The Indians by Sudhir Kakar & Katharina Kakar

Author:Sudhir Kakar & Katharina Kakar
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789351183518
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

THE BODY IN HEALTH AND ILLNESS IN AYURVEDA

Ayurveda is not unique in its intimate connection with the culture and society from which it springs. Medical theories, opinions and practices in any society tell us as much about social beliefs as about the art and science of healing. For instance, expensive medical procedures after the disease has run its course, or keeping alive a person in a coma with no hope of recovery, tell us something about the high value placed on technology in addressing problems that do not have a solution, the importance of the individual vis-à-vis the community (especially if the procedures have been financially ruinous for the family), the mechanistic conceptualization of the body, and so forth. In contrast to Western medicine, which is now global, Ayurveda has been less a mirror of society’s cultural belief system than one of its chief architects. Its contribution to the shaping of Indian consciousness derives from its monopoly of the theory and practice of healing for scores of centuries till the nineteenth century, when this monopoly was challenged by Western medicine.

Not that Ayurveda remained in a mythically pure state till the colonial period. There have always been local deviations from the canonical texts, reflecting the influence of folk medical practices and, from the thirteenth century onwards, the impact of Islamic Unani medicine. Western, allopathic medicine, however, could not be easily accommodated in the Ayurvedic paradigm. Its challenge gave rise to modern Ayurveda, professionalized and institutionalized on the model of Western medicine and concerned with providing ‘scientific’ evidence for the efficacy of its healing methods and medicines. In recent decades, there has been a commercialization and standardization of Ayurvedic therapy, especially in its drugs for an urban middle class, and a transnational Ayurveda has emerged, one that has adapted parts of the traditional system, mainly pleasurable herbal oil massages and dietary advice, for an international clientele.

These modern developments go against the essence of classical Ayurveda and are vigorously resisted by some of the more traditional doctors. For them the storehouse of true knowledge is located in a remote golden past and only the ancient texts can be regarded as true teachers of this art and science of healing. It is precisely Ayurveda’s ‘unchanging’ character, with the weight and authority of the past behind it, which testifies to its ‘truth’ and gives Ayurveda its legitimacy in Indian eyes. For Ayurvedic doctors, changing Western theories of disease—from disease as a consequence of faulty distribution of bodily fluids to the theory of autointoxication, from the concept of focal infection to the bacterial and viral origins of diseases—are then a search for the truth that Ayurveda has already discovered. The application of the standard criteria of science (for example, experimentation, falsification, quantification, concepts of proof other than authority) are thus irrelevant to Ayurveda since it operates with a model of a person quite different from one that underlies Western medicine.

The cornerstone of the Ayurvedic system are the pancha-bhuta—earth, fire, wind, water and ether—the ‘five root forms of matter’, the basic constitutive elements of the universe.

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