88 chapter
stresses shaped by local and translocal infl uences from Persian Gulf migration
to marriage aspirations to trying to get ahead in school help precipitate the
problems that led people to these healing centers.
Notes
- Bhattacharyya (1986), Kakar (1982: 251).
- Th e dates of these texts are diffi cult to establish precisely. G. Jan Meulenbeld
(1999) off ers entire chapters that identify the dates of the Caraka Samhitā and
Suśruta Samhitā, and cites dozens of studies that place these works in this broad
range (105–115, 333–357). Th e Caraka Samhitā was originally composed by
Agniveśa, possibly as early as 1000 B.C.E. Later, according to the editors of a
recent edition of the text, “it was redacted by Caraka” and hundreds of years
after that “supplemented by Drdhabala” (Caraka Samhitā 1998: vi). Zimmermann
(1987) dates the Caraka Samhitā and Suśruta Samhitā as being “stabilized in the
present form at the beginning of the Christian era” (xiii). - For a more thorough introduction to these schools of thought, see Radhakrishnan
and Moore’s compilation of Indian philosophy (1957). - Nyāya Sutra Book 1, Ch. 1 in Radhakrishnan and Moore (1957: 359). Parentheses
indicate parenthetical comments in the original texts, and brackets, “[ ],” indicate
clarifi cations inserted by Radhakrishnan and Moore. - My use of terminology regarding “knowing” and “believing” here and elsewhere
responds to Byron Good’s observation that medical anthropologists tend to use the
term “know” to depict understandings of health they are most familiar with and refer
to “beliefs” when describing less familiar medical perspectives (1994: 37–47). - See Zimmermann (1987) regarding the role of dosas in the natural environment.
- Dash and Junius (1983: 30).
- Obeyesekere (1992) demonstrates how physicians consult their understanding of
ayurvedic theoretical principles when they create medicines in this manner. - Kakar (1982: 244–245). Obeyesekere (1982) and Pfl eiderer (1983) off er explan-
ations of the theory of psychopathology in ayurveda that are similar to that of
Kakar. Weiss (1986) provides further detail on approaches to psychopathology
in ayurvedic texts, and Weiss et al. (1986, 1988) have investigated perceptions of
health and illness among psychiatric patients who patronize ayurveda. Nichter
(1981) shows how ayurveda is used in negotiating psychosocial distress, wherein
patients will, for example, visit an ayurvedic physician complaining of sleepless-
ness or lack of appetite as a way of getting attention or defl ecting blame in inter-
personal confl icts. - Th e architecture of the old facility made it so that one ward had to be much
smaller than the other, and the hospital directors decided to put the male ward
in the larger section. In the new facility, the male and female wards are more
equitable in size, and a greater number of women are treated than were before. - A researcher at the Ayurveda College Pharmocognosy Research Centre in
Trivandrum explained that the cost of ayurvedic medicines is rising because land
that is needed to grow plants that are used for ayurvedic medicines is dwindling
due to urbanization and industrialization.