A 'pudiya' from the Annals of the history of Medicine

A 'pudiya' from the Annals of the history of Medicine!.

Gurukul Kangri and Rishikul in Haridwar were Ancient Ayurvedic Colleges, with herbal gardens for research and a sprawling campus. Mellow temple-like architecture created a hallowed atmosphere. Many years later, when I was browsing through the old ornate libraries in Oxford University, I was reminded of the labyrinth old library that I had been recently going through in Gurukul Kangri, Haridwar.  

Ayurveda literally means 'knowledge of life'. It was regarded as the fifth Veda 'Panchamaveda'. There still is a keen regret for lost libraries in universities like Nalanda and Takshashila which in ancient times had housed texts like Atharvaveda, which abounds in hymns related to health and disease; Charaka Samhita which is derived from Atharveda, is one of the foundational texts of Ayurveda, far older than modern Western medicine and is still referred to by modern Ayurvedacharyas. Modern Ayurveda has a strong base in some of these treatises along with Sushrut Samhita, Ashtanga Sangraha and Ashtanga Hridayam of Vagbhatta.

Since Nalanda was visited by students from the world, similar Ayurvedic concepts are found in Chinese, Tibetan, Korean and other medicine. Ashtanga Hridaya was incorporated in Tibetan medicine. In Goa,  a physician practicing Ayurveda,  Garcia de Orta, 16th century, wrote  a medical treatise which was heavily borrowed upon by European physicians. Commentaries from Sushruta Samhita derived by Nagarjuna, also highly expanded the field of surgery. Charaka and Sushrut Samhitas were translated into Arabic  and is one of the basis of Yunani medicine. 

Chanakya had been a student of Takshashila University and author of the famous Arthashastra; Vishnu Sharma, the author of Panchatantra tales and Charaka too. Jivaka popularised the Naadi Pariksha or Divining of Ailments from pulse reading. Records are found stating Jivaka as the physician of Lord Buddha. 

In Takshashila, courses were taught to discover hidden treasures and decoding ancient knowledge. One of the ancient techniques taught in the universities and also the Gurukulams, far older than these universities, was Trikaal Gyaan - knowledge of Past, Present and Future. This was an actual attunement in which students downloaded lost information from the astral world or the Akaashik records, and wrote it down in Taadpatra or leaves, along with some thumb impressions of people with a frequency that matched the downloaded information. On the upside, we still have preserved libraries of Nadi Vigyaan, rows of palm leaf scripts as old as time. Chidambaram and Padmanabhaswamy, temples in the South for example, house ancient libraries with stacks of such palm leaves created by the gurukuls of those times. 

In The Bhrigu Samhita or the Lal Kitaab in the North, a thumb imprint brings out your palm leaf script (not all people find, possibly, they are new souls or transmigrated from other worlds) but for those whose Karmabhoomi has been this earth for centuries, they can get the path of their soul mapped out since this cycle of yugas. Such are the speculations. 

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravishankar has revived a technique akin to the Trikaal Gyaan in current times. One of these is called ‘The Intuition Process’ or ‘Pragnya Yoga’. Many children from all over the world, under 18, have taken this learning process and if regular with practice, have succeeded in downloading and writing down certain lost knowledge, I myself have seen very young children of seven or eight years writing in the Brahmi script after being blindfolded.  

In that chrysalis of acquired knowledge, the mellowed books breathed centuries of healing and whispered of times when physicians diagnosed by look alone or pulse reading and ….libraries such as in Gurukul Kangri still invite the medical intellectuals to study about some of these real fathers of medicine.