Revitalisation of Ayurveda in Colonial Tamil region and Contributions of Pandit Srinivasa Narayana Iyengar - A Historical Perspective

The present paper attempts to study the revitalisation of Ayurveda in Colonial Tamil region and the contributions of Pandit Srinivasa Narayana Iyengar in the movement. Western medicine was introduced initially for benefit of Europeans in British India and later extended to the Indian population was a ‘tool’ of empire. Gradually, Colonial government and practitioners of Western medicine stigmatised Ayurveda as irrational, dangerous and superstitious medicine and strived to marginalise it in the government policies and public sphere which paved the way to get cultural domination over colonised. As a result, physicians of Ayurveda attempted to revitalise their medicines through professionalization, systematisation and standardisation. Besides, they instituted printing presses and published numerable tracts, pamphlets, journals and books to counter the hegemony of Western medicine. In this contest, the meanings and boundary of Ayurveda were reconfigured and medical practices (written in regional languages) which did not fit into newly constructed medical identity – Ayurveda, were marginalized from the boundary of Ayurveda though they were part and parcel of the system until the late nineteenth century. As a response, an alternative medical identity – Tamil Siddha Medicine – was constructed by Tamil physicians in Colonial Tamil region. In this milieu, the present study traces the valuable contributions of Pandit Srinivasa Narayana Iyengar in promoting Ayurveda and solving the disputes among Sanskrit Ayurveda and Tamil Siddha practitioners in colonial Tamil region.