"Why the Charaka Samhita (k)is a guide for practice

Year: 2018

Why the Caraka Samhita (k)is a guide for practice
Ananda Chopra MD
"The textbook is a light that creates brightness, the eye is one's own mind" - Why the Caraka-Saṃhitā (k)is a guide for practice.

The Caraka-Saṃhitā is without doubt one of the most important texts of the Āyurveda. In the current curriculum for the study of Āyurveda in India, the Caraka-Saṃhitā is the only traditional text that students are to study in its entirety. However, a cursory glance at this work makes it clear that the Caraka-Saṃhitā is a many-voiced and complex work. The 120 chapters, spread over eight books, form anything but a systematic textbook or even a practical handbook. Rather, this work is full of redundancies and occasionally also contradictions; in addition to concrete prescriptions for medicines, there are also philosophical discussions, for example on the training and practice of doctors. No wonder, then, that for centuries Caraka-Saṃhitā has by no means served as a textbook for beginners. Those who wanted to learn the basics of Āyurveda or were looking for a work for diagnosis and therapy in practice used other books. Only specific cultural processes, the emergence of a "Renaissance ideology", in India in the 19th and 20th centuries, led to the Caraka-Saṃhitā obtaining its current position in Āyurveda. But if one then thinks about what medicine actually is, that medicine is first and foremost a practical science and neither natural nor spiritual science, then the Caraka-Saṃhitā offers a true treasure of inspiration and instruction especially for those who practice Āyurveda today. Starting from the form and content of the present Caraka-Saṃhitā, all these aspects will be briefly discussed.