Seminar Āyurveda in Post-Classical and Pre-Colonial India
On Thursday 9 july a one-day seminar will be organized by the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) in co-operation with the équipe de recherche Mondes Iranien et Indien (Paris) and the Scaliger Institute on Āyurveda in Post Classical and Pre Colonial India.
- Āyurveda
- Āyurveda is the classical medical system of South Asia. It was codified in the first few centuries BCE, and is still – in modified form – formally and financially supported by the Government of India through the ministry of health. It is also important in Sri Lanka and other parts of South and South East Asia.
The cohesion and vitality of traditional Āyurveda for over more than two millennia are testified to by the careful transmission of a limited number of classical texts (a ‘canon’), side by side with the creative production of new texts which acknowledge and confirm – occasionally confirm by challenging – the classical status of the canon. The three major classical texts, the latest of which, Vāgbhata’s Astāngahrdaya, has been dated to the early seventh century, have been edited in a preliminary way, but so far not critically; translations and studies are therefore also only preliminary. The later phases of this knowledge system also require, no less urgently, close study in the first place because the classical canon is transmitted and even fashioned by processes taking place in later periods, and, second, because these relatively little studied later phases of the knowledge systems prepare the stage for the momentous transitions in cultural and intellectual life – including in Āyurveda – that set in when the Indian subcontinent is overtaken by colonial powers, from end 18th till early 19th century onwards.
As it was pointed out by Dominik Wujastyk (2003 and 2004), the recent History of Indian Medical Literature of Jan Meulenbeld (1999-2002, esp. vols. 2 and 3) constitutes an essential new tool of research in the domain of the “thousands of Sanskrit medical works from 600 up to the present, laying bare for the first time the sheer volume and diversity of the scientific production of the post-classical period.”
- Programme
- 9 July 2009 09.00 - 18.00 hrs
Venue: Gravensteen, Room 111, Pieterskerkhof 6, 2311SR Leiden
Hosted by the International Institute for Asian Studies, co-organized and co-sponsored by the Research Unit UMR 7528 Mondes Iranien & Indien (Paris) and the Scaliger Institute (Leiden).
Convenors: Prof. Dr. Jan E.M. Houben (Paris/Leiden) and Dr. Dominik Wujastyk (Leiden)
Ayurveda, the classical medical system of South Asia, was codified in the first few centuries BCE, and is even today - in modified form - formally and financially supported by the Government of India through the Ministry of Health. This symposium addresses the dynamic interactions between texts, and between texts and practices according to available sources, in the little-studied period of post-classical and pre-colonial India when Ayurveda interacted with other medical systems such as Unani.
Topics include: Post-classical traditions of medical debate and argumentation. Relative chronologies in alchemical and medical literature. Indo-Persian sources on post-classical Indian medicine. Irrational elements in a rational system for healing.
Speakers: G. Jan Meulenbeld (Groningen) – Dominik Wujastyk (Leiden) – Kenneth Zysk (Copenhagen) – Tsutomu Yamashita (Kyoto) – Fabrizio Speziale (Rome/Paris) – Philipp Maas (Vienna) – Oliver Hellwig (Berlin) – Jan Houben (Paris/Leiden)
Further information and registration (obligatory): a.e.l.van.der.horst@iias.nl | T +31-71-5272227
