The Cultural Definition of Illness in Village India

Abstract

In March, 1947, the Department of Health of the Government of India named a committee to consider measures to be taken to increase the usefulness of the indigenous systems of medicine, primarily Hindu Ayurveda and Muslim Unānī Tibbi. In 1948 this Committee on Indigenous Systems of Medicine issued a volume of explanatory appendices and a report. The principal explanation of Ayurveda in the appendices is found in a “Scientific Memorandum” compiled by a prominent member of the Committee, Dr. B. A. Pathak, the principal of Ayurvedic College, Benares Hindu University. Much of this Memorandum is devoted to a discussion of a view of disease called the tridosha or “three disorder” theory. In introducing it, the Memorandum declares:

This theory is the foundation of Ayurvedic science. Its embryological, anatomical, physiological, pathological and therapeutical conceptions rest upon this foundation. It has been the product of the genius of this country and has not been borrowed from outside. There are references to it in the Vedic literature also. The humoral theory of the Greeks was, perhaps, a bad adaptation of the Tridosha theory. Evidently it was the fruit of numerous observations and prolonged discussions spread over centuries. The human mind has been always very curious to understand the secrets of the working of the human body. There are chapters in the Charaka Samhita [an ancient religio-medical text, M. E. O.] giving glimpses of such discussions showing that several theories were put forth in the past to explain the physiological functions of the human body. By the time these Samhitas of Ayurvedic literature were composed before the beginning of the Christian era, the Tridosha theory was firmly established.