44 chapter
for specifi c affl ictions, and provide epistemological and practical guidelines
for the practice of medicine. Ayurvedic physicians and educators today fre-
quently cite these samhitās as they explain the uses of particular treatments or
discuss a case with a colleague. Th ere is even some competitiveness in citing
classic texts among specialists in ayurveda. A physician’s ability to quote by
memory extensive passages from classic texts in the original Sanskrit confers
admir ation from other physicians and students. Th e classical texts do not thor-
oughly refl ect contemporary ayurvedic practice, however, and part of the art of
ayurveda today involves reinterpreting classic texts in terms of contemporary
contexts—by explaining for example that certain regimens described in a clas-
sic text might not be feasible given people’s contemporary lifestyles or simp ly
observing that a certain ingredient is substituted in a particular medicine
because the ingredient mentioned in the classic text is no longer available.
Ayurvedic concepts and practices are also infl uenced by four schools of phil-
osophy that were founded in the second and third centuries: Nyāya, Vaiśesika,
Sāmkhya, and Yoga. Th ese schools engage issues of epistemology, knowledge
about the workings of the physical world, explanations of the origin of the
universe, characteristics of the body, mind and consciousness and methods of
logic al reasoning.^3 Nyāya is a system of thought, logic and observation that
is not unlike the epistemology that underlies Western scientifi c method. It
is positivistic and makes claims such as, “Perception, inference, comparison
and word (verbal testimony)—these are the means of right knowledge,” and,
“Perception is that knowledge which arises from the contact of a sense with
its object, and which is determinate [well-defi ned], unnameable [not express-
ible in words], and non-erratic [unerring].”^4 Th e discourse of the Nyāya
Sutras resembles Karl Popper’s struggles to defi ne the nature of positivism
and objective perception, but Nyāya often transcends the Western, academic
religious-secular dichotomy by describing things such as the character of the
soul or true self through syllogisms and other positivistic arguments.
Ayurveda is also informed by recent books, journals and research papers.
Although Caraka and Suśruta are still routinely invoked, ayurvedic special-
ists engage in ongoing research and are infl uenced by practices of allopathic
medicine, features of which are embraced or opposed by various ayurvedic
practitioners. For their thesis requirements, students at the Ayurveda College
in Trivandrum conduct clinical studies of new ayurvedic methods of treatment
and attempt to clarify and test classic concepts through contemporary sci-
entifi c research methods (that is, Western/international/biomedical methods,
using statistical analyses and control groups) while Aryavaidyan and other
journals publish the results of contemporary clinical research in ayurveda.
Some ayurvedic physicians explained to me that ayurveda is translatable to