Roadmap for Ayurveda Education in Modern India

Abstract

The roadmap for Ayurveda education in modern India is a complex exercise. It cannot be treated as a de novo project because Ayurveda education has been imparted from 1500 BCE to this date. The amazing fact related to its long history is that the foundational texts of Ayurveda like Charaka and Sushruta Samhita have remained unchanged across more than 3500 years. Despite its antiquity, the foundational texts contain principles and operational frameworks to solve contemporary medical problems in dynamic and evolving epidemiological contexts. There is historical documentation that shows that Ayurveda spread to Persia, Greece, and to countries in Asia since fifth century BCE. However, the global influence of Ayurveda in the West and East has not yet been introduced in scholarship on history of medicine. This article points out that in order to understand educational processes, it is the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of knowledge and not only goals and pedagogy that determine the uniqueness, commonality or differences in the analysis of education. In the twentieth century, under the powerful influence of the western scheme of higher education in India, the Ayurvedic leadership, perhaps in a temporary loss of self confidence, thought it prudent to adopt and copy the educational design of western biomedical education, in order to establish parity with the mainstream.