Ayurveda
: Ancient Heritage in the Age of Globalisation
61
Jaina Ayurveda collects useful materials from
Agama
literature and contains valuable narrative of different
magical practitioners and theories who professed Jaina
religion. Mention here may also be made to the
report of Jain (1978) on the medical texts authored by the
Jainist writers.
DVSR Reddy adopted a social and historical
approach. His studies on health and medicine during
the Buddhist times (1962) and the Mauryan age (1966)
provide new perspectives to the historiography of
medicine. The latter is largely based on the
Arthashastra
.
But both the monographs are very small. Another article
byReddy(1977)onAyurvedicmaterial inthe
Divyavadana
,
a Buddhist text is, however, not a remarkable one. Though
Mitra (1985) has produced an independent book on
Ayurvedic material in Buddhist literature, he could not
further the domain already covered by Reddy. In fact, the
work is no less concerned with non-Buddhist literature.
This is the case also with the small jacket of Haldar (1977)
who intended to report on medical science in Pali
literature. While Mitra arranges Ayurvedic materials
under traditional eight parts of the Ayureda, Haldar’s
book seems to be more interested in such subjects as
medicine and surgery inPali literature, methodof abortion
and so on. Mitra’s interest in scientific aspect of Ayurveda
or ancient Indian medicine is also evident from his paper
