Is Ayurveda going global?

S. Pathiravitana

Advanced reports of the globalisation of Ayurveda say that those who have succumbed are people like Cherie Blair, the wife of the ex-Premier Tony Blair, who was also at one time reported to be toying with the idea of sporting an occasional saree, the ubiquitous Madonna and several top-flight models like Naomi Campbell; mostly for such things like moisturisers, aids for soft skin etc.

Such is the pull of Ayurveda for the beauticians that the world herbal market, it is said, is now worth something like a 120 billion dollars US, to which Ayurveda contributes 60 billion.

There are also those who see in it a spiritual dimension being introduced into the treatment of ailments with the body-mind relationship playing an important part. Or as the Buddha said about the role of the mind, it is the chief, the forerunner and manomaya (mind-made) is all.

At the moment, however, it is massage that is catching the attention of some people in the West. The tourists who come East, go to places like Kerala in India and to some extent to Sri Lanka where Ayurveda is now a five-star hotel facility, projected to meet tourists demands.

But, strictly speaking, I understand that massage is not in the texts of Charaka and Sushrutha. What is found there is the application or rubbing of oil and that is the real Ayurveda. The massage is a mod diversion in its true sense, which is no doubt pleasurable, but the relief that one can gets from the application of oil is remarkable for its almost instantaneous results.

Not so long ago, anyway, Ayurveda was a pariah word that was hardly ever mentioned with any approval as such in the local English speaking press. I remember the time when SWRD emerged champion, leading the pancha maha bala vegaya into victory in 1956, veda took second place in that five-grouped body.

And how the Anglicised press went into jeers over the triumph of the veda mahattayas! Aubrey Collette, the cartoonist of the day, was highly tickled in particular by the serious attention being paid to the Ayurvedic physicians, so much so he often used to picture them as Ayur-Veddahs.

But he needn’t have feared the victory of the native physicians because Ayurveda still remains a subject to which nearly every government pays only lip service. Not even the global demand for Ayurveda has stirred the authorities so far to put their best foot forward.

Nonetheless our TV channels have rallied round to give the deshiya medical treatment quite a big hand. Nearly all the stations have some programme or the other where listeners are invited to pose questions to the vedamahattayas speaking on illnesses and their methods of treatment.

I have been watching a program called osu asapuva, osu meaning medicine asapuva in its literal sense a hermitage. But here it is understood to be a place you can go to for consultations. One day an ayurvedic physician was talking about the skin conditions of infants and remarking that most of those ailments are due to infants not being given a sip or two of water now and then.

He said that the allopaths or Western-educated medical men have discouraged infants being fed water saying that all the water an infant needs is supplied by the milk it takes. He said he would challenge any allopath to contest what he recommends. And to my surprise an allopathic doctor did take up the challenge.

I thought that this was a historic moment, for as far as I can remember these two disciplines have, to our great loss, never been on talking terms. What had been decided apparently was to ignore whatever that was said by the native school of physicians. And no allopath would want to contest any of them either.

Ignoring, they thought was the doctor’s best defence. Anyway, all credit to this allopathic physician. He introduced himself giving his qualifications and said that the prohibition was mainly because mothers were not always ready to sterilise the utensils that were used to feed water.

This, apparently, was the main disagreement about feeding water to infants. I am not sure whether he contested the Ayurvedic physician’s statement that water improved the complexion of the infant.

I had a personal experience once of how obtuse and ironical some Western medical practitioner can become when told of how a slipped disc was cured by a kadun bindum vedamahattaya. This happened to my wife when she reached for something on the top of a cupboard and then she heard something go snap at her back. She was in pain and I helped her into a chair to be more comfortable.

I quickly rang up our family doctor, who was more a personal friend, and told him of the accident. He drove home immediately, took one look at the patient and said, “That means plaster of paris and a month in hospital.” My wife had just given birth and was nursing an infant. She couldn’t think of being in hospital and leaving her infant helpless.

It was then that I thought of getting the help of a kadun bidum vadamattaya. He quickly arrived and while inquiring about her accident he asked her to indicate the spot where the pain was when he moved his finger down her spine.

As it touched the injured spot she perked up and then the vedamahattaya quite deftly pushed the awkward disc back into place. He recommended the application of a medicinal oil and before the week was out my wife was back at work.

Years later when she had to consult an orthopaedist for some trouble in her knee she told him the story of the slipped disc and how it was set right by a vedamahattaya. The orthopaedist who was listening to the story said with considerable irony, “Tell me his name. I can send him all my patients.”

People in England too, have their kadum bindum vedamahattayas who were once known as bonesetters. Here is a brief history of how this art flourished in Britain and the States and to where it has risen today. “...the earliest medical practice,” says Brian Inglis in his brilliantly written book Fringe Medicine, “was probably bonesetting.

Since humans began to walk on two legs they have always been particularly susceptible to strains and sprains and dislocations, and in time, individuals emerged who happened to have the knack of putting things to right again - a knack which in time developed into a craft, often handed down from father to son...it was out of the bonesetters’ technique that the new system of medicines, osteopathy and chiropractic, (still frowned on by the medical establishment) emerged. “ Today the bonesetter’s art fetches very high stakes in America.

As Inglis points out, Hollywood in particular has had many stars that could be pointed out as walking memorials to successful (bone) manipulations. Film companies and Baseball League teams (in a hurry to get their injured stars back at play) have begun to appoint a consultant manipulator as a matter of course.

I am sure we can easily find among our people excellent bonesetters or kadum bindum veda mahattayas or if you don’t like that name osteopaths who could put back the springs into the shoulders of Sanath Jayasuriya and make supple the stiff back of a Marvan. Or still better have a bone manipulator on the permanent staff of the SLC.

What I was really driving at when I began this article was that the Mahinda Chintanaya should try to encourage this dialogue between the different medical treatments in this country.

Something on those lines was a Panel Discussion held a few years back in Chennai on the Scientific basis of the Indian systems of medicine, [yes, and it was proved scientific] by The Hindu paper publishers in Chennai, who probably organised the symposium. Among the doctors participating was Dr. Uma Krishnaswamy, surgeon, of the Apollo Hospital in Chennai.

Our medical bill can be halved if we educate our people how in every way both our health and country could gain by seeking Ayurvedic help.

The gama neguma programme could include the cultivation of medicinal herbs, which are often found as weeds like kuppameniya, either as a home garden product or as an osu uyana, a larger version of the home garden. There is now a very interesting home garden programme conducted by either Rupavahini or ITN. I am looking forward to see one on medicinal home gardens or dialogues between allopaths and traditional healers.