Correspondence Course in the History of Religion and Medicine in India
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 A modern day Siddha in Rameswaram, Southern India, participating in an ancient bathing ritual dating back to the Vedic period. |
 Wandering Hindu ascetics carried the Yoga and Ayurvedic tradition for centuries before it was written down. |
What is Indian medicine? Where did it come from?
The premise of this course is that medicine and religion were inseparable in the history of India, and that in order to understand the former we must equally investigate the latter. The earliest Indian medical sources were, in fact, religious texts, and subsequent medical texts throughout Indian history almost invariably address religious as well as physical concerns. No Indian religion has neglected to address issues of the body, disease, and healing: Vedic, Upanishadic, Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, Christian, and tribal religions each forwarded views of medicine that developed, combined, and competed throughout almost 5000 years of Indian history. Rather than one monolithic “traditional medicine of India,” then, the course will explore this diversity of ideas.
The chronological arc of this course begins with a review of the earliest archaeological evidence for medicine in the Indus Valley Civilizations, as well as the first medical texts extant from the Vedic period. Against this backdrop of medicine centered around the rituals of the priestly class, we will trace the rise of anti-Brahman movements such as Buddhism, and discuss their significant contributions to the development of the empirically-based medical tradition of Ayurveda. We will learn the theories of the body as well as the therapeutic rationale of this medical system as it became codified in the Buddhist Canon, and later, in the classical medical literature.
The rise of Tantra in Buddhism and Hinduism brought with it a revolutionary new conception of the body in the medieval period, and in the second half of the course, we will see the re-emergence of practices of ritual medicine, as well as a new form of yogic self-cultivation focused on the body’s invisible forces and energies. We will also look at the dissemination of medical and scientific knowledge from India to China and neighboring South and Southeast Asian cultures, as well as Ayurveda’s interaction with other medical systems like the Unani (Greco-Islamic) and Siddha traditions within the Indian subcontinent itself.
The course will finish with a brief section on medicine in modern India, from an assessment of attempts to implement Western ideas of public health and medicine in the British colonial period to a critical analysis of the global Yoga movement spawned by Indian gurus and Western aficionados in the 20th century.
The Course
This course is equaivalent to and is modeled after a semester-long college-level course. Successful completion of this course will require completion of the reading packet and books listed below. A written test will be sent to the participant which will include a 2-3 page written analysis of a particular area of Indian medical history. A 10-page paper on a topic covered in the course is also required. Certificate of completion will be provided upon successful completion of the course.
Cost$499 is the total cost of this course, including all materials listed below. Click
here to register for this program, or contact
us for more information. |
Readings
Course Materials Provided:
- TaoMountain's History of Religion and Medicine in India: an enormous collection of academic articles on the origins of Ayurveda. Click below for more information or to buy separately.
Required Books (Not provided - Click below to purchase):
- Wujastyk, Dominik, The Roots of Ayurveda, © 2003 Penguin Books, London - A compendium of ancient Ayurvedic texts, translated and compiled by one of the leading scholars in the field.
- Flood, Gavin 1996, An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press.