Ayurveda
: Ancient Heritage in the Age of Globalisation
63
Indian medicine
, has also taken note of relationship
between ancient Chinese and Indian views on longevity
(1966). Two good papers by Mahdihassan cover useful
topics on Triphala and its Arabic and Chinese synonyms
(1978) and on Tridosha doctrine and the constituents of
Chinese humorheology (1984). A successful paper on the
historical relationship between the Indian and the Chinese
medicines is the one written by Unschuld (1979). He
dwells at length upon how both Buddhism and with it the
Indian medicine spread in China with the decline of the
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220) (p.33). In comparison to its
Chinese counterpart, Ayurveda was closer to the Tibetan
system. Kanzang’s monograph (1973) narrates how
Tibetan kings sent their physicians to learnmedicine from
India. Similarly, Dash (1976) reports on the contribution
of
Yoga Shataka
, an Indian text of the 4
th
century AD to the
development of Tibetanmedicine and psychiatry. It would
have been very interesting to read the spread to Ayurveda
in the Southeast Asian countries in which Indian cultural
elements were noticeably present. It may be noted that
the epigraphic records of Jayavarman VII (1181-1281)
testify to the establishment of Ayurvedic hospitals in
Cambodia. Ayurvedic topics have been reflected in the
ancient Indo-Javanese literature. But historiography of
Ayurveda or ancient Indian medicine perhaps still awaits
serious independent studies in the field.
