Pranam Long life in Ayurvedam
No one knows exactly when civilization developed in India; all dating is arbitrary until the time of Gautama Buddha (563-483 BC). The earliest culture about which we have any useful data is that of the Harappa, the Indus Valley civilization, which arose around 3,000 BC and lasted for perhaps 1,500 years. Successors to Neolithic settlements of 5,000 years previously, the Harappans built large cities, such as Mohenjo-daro, and traded with foreign lands via Lothal, their seaport. Their cities had wide, paved roads, aqueducts, public baths, and extensive drainage systems. With such attention to sanitation, they almost surely also possessed a system of medicine, though no firm evidence yet exists to support this conjecture except for the discovery in Harappan remains of substances such as deer antler and bitumen, which are used in classical Ayurveda. The Harappan civilization seems to have collapsed between 2,000 and 1,500BC. Natural disasters may have been to blame, or the Harappan downfall may have been caused by any factor but brought with them the Vedas, their ancient books of wisdom and sacrificial ritual. The Vedas took on their current form at some point during the second millennium BC, though this version, which has been carefully preserved by India’s priests, the Brahmins, is derived from much earlier versions, which are now lost. From the youngest of the Vedas, the Atharva-Veda, developed Ayurveda, probably with the help of residual Harappan knowledge. At the turn of first millennium BC the treatise now known as the Charaka Samhita, the first and still most important of all Ayurvedic texts, appeared. Although Ayurveda’s most famous surgical text, the Sushruta Samhita, was also compiled around this time, the development of surgery being spurred by the need to treat injuries sustained in warfare, the version that has come down to us dates from much later. Indian culture entered its Golden Age during this period and learning flourished. By the sixth century BC a ‘university’ had been established at Takshashila (Taxila), near what is now Rawalpindi in Pakistan. This institution apparently had no true campus but was rather a concentration of scholars and their disciples, who lived near one another to facilitate debate and the exchange of ideas. One of Takshashila’s products was Jivaka, the royal physician of King Bimbisara of Magadha (now part of the state of Bihar), who was appointed by the King to personally supervise the health of Gautama Buddha and his followers. Ayurvedic medicine was already extensively developed by the time of the Buddha, a result, at least partly, of politics. Because the health of the king was equivalent to the health of the state, the services of a royal physician were essential to the state’s political stability. The physician had to protect his royal patron from poisoning, cure him of wounds accidental and military, and ensure the regal fertility, the queen’s safe pregnancy and delivery, and the royal progeny’s healthy development. He allowed his monks almost all the therapeutic measures advised in classicalAyurveda, including surgery (except for fistula, the operation for which is often unsuccessful and which is better treated by other means).Jivaka was so famous that at one point most of the citizens of Magadha joined the Buddhist community solely to be able to avail themselves of his treatment; the Buddha consequently prohibited anyone who was ill from being accepted into the fold. Many are the stories of Jivaka’s amazing cures, and his studentship at Takshashila was apparently no less amazing. In 326 BC Alexander the Great invaded northern India. Though it is likely that Indian medical knowledge had already found its way to Greece before then, this was the first documented exposure of the two cultures to one another. Alexander was sufficiently impressed by Ayurvedic practitioners that he ordered all cases of poisoning to be treated by them alone. He carried some of these doctors away in his retinue on his departure. In the third century BC Ashoka, the emperor of most of northern India, became a convert to Buddhism. Motivated by compassion for all sentient beings, as Buddha taught, Ashoka built charitable hospitals, including specialized surgical, obstetric and mental facilities, for both humans and animals throughout his realm. Numerous rock-cut edicts around India attest to this, and to the embassies and Buddhist missionaries he sent to many neighbouring countries. These emissaries carried Indian science with them, which is probably how Ayurveda reached Sri Lanka. The Ayurveda now existing in Sri Lanka is almost identical to that in India except that it has been adapted to the requirements of the island and reflects basic Buddhist philosophies, as it might still in India had Buddhism not been exterminated there almost a thousand years ago. Medical missionary activity continued long after Ashoka, as documented by the Bower Manuscript, written in the fourth century AD and found in Central Asia, where the missionaries had carried it. It contains recipes for various medicines and a long panegyric on garlic. In the later empires of the Guptas and the Mauryas, state-employed and private practitioners seem to have coexisted, and village physicians were maintained by the government through gifts of land and payment of salary. The state also planted medicinal herb gardens, established hospitals and maternity homes, and punished quacks who tried to practice medicine without imperial permission. During this period of intellectual flowering three more famous Ayurvedic texts appeared. Ashtanga Sangraha (probably seventh century) and AshtangaHrdaya (about a century later) are both ascribed to one Vagbhata, though they were almost certainly written by two different people. These two texts are condensations of the works of Charaka and Sushruta, with some new diseases and therapies added. The eighth century also saw the appearance of the Madhava Nidana, a treatise on diagnostics. All forms of learning, set up true universities to teach Buddhism, Vedic lore and more secular subjects such as history, geography, Sanskrit literature, poetry, drama, grammar and phonetics, law, philosophy, astrology, astronomy, mathematics, commerce and even the art of war, as well as medicine. The most famous of these universities was that of Nalanda, also in Bihar, which was established during the fourth century Ad and flourished until about the twelfth century. Students came from all over the world to study at these universities. The best accounts we have of Nalanda are those of two Chinese travellers who visited India as students in the seventh century. We learn from them that only 20per cent of all applicants could pass the entrance examinations, that instruction was free to all, that senior students acted as teaching assistants and that teaching went on day and night. Some graduates elected to stay on as research scholars at Nalanda, whose campus covered half a square mile, housing as many as 10,000pupils and 1,500 teachers at a time, with numerous cooks and support staff. ‘Nalanda brothers’ even had the same kind of old-boy network that old Etonians or alumni of Harvard enjoy today. The Golden Age ended when waves of Muslim invaders inundated north-ern India between the tenth and twelfth centuries. The Muslims slaughtered the monks wholesale as infidels, destroyed the universities and burned the libraries. Those who could escape fled to Nepal and to Tibet, where Ayurveda had first penetrated in the eighth century AD. Some Ayurvedic texts are thus preserved today only in Tibetan translation. In spite of these catastrophes and of the import into India by the Muslim conquerors of their own medicine, Unani tibia, Ayurveda survived. Unani (the word means ‘Greek”) was created by Arabic physicians by combining Greek medicine with Ayurveda, which they learned from texts translated into Persian in the early years of the modern era when the Sassanian dynasty controlled part of northern India. Unani medicine is thus closely related to Ayurveda and, while India’s Muslim rulers tended to support Unani, Ayurveda also prospered. In the thirteenth or fourteenth century a new treatise on medicine, the Sharngadhara Samhita, appeared, introducing new syndromes and treatments. During the sixteenth century Akbar, the greatest Mogul emperor and a remarkably enlightened ruler, personally ordered the compilation of all Indian medical knowledge, a project that was directed by his finance minister, Raja Todar Mal. For centuries Europe had coveted Indian spices, which were used to preserve meat and to mask the taste and odour of putrefied meat. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the opening of secure trade routes to the East to ensure a steady flow of spices, a European fascination for things Indian developed. An Indian massage therapist named Sake Deen Mohammed, known as the ‘Brighton Shampooing Surgeon’ (the Hindi word for massage, champana, metamorphosed into the English word ‘shampoo’), became the toast of that resort town in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with his ‘Indinavir Bath and Art of Shampooing’. Lords and ladies flocked to him for both treatment and preventive care, and odes were written to his expertise. The Europeans brought to India syphilis, which was first described in Ayurveda in Bhavaprakasha, a sixteenth-century text, under the name of ‘the foreigners’ disease’ in honour of the Portuguese, who imported it. They also imported their own intellectual bigotry, which gradually superseded their fascination. Sir Praphulla Chandra Ray in his History of Hindu Chemistry cites an essay by a Briton in which the author endeavoured to prove that the entire Sanskrit literature as well as the Sanskrit language itself was a ‘forgery made by the crafty Brahmans on the model of Greek after Alexander’s conquest’. This deni-gration of traditional wisdom reached its zenith in 1835, when Lord Macaulay settled the controversy over whether the government should support indigenous or Western learning by ordering that European knowledge should be exclusively encouraged in all areas governed by the East India Company. Before 1835 Western physicians and their Indian counterparts exchanged knowledge; thereafter only Western medicine was recognized as legitimate, and the Eastern systems were actively discouraged. Since living traditions are lost when experts die without being able to reach others, vast quantities of indigenous expertise evaporated during the next several decades. Even during these years of persecution, however, Ayurveda generously contributed to modern medicine. During the nineteenth century the Germans translated from Sushruta’s treatise details of an operation for repair of damaged noses and ears. This operation, which now appears in modern textbooks as the pedicle graft, led to the development of plastic surgery as an independent specialty, and today Sushruta is regarded by plastic surgeons around the world as the father of their craft. Skin grafting and operations for cataract and bladder stones were still being performed by Ayurvedic surgeons in India as late as the eighteenth century. Many writers on Ayurvedic history decry the evident decline of Ayurvedic surgery after the Classical Age, often blaming the Buddhists and their doctrine of non-violence for discouraging wilful injury to the body. It is more likely, though, as Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya argues in Science and Society in AncientIndia, that it was the ritual ‘impurity’ involved in surgery, the close physical contact that a surgeon must have with blood and other bodily substances, that discouraged its practice, since the Buddha himself did not object to surgical intervention when it was necessary. With the assertion of Indian nationalism at the dawn of this century, interest in Indian art and science was reawakened and Ayurveda began a gradual renaissance. Today it is one of the six medical systems in India that are officially recognized by the government, the others being allopathy (also known as mod-ern, cosmopolitan or biomedical medicine), homeopathy, naturopathy, unani, Siddha (a variety of Ayurveda practiced by the Tamils of southern India) and yoga therapy. The practitioners of these six systems must compete for patients with each other and with a profusion of practitioners of other medical skills, including itinerant tonic sellers, pharmaceutical representatives, village curers, bone-setters, mid-wives, exorcists, sorcerers, psychics, diviners, astrologers, priests, grandmothers, wandering religious mendicants, and experts in such maladies as snakebite, hepatitis, infertility and ‘sexual weakness’. Today’s developmental planners, who often seem to be Lord Macaulay’s spiritual descendants, tend to think of traditional systems like Ayurveda as archaic and dysfunctional, and so non-progressive (all the while ignoring the clear evidence of obsolescence and dysfunction in the practice of biomedicine).Believing, as do many foreigners, that ‘traditionalism’ has kept India backward, they would prefer for most ancient traditions, including the medical ones, to disappear. Many practicing allopath’s agree, ostensibly because traditional medicine is not ‘scientific’, but practically because elimination of alternative medical systems would reduce their competition. Social scientists have noted that allopaths derive their social status less from their medical ability than from the culture of modernity and ‘progress’ that they represent; when in distress, most Indians seek out any practitioner of any system who can cure them. Ayurveda is the upaveda, or accessory Veda, to the Atharva-Veda. Though all four Vedas are collections of hymns written by seers called rishis, the Atharva-Veda differs in subject matter from the other three Vedas (the Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda and Sama-Veda); here are a few references to treatment in the other Vedas, like a charm in the Rig-Veda for chasing consumptive disease from all parts of the body, and an entire hymn in praise of medicinal herbs, invoking their healing power and comparing the physician to a warrior. The god Rudra is invoked in yet another hymn as the ablest of physicians, preparing medicine for all with his beautiful hands. One of the most famous of the Vedic hymns, the ‘Rudra Adhyaya’ of theYajur-Veda, praises Rudra as the first physician, and mentions many medicinal plants. *{A view of extracts from a book written by a British }. KR IRS 281221* On Tue, 28 Dec 2021 at 08:00, 'gopala krishnan' via iyer123 < iyer...@googlegroups.com> wrote: > *CULTURAL QA 12-2021-28* > > *BEING A COMPILATION THERE MAY BE ERRORS* > > *Q1 How many oranges can you eat daily?* > > A1 Lucia Garcia Worked at Hospitals Fri > > Oranges are cold fruits. at the same time, oranges are also known as the "good > fruit for curing diseases", which have the effects of promoting body > fluids and quenching thirst, moistening the intestines and laxative, > clearing heat and detoxification. > > If you are hot physique, in order to let the body achieve balance, you can > eat 3 to 4 oranges a day. > > But for people with cold physique, eat up to two oranges a day. > > Oranges are rich in vitamin C. A medium-sized orange weighs about 150 > grams and contains 48 mg of vitamin C. > > The daily intake of vitamin C for adults is 60 to 90 mg, with an upper > limit of 2,000 mg per day. > > Two oranges can meet the vitamin C requirement for a day. Taking more > dietary vitamin C is also harmless to the body. > > Although oranges are a bit sweet, oranges are a low-calorie fruit with low > sugar content. > > A medium-sized orange contains only 70 calories and 15 grams of sugar. Eating > oranges will not make you fat. > > It is worth mentioning that oranges have much higher vitamin C and vitamin > P content than most fruits. These two vitamins can increase the elasticity > and toughness of capillaries and reduce blood cholesterol levels. > > Therefore, regular consumption of oranges is very beneficial for people > with high blood pressure, high blood lipids, arteriosclerosis and other > cardiovascular and cerebrovascular problems. > > *Q2 What is Queen Elizabeth’s secret to a long and healthy > life?* > > A2 Diana Donald Lives in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK > (1994–present)Thu > > Her mother lived until age 101, so in her DNA. Her father contracted > cancer due to heavy cigarette smoking, but the Queen has never smoked and > in fact the late Duke gave it up on his wedding day out of respect for his > wife’s fear of smoking disease. She has always eaten moderately and never > drunk alcohol excessively. She has also had the privilege of owning > horses so has ridden every day when possible until the last couple of years. > She walks a lot on her estates and is often seen out by members of the > public. Added to that she has the very best medical care. > > *Q3 Is it wrong in the 21st century to expect my bride to > change her last name to mine after the wedding?* > > A3 Bhuvana Rameshwar married for three decades Sun > > It is neither wrong nor right. Most girls, women add husband's name after > theirs to avoid confusion in jobs. Their educational certificates remain > the same with their maiden name, sometimes with father's name or family > surname. > > I changed mine to bhuvana rameshwar from bhuvana krishnan, *however my > dil maintains the father's name as her surname* but gives our son’s name > as husband in all documents and ID cards like passport, aadhar, PAN . > > *In the passport, national ID Card changes have to be made in the > husband's name column as a married person*. It is a must. Some just add > on like Priyanka chopra Jonas. This gives them a new identity. > > *Q4 Why do clothes under a fan dry up faster than without a > fan?* > > A4 Loring Chien, former Principal Engineer at Fortune 1000 > Company (2002-2016)Answered Jul 13, 2020 > > Air can only hold so much moisture, and warm air more than cool air. If > the air is still, the air next to the clothes will be saturated with > moisture and cannot absorb more moisture. *Moving air will circulate air > with less moisture and and it will absorb more moisture*. The fan is a > perfect way to move large amounts of air. > > *2ND ANSWER- Seth Flannigan, Merchant (1997-present)Answered May 27, 2018* > > The flowing air speeds up the evaporation process. It's actually pushing > the water off the clothes and turning it into vapor > > Try this experiment. *Next time you have to line dry clothes, dry them > inside and put a fan underneath wherever you hang them*. You'll be amazed > at how fast they dry, without damage. > > *Q5 Why is the British monarchy so important, while other world > monarchies are nearly unknown to the general public?* > > A5 Mats Andersson Visited 24 European countries Dec 14 > > *Because you're English-speaking. Here in Sweden, we know all about our > own royals, whether we want to or not, and the Dutch swear by their own > royal family*. The Japanese actually believe their royals are descended > from the Sun Goddess, which makes the House of Windsor look like plebeian > upstarts. > > *Q6 Which foreign language did you learn in school, and how > well do you still know it today?* > > A6 Gopalkrishna Vishwanath Decreasing proficiency order: > English/Hindi/Tamil/Kannada/ > > Gujarati/Malayalam Fri > > *I learnt French in school from standard 8 to standard 11 during the years > 1962 to 1966.We were not taught to speak at all.* > > Those days the TV and internet did not exist and so we could not get any > exposure to French spoken by a native speaker. > > The teacher was a local Maharashtrian who himself did not to how to speak > French.*He taught us basic French vocabulary, grammar and reading and > writing simple sentences.* > > By memorising the text book I managed to pass my matriculation exam with > 90% marks in French. > > It was ironical because I got more marks in French than I got for English > in which I was much better. > > Ever since I left school I have had no exposure to this language, no > opportunities to use it, and no need for it either in my career. > > I have now forgotten almost everything that I knew after a long gap of 55 > years.I now remember only a few words and popular standard phrases. > > *Q7 If water is H2O and there are planets were they are covered > with ice (water form), doesn't that mean there lies oxygen too?* > > A7 Steve Baker Blogger at LetsRunWithIt.com (2013–present)Dec > 21 > > Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen - so, yes - if there ice or liquid > water - then there are oxygen atoms present - but that’s not necessarily > breathable oxygen. > > Consider Mars, for example. It has a LOT of water - and it’s atmosphere is > almost 100% carbon dioxide - which ALSO contains oxygen. *But if you > tried to breathe the air there - you’d be unconscious in 20 seconds and > dead in two minutes* - because there is no FREE oxygen…oxygen that’s not > chemically bound to anything else. > > You can extract the oxygen from water (or from CO2 for that matter) - but > the energy costs to do so are considerable. > > Here on earth, we have green plants and algae - which are like little > solar power stations - converting water and CO2 into oxygen and > high-energy sugar using sunlight to power that chemistry. > > If we didn’t have those plants and algae - then all of the oxygen in our > air would gradually either be converted to CO2 or would also combine with > iron in the soil to form rust - and so forth. > > Planets that have free oxygen just floating around and not reacted with > something have to have some kind of active process - such as our green > plants - continually renewing it. > > *Q8 What do you do when there is literally no one to talk to?* > > A8 Bhuvana Rameshwarmarried for three decades Thu > > *In such a situation I talk to myself. We are our best friends. We keep > the talk to ourselves. We do not* spread it to others as gossip. We are > our best advisors also. > > I go for my morning walks. Usually the roads are empty with only birds and > some stray dogs. Unknowingly I have often found myself talking. With > whom? To myself.. Sometimes they are about events that happened, some > explanations or sometimes sentences in defence of any future confrontation. > It is like a good rehearsal. > > Our thoughts can be processed better when we rewind, talk about it and > analyse everything to ourselves, like a retrospection . Such talk is good > as helps to think rationally, speak chosen words to the point and helps us > to prepare for a bad situation, in future. We are also our best judges when > alone. > > *Q9 What evolutionary purpose do slanted/smaller eyes serve?* > > A9 Claire Jordan Degree in biology and folklore; programmer, > shop owner, secretary on newspaper Oct 24 > > The eyes themselves are not smaller - it’s just that the opening between > the eyelids is narrower when they are open but at rest. It protects the > eyes against wind and glare in extreme weather conditions. East Asians > developed this feature for protection as their ancestors migrated across > steppes and snowfields, before humans had worked out how to make horn or > parchment goggles that would do the same job. > > *Q10 Which planet is so light that can float on water?Can Saturn > really float on water?* > > A10 Vinod Kumar Teaching S.St, GK, preparing NTSE aspirants > (1999–present)Sat > > *Yes, if you could find a big enough body of water for it to float on*. > Saturn is very large and is the second largest planet in the Solar System. > However, it is made up mostly of gas and is less dense than water. Since > it is lighter than water, it can float on water. None of the other > planets in our Solar System can do this because they have a higher density > than water. Saturn has the lowest density of all the planets, which means > that it does not weigh as much for its size as the other planets do. > > *Q11 What is the point of an oxygen machine or giving someone pure > oxygen?* > > A11 Steve Baker Blogger at LetsRunWithIt.com (2013–present)Dec 22 > > Air is only 20% oxygen. With healthy lungs and normal respiration - that’s > plenty. > > But suppose someone’s breathing is shallow - or blood flow is slow - or > lungs are congested with fluid? Maybe a piece of a lung - or even an entire > lung has been surgically removed due to cancer or something? > > In all of those cases - you can make the remaining respiratory function > five times more effective by supplying the patient with pure oxygen. > > *Q12 How does metal stick on a magnet?* > > A12 Ritwik Sunny Former Customer Support Executive at Ashok > Leyland1h > > A magnet is a piece of metal with the ability to attract other metals. > These forces merge, and the object acts like a magnet. The north pole of > one magnet attracts the south pole but repels the north pole of another > magnet unlike poles attract and like poles repel. A metal is a magnet if > it repels a known magnet. > > *All the above QA are from Quora website on 27-12- 2021. * > > *Compiled and posted by R. Gopala krishnan ,78, former AGM Telecom > Trivandrum on 28-12-2021* > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "iyer123" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to iyer123+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/iyer123/483431.1459409.1640658667040%40mail.yahoo.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/iyer123/483431.1459409.1640658667040%40mail.yahoo.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. 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