Cannabis in India: ancient lore and modern medicine

India is a land steeped in faith and mysticism. Ayurveda, combining the Sanskrit words for life and knowledge, is a system of medicine intertwined inextricably with these traits. That a core of belief combined with empirical experimentation could produce a viable medical regimen still widely practiced after well over 3000 years is astounding to Western physicians. Cannabis was similarly bound to faith and mysticism in India in the past, in the Hindu and Islamic traditions, as well as in numerous other minority religions [1]. Merlin recently explained it well [2], “with the powerful tools of modern science and human imagination, our understanding of our deep-rooted desire to experience ecstasy in the original sense of the word (to break the mind free from the body and communicate with the ‘gods’ or the ancestors) will become clear with time”. This chapter will seek to examine the medical claims for cannabis of the past, and place them in a contemporary light given current pharmacological knowledge. Ayurveda is based on a conceptual medical system that seeks to balance three functional elements, called doshas, that the human body is composed of, and are commonly represented as Vata or Vayu (ether or air), Pitta (fire and water) and Kapha (phlegm or water and earth). Nadkarni [3] has rejected these simple relationships in favor of more abstract assignations [3]: