sarira, Indriyas, Sattva (Mind) and Atma exists. Bramha taught eternal science of Ayurveda to Daksa. There have no clear evidence for he created a ‘Prajapathe Samhita’, but in ‘Bramha vaivarta Purana’, discussion about these, Samhita have. There have no clear evidence in Ayurvedic Samhitas.

The earliest literature on Indian medical practice appeared during the Vedic period in India. All the Vedas-Rig, Yajur, Sam, and Atharv have contributed to the development of Ayurveda. The Shushrut samhita and the charaka samhita are great encyclopedias of medicine compiled from various sources from the 600-BC to about 500. Charaka samhita has mentioned about 341 plants while Shushrut samhita have listed 760 medicinal plants. They are among the foundational works of Ayurveda.

A number of drugs and surgical methods are developed by ayurvedic practitioners for various ailments. Ayurveda stresses on a balance of three elemental energies or humors vata (air & space - "wind"), pitta (fire & water -"bile") and kapha (water & earth "phlegm"). According to ayurvedic medical theory, these three dosas are important for health, because when they exist in equal quantities, the body will be healthy, and when they are not in equal amounts, the body will be unhealthy.

Ayurveda stresses on the use of plant-based medicines and treatments. Hundreds of plant-based medicines are employed by ayurvedic practioners. Some animal products may also be used, like milk, bones and minerals including sulphur, arsenic, lead, copper sulphate. Some metals like gold, silver and mercury are also consumed as prescribed. Many ayurvedic herbs used for therapy have shown very promising results like turmeric and its derivative curcumin are very good antioxidants. Tinspora cordifolia has been tested for its hepato- protective nature, Salvia officinalis (Common sage) may improve Alzheimer’s patients. Many plants used as rasayana (rejuvenation) medications are found potent antioxidants.

Introduction

Indian medicinal plants are plants using in Ayurveda mainly as medicinal purpose. Indian medicinal plants are the essence of Ayurveda and Ayurvedic treatments. When used judicially and clocking with the basic principles they produce miraculous effects. Their role cannot be confined to mere curative of disease but they also used being of human body. Hence, Ayurvedic drugs are rightly called the elixirs of life. Ayurvedic Herbs played important role in Ayurvedic treatment, from ancient time to this most modern time.

The development of ancient Indian medicine system can be traced right from the Indus Valley Civilization. The archaeological remains of Harappa and Mohenjodaro suggest the evidence for the existence of a medicine system. The Indus people used plant drugs, animal products and minerals. In one of the excavations Silajatu (Silajit) has been found, which indicates that it might have been used by the Indus people.

However, there are not many evidences to support the medical system prevailing during the Indus period. Notwithstanding the facts, it is impossible to believe that there was no medical system to cater to the large urban settlements and knowledge of elaborate town planning.

The ancient system of medicine finds more graphic details in the Vedic civilization that flourished in the Gangetic plains from 1000 BC onwards.  The earliest treatise Rig Veda mentions that Dhanvantari 17th incarnation of Lord Vishnu was worshipped as God of medicine. It was also regarded as the source of Ayurveda.  The other reference to medical practice in Vedic age finds mention in the worship of Ashvins or Ashwini Kumaras, the twin gods that averted misfortune and sickness. They are considered as the doctors of gods and devas of Ayurvedic medicine.