Ayurveda
: Ancient Heritage in the Age of Globalisation
55
referred to in the ancient text and discusses its date. The
same group excepting Roy has also produced a similarly
useful study on the ancient
Caraka Samhita
(1965).
Another series dealing with Ayurveda or ancient
Indian medicine has been prepared by Jaggi. Basically a
chest-specialist from Delhi, he has produced many a work
on other sciences in Indian history as well. Though his
works
Yogic and Tantric Medicine
(1973a) and
Folk
Medicine
(1973b) are valuable since they cover new
subjects, his
Indian System of Medicine
(1973) reflects a
poor reading. It describes in some detail the medical
education, personal health, anatomy, physiology as well
as classification, diagnosis and prognosis of diseases in
the Ayurveda. The same approach has been used several
times already and in past. It is hardly enough to serve up
verbatim extracts from the ancient Ayurvedic texts,
without adding onto any material respecting the problem
of chronology of the treatises. The major fault of this
volume is that it has nothing new to say. It is meant more
for a widely-read amateur and hence lacks original efforts
which are much wanted in this area of academics.
Among the books limited to the scientific narrative
of Ayurveda without any discussion on its relations with
the history of the country in general, may be noted the
monographs of Hoernle (1907) on osteology in ancient
India, of Gupta (1930) on the general principles of
