[Ayurveda & India]
Over the centuries different communities
around the world have developed their own system
to use medicinal plants. Some of the systems may
be difficult to understand but all are attempts
to cure illness and suffering and to make life more
comfortable. Aryurved or Indian system of medicines
is one such attempt to enhance quality of life.
In India the use of Medicinal herbs
is as old as 1500 BC. Underlying the medical culture
of India both folk traditions as well as codified
knowledge systems is a deep understanding of the
medicinal value of the plants starting with the
references in the Atharva Veda, we have textual
evidence of a tradition of use of medicinal plants
that is more than three thousand years old.
It is estimated that about 80,000
species of plants are utilized by the different
system of Indian medicine. The indigenous knowledge
about plants and plant products is rather detailed
and sophisticated and has evolved into a seperate
shashtra (branch of learning) itself, called Dravya
Guna Shashtra. The codified traditions have about
25,000 plant drugs formulations that have emerged
from such studies. In addition to this over 50,000
formulations are believed to be exsisting in the
folk and tribal traditions. All these point to the
deep passion for and exhaustive knowledge about
medicinal plants that have existed in the land from
time immemorial. The Vedas, epic poems contain rich
material on the Herbal lore of that time.
Around 1500 B.C., Ayurveda was
delineated into eight specific branches of medicine.
There were two main schools of Ayurveda at that
time, Atreya- the school of physicians; and Dhanvantari-
the school of surgeons. These two schools made Ayurveda
a more scientifically verifiable and classifiable
medical system. Through research and testing, they
dispelled the doubts of the more practical and scientific
minded, removing the aura of mystery that surrounded
the concept of Divine revelation. Consequently Ayurveda
grew into a respected and widely used system of
healing in India. People from numerous countries
came to Indian Ayurvedic schools to learn about
this world medicine in its completeness. Chinese,
Tibetans, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Afghanistanis,
Persians, and more traveled to learn the complete
wisdom and bring it back to their own countries.
According to the World Health Organization
(WHO) more than 1 billion people rely on herbal
medicines to some extent.. The WHO has listed 21,000
plants have reported medicinal uses around the world.
Aryurved herbs or Indian herbs have been used since
1000's of years to produce herbal remedies. Nowadays
it is a well-established fact that herbal remedies
are more suitable to human body then isolated chemical
medicines. India has a rich medicinal plant flora
of some 2500 species, of these, 2000 to 3000 at
least 150 species are used commercially on a fairly
large scale. Foreign researchers have always appreciated
the traditional Indian healers.
Moreover dividing line between
food and medicine is not clear. are Garcinia, Papaya,
Onions food or medicine ? The answer is they are
both. Garcinia helps in weight management, Papaya
helps in upset stomach, and onions are used to cure
bronchial infection.
