While it is impossible to discuss or even summarise the diagnostic paradigms and extensive and unique pharmacopoeia of Ayurveda in a single article, what is certainly interesting and accessible to all students of medicine – indeed, even to laypersons – is a summary of the philosophy of Ayurveda, which remains cogent and relevant to our life today.

Fortunately, we now possess the life’s labour of Dr Priyavrat Sharma, former Director of the Postgraduate Institute of Indian Medicine, BHU who has brought out a revised, critical, annotated edition of the Sanskrit text with a fluent English translation, several decades in preparation, now readily available in online stores, and as a free download on several sites.

One reason for this is the lack of a clear and authoritative version of the Charaka Samhita, the foundational textbook of Ayurveda. Almost 200 years later there remains considerable interest in Ayurveda and its philosophy of medicine, although no MBBS curriculum medical school teaches it in detail. All the subsequent medical colleges in the Madras and Bombay Presidencies followed suit.Īyurveda, though, and its teaching never went away. Should it be the Indian systems of medicine then current – Ayurveda or Unani – or should the students be taught the Western medical education system? The authority of Pandit Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar – a scholar of Ayurveda if not an actual practitioner – was influential in deciding that Western medicine was the way forward and the teaching of Western medicine triumphed. When the British-era Government of Bengal decided to set up the first medical college in Asia in Calcutta in the 1830s, there was intense debate among the Indian educated class about what the curriculum to be taught to the future students should be. ISL: Chhetri’s cheeky goal, KBFC’s crazy walkout – how an incredible night unfolded in Bengaluru.‘Writing is a means to seek not truth, but what’s real’: Annie Ernaux, winner of 2022 Nobel Prize.How caste certificates in India make or break dreams.ICC World Test Championship standings: Australia book their place in final, India made to wait.Watch: Archaeologists discover a hidden corridor in the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.Simran interview: ‘My hard work in the South has paid off’.Why did Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata build the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay?.Watch: Singer Benny Dayal gets hit by a drone camera during live performance in Tamil Nadu.Why the BJP is struggling to expand its footprint in Meghalaya.Hindu monks calling for violence against India’s minorities are betraying their sacred vows.‘Can’t leave it to kids’: Saurabh Shukla and Johny Lever recreate scene from ‘Pathaan’.Why thousands of people who thought they were British could lose their citizenship.

Charaka samhita online