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- History, World History of Pharmacy, History of the ancient world of science and technology, Indigenous Medicine, History of Medicine in India, History of Technology, and 7 moreScience, Production and Society, Knowledge Systems and Culture, Anthropology, Art History, Colonialism, and Early Modern Historyedit
Colonizing ventures played out in myriad ways in garnering the world of indigenous botanical species, floral spaces and knowledge, especially those useful for medical purposes, into categories and ordered identities which helped them to... more
Colonizing ventures played out in myriad ways in garnering the world of indigenous botanical species, floral spaces and knowledge, especially those useful for medical purposes, into categories and ordered identities which helped them to come to terms with the increasing volume of resources and information. The process of introducing this semblance of ‘order’ was primarily and predominantly attended with legitimation through the emerging frames of science. Ordered into sequences and neatly packaged for uses of various kinds, as well as documented for future use, indigenous floral and medical resources and knowledge added a new dimension to the cultural hegemony of colonial forces, impacting all corners of colonized life in diverse ways.
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A number of dynasties ruling over regional kingdoms simultaneously contended for territorial superiority between the 9th and the 12th centuries CE in the fertile region stretching from the south of the Ganga- Yamuna doab to the north of... more
A number of dynasties ruling over regional kingdoms simultaneously contended for territorial superiority between the 9th and the 12th centuries CE in the fertile region stretching from the south of the Ganga- Yamuna doab to the north of Godavari basin. Of these, the house of the Candellas ruled for a long period from the 9th to the turn of the 14th century in the region between Yamuna and Narmada, with Betwa and Tons on the west and east respectively.
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This article covers a review of the historiography of women in ancient India. The review especially tracks the changes and shifts in methodology and perspectives till recent times.
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Minor Metal Crafts in Bengal_Tradition and Changes from the Medieval Times to the Present
The Sundarbans in linguistic Bengal in the Indian Subcontinent constitutes a unique ecosystem. Living conditions in these environs have been riddled with specific bounties as well as hazards. Historical records since the early medieval... more
The Sundarbans in linguistic Bengal in the Indian Subcontinent constitutes a unique ecosystem. Living conditions in these environs have been riddled with specific bounties as well as hazards. Historical records since the early medieval times reveal how society has created its own mechanisms for physical and psychological sustenance in these natural conditions. With time these have manifested in the form of a number of cults and rituals at the grassroots. They got mingled with higher cultures which came later into the region, giving birth to a variety of significant faiths like those propitiating the Goddesses Manasa, Candi, Sitala and the Bon Bibi bridging the cultural divides. Review of historical data since early medieval times reveal how these faiths and practices have been crystallized into a cultural paradigm embraced by popular folk society in need of psychological solace in the face of imminent threats of devastating natural and health conditions.
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The Judicial system of India and France was highlighted by French travelers and adventurers who traveled in India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their records became significant source of information to compare the... more
The Judicial system of India and France was highlighted by French travelers and adventurers who traveled in India during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their records became significant source of information to compare the judicial system of both the countries. This article makes attempt to give these voyagers treatise on judicial system of the oriental and occidental worlds. In which significant French travelers such as Francois Bernier, Jean Chardin, Anquetil Duperron and Comte de Modave wrote extensively about the positive and negatives of the judicial system of both countries. Several first-hand French sources [translated and untranslated] have been referred in this article to make a comprehensive review of judicial system of India through French prospective.
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ABIM started as the bibliography of Jan Meulenbeld's A History of Indian Medical Literature, and was first published on the internet as a set of HTML files in 2002. In the course of 2007 a new website for ABIM and EJIM, the... more
ABIM started as the bibliography of Jan Meulenbeld's A History of Indian Medical Literature, and was first published on the internet as a set of HTML files in 2002. In the course of 2007 a new website for ABIM and EJIM, the Electronic Journal of Indian Medicine, was created by Roelf ...
Looking at the archaeological evidence from Taxila as an early historic zone of urban settlements.
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This is a special Issue on the History of Diseases and Medicine in India and Beyond
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Special Issue on History of Diseases and Medicine in India and Beyond
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This article explores a paradigm of male fitness and all-round wellbeing that was purportedly emerging in early historic state society in India. While the much-advertised results of the Rasayana and Vajikarana treatments as described in... more
This article explores a paradigm of male fitness and all-round wellbeing that was purportedly emerging in early historic state society in India. While the much-advertised results of the Rasayana and Vajikarana treatments as described in the Caraka and the Susruta Samhitas provide us with rich information, the contemporary social concern for ageing and loss of virility and power is palpable in non - medical literature. The aspirations for physical and mental excellence and youth was of course basically rooted in desires and accessibility of the well-to-do male section in the upper echelons of patriarchal state-society.
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This article covers a review of the historiography of women in ancient India. The review especially tracks the changes and shifts in methodology and perspectives till recent times.
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ABSTRACT: Gardens, as intervened floral spaces especially landscaped by man, is that unit of nature whose story of origin and evolution is intertwined with the trajectory of environmental history. Moreover, this history is an integral... more
ABSTRACT: Gardens, as intervened floral spaces especially landscaped by man, is that unit of nature whose story of origin and evolution is intertwined with the trajectory of environmental history. Moreover, this
history is an integral part of the social and cultural history of India. The present article explores the history of evolution of gardens in the context of ancient India. The main focus in the article is directed towards observing and analyzing the many operative historical forces behind the emergence of varied cultural practices related to the creation and nurturing of both the actual gardens and the idealized conception of the same. These practices and imaginings indicate the deep as well as wide range of human engagements with nature from the early
emergent public sensitization to the very private spheres of actions and aspirations. While we do get splendid insights into the material and cultural practices related to gardens in literary sources, a marked authentication of these practices may be culled out from epigraphic sources. In fact, the present article has studied select sources to explore the possibilities of utilizing the data from inscriptions in order to look into an aspect of human intervention in nature that had varied and wide political, social and cultural nuances in the context of early Indian history.
history is an integral part of the social and cultural history of India. The present article explores the history of evolution of gardens in the context of ancient India. The main focus in the article is directed towards observing and analyzing the many operative historical forces behind the emergence of varied cultural practices related to the creation and nurturing of both the actual gardens and the idealized conception of the same. These practices and imaginings indicate the deep as well as wide range of human engagements with nature from the early
emergent public sensitization to the very private spheres of actions and aspirations. While we do get splendid insights into the material and cultural practices related to gardens in literary sources, a marked authentication of these practices may be culled out from epigraphic sources. In fact, the present article has studied select sources to explore the possibilities of utilizing the data from inscriptions in order to look into an aspect of human intervention in nature that had varied and wide political, social and cultural nuances in the context of early Indian history.
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The Sundarbans in linguistic Bengal in the Indian Subcontinent constitutes a unique ecosystem. Living conditions in these environs have been riddled with specific bounties as well as hazards. Historical records since the early medieval... more
The Sundarbans in linguistic Bengal in the Indian Subcontinent constitutes a unique ecosystem. Living conditions in these environs have been riddled with specific bounties as well as hazards. Historical records since the early medieval times reveal how society has created its own mechanisms for physical and psychological sustenance in these natural conditions. With time these have manifested in the form of a number of cults and rituals at the grassroots. They got mingled with higher cultures which came later into the region, giving birth to a variety of significant faiths like those propitiating the Goddesses Manasa, Candi, Sitala and the Bon Bibi-bridging the cultural divides. Review of historical data since early medieval times reveal how these faiths and practices have been crystallized into a cultural paradigm embraced by popular folk society in need of psychological solace in the face of imminent threats of devastating natural and health conditions.
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This article explores the genesis of social codes in early India which reveals the conscious working of a disciplinary apparatus in the form of sastra. Dharma, a term loosely embodying broad principles of absolute morality in the... more
This article explores the genesis of social codes in early India which reveals the conscious working of a disciplinary apparatus in the form of sastra. Dharma, a term loosely embodying broad principles of absolute morality in the Upanisads was brought into the arena of public behavioral pattern in early Nikayik Buddhism. Thenceforth it was moulded into diverse forms as Sadharana and Visesa Dharma, Rajadharma and Apad Dharma assuming importance in political and philosophical discourses.
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The article traces the conception of medical substances as dravya in classical Ayurveda genre and its transitions through the times. The main moment arrives when drvayaguna gets established as a distinct sub discipline under Ayurveda in... more
The article traces the conception of medical substances as dravya in classical Ayurveda genre and its transitions through the times. The main moment arrives when drvayaguna gets established as a distinct sub discipline under Ayurveda in the 11th century. Thenceforth we look into the modifications and additions in the medicinal repertoire especially with the medieval inclusions of both diseases and substances and partial adoptions of alchemical knowledge. Finally we witness the western engagements with Ayurvedic materia medica and pharmacology from the early modern to the 19th century and a resuscitation of the textual culture of Ayurveda in the 19th century at the hands of Whitelaw Ainslie and J.F. Royle and E.J. Waring as well as Kanny Lall Dey and mosty, U.C. Dutt.
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This article explores the contribution of Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray, the Bengali nationalist chemist, in salvaging the history of Chemistry of pre modern India. Although dealing profoundly in the Sanskrit sources, Ray had also looked... more
This article explores the contribution of Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray, the Bengali nationalist chemist, in salvaging the history of Chemistry of pre modern India. Although dealing profoundly in the Sanskrit sources, Ray had also looked into Mughal texts and workroom artisanry traditions to attain a holistic perspective. The article begins by focusing on the social and intellectual background and impact of Marcellin Berthelot and Hermann Kopp on Ray’s historiography and goes on to review his discovery and deep study of the classical Sanskrit texts on alchemy, most of which were unknown and unexplored till then. We end with a brief comment on Ray’s notions on nationalism and the social aspects as causative factors both for the decline of India’s earlier scientific traditions as well as for the social conditions in his own times.
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The article observes the context and nature of the upsurge in the practice of indigenous medicine, especially Ayurveda, in the late 19th and early 20th century within an ambiance of transformation in health care and culture and response... more
The article observes the context and nature of the upsurge in the practice of indigenous medicine, especially Ayurveda, in the late 19th and early 20th century within an ambiance of transformation in health care and culture and response to western intervention.
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The paper explores the work environs in which the Harappan ceramic manufacturers had operated. The survey of this environment reveals the processing techniques, the handling of raw materials and the different grades of engagements... more
The paper explores the work environs in which the Harappan ceramic manufacturers had operated. The survey of this environment reveals the processing techniques, the handling of raw materials and the different grades of engagements required by the artisans to run this industry which supplied the highest echelon as well as the rank and file with a most common and yet treasured item. The paper throws light on how a socio-cultural cohesion was emerging amongst the participants in the operation over wide geographical areas and across cultural segments brought under the umbrella of the Harappan society.
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This is the introduction to the edited volume comprising thirty articles contributed by noted senior and rising archaeologists and historians who are especially surveying evidence for the past in material culture. The focus is mostly... more
This is the introduction to the edited volume comprising thirty articles contributed by noted senior and rising archaeologists and historians who are especially surveying evidence for the past in material culture. The focus is mostly oriented to understanding the interfaces of archaeology, history and the scientific investigations of archaeological remains.
In pursuing the social history of medicine the less we take note of how scientific the practices were, the more we keep the doors open for opportunities to observe and make meaning out of diverse social phenomena related to health and... more
In pursuing the social history of medicine the less we take note of how scientific the practices were, the more we keep the doors open for opportunities to observe and make meaning out of diverse social phenomena related to health and medicine. The present research is in continuation of my paper on “Mustiyog and the Chest of medicine: Popular Remedies and Medical Products in 19th century Bengal", presented at the Workshop on Monitoring Markets: Medical Substances in South Asia, organised by Prof. Nandini Bhattacharya of the Scottish Centre for Global History, University of Dundee in May, 2015. The present version comprises an attempt to explore into the significance (and not to evaluate) of some traditional ideas and practices related to preservation of health and alleviation of diseases in the popular sense, which seem to have made their way into the emergent culture of health and medicine in the Bengali Hindu middle class society in the fifty years before and during the First World War.
I shall attempt to explain this curious phenomenon against the backdrop of the rising Bengali Hindu middle class awareness of self and society embodied in ideas of the family and home. Home was seen as the site wherein motley of concepts and practices related to health had emerged. This is apparent from glimpses of the tracts on home, remedy, health and diseases in contemporary vernacular periodicals and various genres of kabiraji writings which comprise the main sources for this research.
I shall attempt to explain this curious phenomenon against the backdrop of the rising Bengali Hindu middle class awareness of self and society embodied in ideas of the family and home. Home was seen as the site wherein motley of concepts and practices related to health had emerged. This is apparent from glimpses of the tracts on home, remedy, health and diseases in contemporary vernacular periodicals and various genres of kabiraji writings which comprise the main sources for this research.
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This book highlights emerging trends and new themes in South Asian history. It covers issues broadly related to religion, materiality, and nature from differing perspectives and methods to offer a kaleidoscopic view of Indian history... more
This book highlights emerging trends and new themes in South Asian history. It covers issues broadly related to religion, materiality, and nature from differing perspectives and methods to offer a kaleidoscopic view of Indian history until the late eighteenth century. The essays in the volume focus on understanding questions of pre-modern religion, material culture processes, and their spatial and environmental contexts through a study of networks of commodities and cultural and religious landscapes. From the early history of coastal regions such as Gujarat and Bengal to material networks of political culture, from temples and their connection with maritime trade to the importance of landscape in influencing temple-building, from regions considered peripheral to mainstream historiography to the development of religious sects, this collection of articles maps the diverse networks and connections across regions and time.
The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, archaeology, museum and heritage studies, religion, especially Hinduism, Sufism, and Buddhism, and South Asian studies.
The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, archaeology, museum and heritage studies, religion, especially Hinduism, Sufism, and Buddhism, and South Asian studies.