Revealed-The Oral Tradition of Healing
Communities have used medicinal plants to promote good health and treat disease for millennia and even today tribal and folk healers possess a wealth of knowledge about the properties of different plants and how they can be used to heal. Herbs that were one easy to find are now becoming almost extinct and knowledge which was the mainstay of villages is fast disappearing. The ability to identify the plants is also becoming rare and even botanists find it difficult to certify the authenticity of raw drugs unless sophisticated instruments are used.
This article is about the oral heritage of healing. This is vastly different from documented knowledge which is based on innumerable manuscripts and classical texts written by families of Vaidyas and Hakims many centuries ago. Ayurveda and Unani systems of medicine thus fall in the “codified” segment; both systems and depend on textual references to interpret health and disease. Thousands of formulations aim to detoxify and to balance the constitution of an individual.
The approach is entirely different from oral heritage which is the result of unwritten knowledge about healing traditions which despite the absence of documentation are still alive in many Indian villages. Simple and unpretentious as these methods are, they resonate through the lives of communities and Indian kitchens – no matter how humble they are they remain a unique and distinct feature of Indian heritage.
Dr. Shailaja Chandra