The Practice of Texts: Education and Healing in South India

Anthony Cerulli

Open Access Published by University of California Press 2022

The Practice of Texts

Education and Healing in South India

Anthony Cerulli

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780520383555

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Contents

About this book

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

The Practice of Texts examines the uses of the Sanskrit medical classics in two educational institutions of India’s classical life science, Ayurveda: the college and the gurukula. In this interdisciplinary study, Anthony Cerulli probes late- and postcolonial reforms in ayurvedic education, the development of the ayurvedic college, and the impacts of the college curriculum on ways that ayurvedic physicians understand and use the Sanskrit classics in their professional work today. His fieldwork in south India illuminates the nature of philology and ritual in the ayurvedic gurukula and showcases how knowledge is exchanged among students, teachers, and patients. The result, Cerulli shows, is that the Sanskrit classics are presented and applied differently in the college and gurukula, producing a variety of relationships with these texts among practitioners. By interrogating the politics surrounding the place of the Sanskrit classics in ayurvedic curricula, this book reveals a spectrum of views about the history and tradition of Ayurveda in modern India.

Author / Editor information

Cerulli Anthony :

Anthony Cerulli is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is author of Somatic Lessons: Narrating Patienthood and Illness in Indian Medical Literature.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Introduction: Gurukulas and Tradition-Making in Modern Ayurveda Open Access Download PDF	1
1 Situating Sanskrit (Texts) in Ayurvedic Education Open Access Download PDF	31
2 Practicing Texts Open Access Download PDF	71
3 Knowledge that Heals, Freely Open Access Download PDF	103
4 From Healing Texts to Ritualized Practice Open Access Download PDF	127
5 Texts in Practice and the Ayurvedic Patient Open Access Download PDF	158
Notes Open Access Download PDF	183
References Open Access Download PDF	203
Index Open Access Download PDF	217

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 240

eBook

Published: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 9780520383555