Second World Ayurveda Congress (Theme: Ayurveda for the Future)—Inaugural Address: Part II

At the Science Congress we held here in this same Pune University Campus, Noble laureate Professor Richard Ernst lectured on work using the latest advances and tools in high-resolution solid-state NMR, to gain understanding of the Chinese system of Acupuncture at the molecular level. He referred to papers in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Science (1). You see, while western scientists are scientifically probing the ancient practices of the East, our own Indian research is invariably focused on the West’s leftover problems. That is unfortunate: it is a great, great pity indeed. As I have said, Ayurveda is the ‘Science of Life’. The period 600 B.C.–800A.D. has been called the ‘Ayurvedic period’ (2). At that time, developments in Ayurveda led to fundamental advances in chemistry, and in our ancient forms of botany and zoology, as well as its own discipline of medicine. Today, however, Ayurveda gets equated only with herbal products. That is not only unfortunate, but also it is just plain wrong. It presents a vision of Ayurveda through the spectacles of molecular medicine and pharmacology, and excludes the greater proportion of its substantial scientific value. Dravyaguna, Ayurvedic knowledge of herbs, forms only a small part of the whole system. Similar to the way that Nobel laureate Richard Ernst was looking at Acupuncture and the science behind it by probing with high resolution solid-state NMR, much of Ayurveda requires fundamental physical investigation. For example, Ayurvedic etiology is couched in terms of the concept of Dosha Prakriti, as are physician’s strategies of treatment. It is scientifically very important to decide whether Prakriti has a genomic basis (3), as Patwardhan has suggested (3), or if they are only phenotypes. We are only beginning to address this question, and future developments may be very important (4), since establishing a full scientific basis for Tridosha would be of the utmost significance. Valiathan also addresses (5) several other similar questions. If we investigate Panchakarma, that powerful tool to detoxify the body, does it alter the patient’s biological and immunological profiles? This has not yet been investigated. Then there are the Rasayanas. What do they do? Do they accelerate repair of damaged DNA? Can any show improvements in mouse models of Alzheimer’s, such as inhibition of beta-amyloid accumulation? These questions have not been addressed. There have not been any studies on them; they are virgin territory where we canmake major applications and advances. I would go as far as saying that just as we have cellular biology, molecular biology and structural biology, there must be an ‘Ayurvedic biology’ that we should start talking about. I must give credit to Dr Valiathan for coining this phrase (5,14). The more I think about it, the more I believe in it. What has India given to the rest of the world? Did we give cellular biology, molecular biology or structural biology? Did we give structural genomics, functional genomics or pharmacogenomics? No, but we can give Ayurvedic biology (14) and Ayugenomics (3) to the world alright. We need to think really seriously about that.