Ayurveda
: Ancient Heritage in the Age of Globalisation
91
ayurveda and the concept of mind, mental diseases and
healing. In the 2
nd
week of September, there was a group
of botany students from a leading college of south India
with whom I talked about the botanical perspective of
Ayurveda. As Amarjiva ji said, on September 9-10, there is
a conference onAyurveda andYoga for Cancer. There I will
be deliberating upon on the Ayurvedic understanding and
management of cancer. Here I have been asked to speak
on the holistic perspective of Ayurveda. So it means that
Ayurveda is a sciencewhich couldbe looked fromdifferent
perspectives as a seeker is interested in. There is saying
in one of the classical texts that
“yadihasti tadanyatra
yannehasti na tatkvachit”
. It means that:
whatever you see
in the classical treatises of Ayurveda will be seen outside in
theworldandwhatever that is not herewill not be seen there
also
. It may sound to be slightly hyperbolic. But there are
components in the system which you can easily associate
to and one of this was this thing which I saw three years
back on my trip to China, in the Suvarnabhumi airport.
The samudra manthan or the churning of the milky ocean
-this is perhaps the way you can easily connect to one of
the core concepts of Ayurveda - and that is the concept of
Dhanvantari. This is a typical Kerala mural painting and
and hope it is clear. So he is considered to be the Lord
of Medicine and he is also a proponent of the school of
surgery in Ayurveda. Take it as a symbol. On his right
