Journey

Indian medicine - Āyurveda, Siddha, Unani, Sowa Rigpa

The four classical medical traditions that are AYUSH-recognised Indian systems today, read as a single long story. Āyurveda runs from Dhanvantari and Divodāsa at Kāśī, through the compilations of Charaka, Sushruta and Vāgbhaṭa, to the Rasaśāstra alchemy associated with Nāgārjuna, to the twentieth-century institutions at Kottakkal and the apex All India Institute of Āyurveda at Delhi. Siddha, the Tamil tradition, is attributed to the sage Agastya and the Śaiva poet-physician Tirumūlar, and now runs out of the National Institute of Siddha in Chennai. Unani-Tibb arrived in Delhi with the Sultanate and found its modern home in the Sharīf Khān family of Hakim Ajmal Khan, Jamia Hamdard, and the Unani institutions at Hyderabad. Sowa Rigpa, Tibetan medicine, re-established itself at Men-Tsee-Khang in Dharamshala after 1961 and was recognised as the sixth AYUSH system in 2010.

Follow this journey on the map →

Āyurveda, Siddha, Unani and Sowa Rigpa across their classical sources, their alchemy, their teachers, and their modern institutions.

Stops (21)

Dhanvantari · Dhanvantari - the divine physician
Dhanvantari, physician of the devas in the Puranas, said to have emerged from the churning of the ocean bearing the pot of amṛta. The Agni, Garuḍa and Harivaṃśa Purāṇas name him as the first teacher of Āyurveda, with Divodāsa the king of Kāśī as his royal pupil. Worshipped on Dhanteras; deity of the National Institute of Āyurveda, Jaipur.
Kāshī / Vārānasī / Banāras · Kāśī / Vārāṇasī - Divodāsa's Āyurvedic school
Sushruta identifies himself in the Suśruta Saṃhitā as a student of Divodāsa Dhanvantari at Vārāṇasī, where Divodāsa taught the surgical branch (śalya tantra) of Āyurveda. The Dhanvantari lineage of Kāśī is the first identifiable medical school in the Sanskrit tradition. The modern Banaras Hindu University runs the oldest university Āyurveda faculty in India (1927).
Sushruta · Sushruta - the compendium of surgery
Sushruta, named as the author of the Suśruta Saṃhitā (c. 600 BCE core, with later additions). Trained at Vārāṇasī under Divodāsa Dhanvantari; the compendium contains the earliest systematic description of plastic surgery (rhinoplasty, auriculoplasty), lithotomy, cataract couching, 101 blunt and 20 sharp surgical instruments, 1,120 illnesses and 760 medicinal plants. The forehead-flap rhinoplasty was transmitted to Europe through Bhagwandas Vaidya and the Gentleman's Magazine of 1794.
Charaka · Charaka - the compendium of internal medicine
Charaka, redactor of the Charaka Saṃhitā (c. 100 BCE - 200 CE), the pre-eminent Āyurvedic text on kāyacikitsā (internal medicine). The text codifies the tridoṣa theory (vāta, pitta, kapha), the eight branches (aṣṭāṅga) of Āyurveda, the role of diet, lifestyle (dinacarya, ṛtucarya), and gives the earliest Sanskrit statement of physician's ethics ('vaidyavṛtti'). Attributed to the court of the Kuṣāṇa Kaniṣka.
Vāgbhata · Vāgbhaṭa - the Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdayam
Vāgbhaṭa (c. 600 CE), compiler of the Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdayam and the Aṣṭāṅga Saṃgraha — the two texts that condense Charaka and Sushruta into pedagogically useful form, and which became the backbone of Āyurvedic teaching from Kerala to Tibet. The Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdayam was translated into Tibetan in the 8th century, is one of the sources of the Four Tantras of Sowa Rigpa, and is still the first text an Āyurvedic student memorises.
Takshashilā / Taxila · Takṣaśīla - Ātreya's medical school
Takṣaśīla was the pre-eminent medical school of early India. The physician Ātreya Punarvasu — the teacher-figure of the Charaka Saṃhitā — is placed here in the texts, with his six pupils: Agniveśa (whose redaction became the Charaka Saṃhitā), Bhela, Jatūkarṇa, Parāśara, Hārīta and Kṣārapāṇi. The Buddha's physician Jīvaka is also said in the Vinaya Piṭaka to have been trained at Takṣaśīla for seven years before returning to serve Bimbisāra at Rājagṛha.
Nālandā mahāvihāra · Nālandā - medicine among the four Vidyās
Nālandā mahāvihāra taught Āyurveda alongside grammar, logic and metaphysics as one of the four classical vidyās. Xuanzang (7th century) and Yijing (late 7th century) both record medical lecturing there. The Sowa Rigpa transmission to Tibet in the 8th-11th centuries ran through Nālandā-trained physicians; the Bower Manuscript — the earliest surviving Sanskrit medical manuscript, found at Kucha in 1890 — is a copy of a Nālandā-type Āyurvedic compendium.
Nāgārjuna · Nāgārjuna - Rasaśāstra and mercury
Nāgārjuna, named as the author of the Rasaratnākara and the earliest systematisation of Rasaśāstra (medical alchemy) — the controlled use of mercury, sulphur, gold, silver, iron, copper and tin, reduced to bioavailable ash preparations (bhasma) and still used in classical Āyurveda and Siddha today. The attribution combines the 2nd-century Mādhyamika philosopher with later alchemical figures of the same name; the composite 'Rasa Nāgārjuna' is also credited with the Kakṣapuṭa Tantra and the first Indian pharmacopoeia of mercury.
Rasaśāstra — Indian iatro-chemistry · Rasaśāstra - Indian iatro-chemistry
Rasaśāstra, the medieval Indian science of metal and mineral preparations in medicine, systematised between the 8th and 13th centuries in a Sanskrit corpus attributed to Nāgārjuna, Govinda Bhagavatpada and Vāgbhaṭa II. The eight-stage mercury process (aṣṭādaśa saṃskāra) is the paradigm; the Siddha parpam and ceṉṉīram preparations are its Tamil analogue.
Agastya · Agastya - traditional founder of Siddha
Agastya, the short Vedic ṛṣi of the Rig Veda and the Puranas, credited by the Siddha tradition of Tamil medicine as its founder — the first of the eighteen Siddhars who received medical knowledge from Śiva at Mount Kailāsa and brought it south across the Vindhyas. Over 200 Tamil Siddha medical texts are attributed to him, covering herbal preparations, metal-and-mineral alchemy and the rejuvenation (kāyakalpa) therapies that distinguish Siddha from Āyurveda.
Tirumūlar · Tirumūlar - the Tirumantiram
Tirumūlar, one of the eighteen Siddhars and the sixty-three Nāyanār saints of Tamil Śaivism. His 3,000-verse Tirumantiram, composed in the Chidambaram-Tiruvāvaḍuturai belt, is the tenth Tirumurai of the Śaiva canon and is simultaneously a tantric philosophical text and a medical compendium — 108 postures, prāṇayāma, the chakras, kāyakalpa rejuvenation, and formulations later systematised in Siddha medicine.
Siddha medicine · Siddha medicine - the Tamil tradition
Siddha, the dominant indigenous medicine of Tamil-speaking regions, with the eighteen Siddhars as its traditional lineage and a far greater emphasis than Āyurveda on mineral and metal preparations (dhātu vargam) and on kāyakalpa rejuvenation. Siddha shares Āyurveda's tridoṣa framework but reads it in Tamil-Śaiva philosophical terms; its pharmacopoeia uses parpam (calcined mineral powders), ceṉṉīram (mineral oxides), kuḻampu (herbo-mineral pastes) and mezhugu (medicated waxes).
National Institute of Siddha, Chennai · National Institute of Siddha, Chennai
The apex Siddha teaching institution at Tambaram Sanatorium, Chennai, inaugurated in 2005. 200-bed hospital, MD-Siddha programmes in all six specialties, and a central Siddha Pharmacopoeial Laboratory. Siddha is one of the six AYUSH systems and the one most tightly tied to a single linguistic region.
Kottakkal · Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala - Āyurveda industrialised
Arya Vaidya Sala at Kottakkal in Malappuram district, Kerala, founded in 1902 by P.S. Varier as a charitable Āyurvedic hospital-pharmacy. It is the single largest producer of classical Āyurvedic medicines in India, with factory-scale manufacture of 500+ formulations, a 220-bed hospital, an Āyurveda college, and research publications in botany and pharmacology. The 'Kottakkal' name became synonymous in Kerala with authenticated classical pharmacy.
All India Institute of Ayurveda, New Delhi · All India Institute of Āyurveda, New Delhi
The apex Āyurveda institution at Sarita Vihar, New Delhi, inaugurated 17 October 2017 under the Ministry of AYUSH — the parallel for Āyurveda of what AIIMS is for allopathic medicine. Deemed-to-be University; 200-bed hospital; postgraduate and PhD programmes in all eight branches of classical Āyurveda; Centres of Excellence for Yoga and Pañcakarma; houses the WHO Collaborating Centre for Traditional Medicine.
Men-Tsee-Khang, Dharamshala · Men-Tsee-Khang, Dharamshala - Sowa Rigpa
The Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute at Gangchen Kyishong, Dharamshala, re-founded by the 14th Dalai Lama in 1961 in exile from the 1916 Lhasa institute. It is the global centre for Sowa Rigpa, Tibetan medicine recognised as the sixth AYUSH system in 2010. Seven-year amchi training; 54 branch clinics across India; manufactures the classical Tibetan compound medicines based on the Four Tantras (rGyud bzhi), which drew in turn on the Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdayam of Vāgbhaṭa.
Hakim Ajmal Khan · Hakim Ajmal Khan - Unani and nationalism
Hakim Ajmal Khan (1868-1927) of the Sharīf Khān family of Delhi hakīms, the most prominent twentieth-century exponent of Unani-Tibb. Founder of the Āyurvedic and Unani Tibbia College at Karol Bagh (1916), of the Hindustāni Dawākhāna (1906, later Hamdard), and of the Hamdard National Foundation. President of the Indian National Congress (1921) and co-founder of Jamia Millia Islamia. His research with Dr Salimuzzaman Siddiqui on Rauwolfia serpentina produced the first chemically isolated anti-hypertensive, later marketed as reserpine.
Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi · Jamia Hamdard - Unani teaching, Delhi
Jamia Hamdard at Tughlaqabad, grown out of the Hamdard Dawakhana founded by Hakim Hafiz Abdul Majeed in 1906 and expanded by his son Hakim Abdul Hameed. One of India's two leading Unani teaching institutions. Houses the School of Unani Medical Education and Research, the Majeedia Hospital, the Bait-ul-Hikmat library of Unani manuscripts, and the Ghalib Academy; deemed university 1989. Hamdard's flagship product Rooh Afza, invented at the Dawakhana in 1907, is sold across South Asia.
Unani institutions, Hyderabad · Hyderabad - Unani institutions
The Nizāmia Tibbi College (1938) and the Government Nizamia General Hospital on Charminar Road, Hyderabad, together form the oldest continuous teaching-and-practice complex for Unani-Tibb in India. The Āsafiya branch of Unani that developed at Hyderabad under Nizam patronage specialised in the ilāj-bil-tadbīr regimen (regimenal therapies — venesection, cupping, massage, exercise) and in the preparation of mufradāt (single-drug compounds) and murakkabāt (compound formulations) from the Qarābādin-i-Qādirī.
Hidaklon — Meitei materia medica · Hidaklon — Meitei materia medica
Hidaklon is the Meitei science of medicine and healing, documented in Puya manuscripts of the Meitei kingdom and transmitted within hereditary Maiba and Maibi practitioner families. The system draws on an unusually plant-rich pharmacopoeia of the Imphal valley and Barak-Chindwin biome (over 400 identified medicinal species), uses mineral and animal preparations, and reads human health against a cosmology of eight Umang-Lai forest deities. Manipur regulates it through the state AYUSH directorate.
Maibaron — Meitei therapeutic practice · Maibaron — the Maiba and Maibi therapeutic craft
Maibaron (also Maibarol) is the Meitei art and science of therapeutic practice — the lived craft that applies the materia medica of Hidaklon. It combines herbal medicine, pulse diagnosis (Nādi), spiritual ritual, bone-setting, and the earlier crude surgical techniques of Meitei civilisation. Practitioners are the Maiba (male) and Maibi (female); the Maibi are also the ritual mediums of the Lai Haraoba festival, which places Meitei medicine inside a continuous priestly and healing tradition.

Sources

Wikipedia