three therapies of south india 45
Western-style scientifi c and allopathic terms and asserted that the two medical
systems are not radically diff erent from one another. Others maintain that
ayurveda is distinct, and they are critical of the practice of continually updat-
ing research and treatment methods. Th ey believe that such attempts to update
ayurveda simply imitate the epistemology and methods of allopathy, which
is constantly abandoning earlier techniques and concepts, indicating, in their
eyes, a lack of reliable, tried-and-true practices.
Leslie (1992) and Langford (2002) have likewise observed a distinction
between syncretists and purists in ayurveda. Leslie (1992) suggested that syn-
cretism among medical systems is a feature of South Asian cultures, yet pur-
ists in India advocate through professional organizations that ayurveda should
remain distinct. Th e purist position is partly a reaction to biomedicine shaped
in the context of postcolonial identity struggles that emerge with developmen-
talist discourses. In fact, the emphasis on gentle and non-abrasive medical pro-
cedures that will be considered in Chapter 5 may have developed in response
to allopathic practitioners’ control over performing more invasive, violent pro-
cedures (such as surgery) that were once also the province of ayurvedic phys-
icians (Zimmermann 1992). Langford (2002) explains that the term “ayurveda”
designates a diversity of practices. Ayurveda is taught in colleges that resemble
biomedical schools in their institutional structure, while physicians who work
and teach in these institutions, claiming an authoritative text-based ayurvedic
knowledge, are haunted by the claims to authenticity of vaidyans (a more “trad-
itional” term for an ayurvedic practitioner) who have been trained outside of
academic institutions through the guru-disciple method (188–230).
Th e awareness of colonial and postcolonial processes of imitation, resistance
and competition can make a “real” ayurveda appear elusive or highly contingent.
It is important to recognize that the diversity of styles and claims to authenti-
city demonstrate that ayurveda is not a uniform or timeless system. However,
it is possible to identify features of ayurvedic medical practice, or at least of
contemporary ayurvedic practices. Th e canonization of key texts indicates some
degree of character or stability or at least an axis of issues that re-emerge in
ayurveda, even if these are reinterpreted in diff erent periods. Moreover, one can
speak of an ayurvedic system in terms of how it diverges from, and parallels,
other healing systems such as allopathy or religious therapies. Trying to draw
the boundaries around “ayurveda” as a medical system is an elusive process that
is subject on the one hand to essentialization and reifi cation and on the other
hand to a process of deconstruction that can make it appear that ayurveda has
no defi nable characteristics. My solution to this dilemma in the present work
is to qualify my description of features of ayurvedic ideals and practices by
emphasizing that what I describe are dimensions of contemporary ayurvedic