What is a human body? This may seem like a jocular question, but the answer will be very different depending on which medical tradition you consult. Take Ayurveda, a traditional system of medical knowledge from India that has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in the West since the 1980s – and is undergoing a new exposure at the Wellcome Collection in London.
As you walk through the show, you are invited to explore different ways of understanding and visualizing the human body. The Ayurvedic body differs significantly from that of European biomedicine, which is based on dissection. The Ayurvedic body is a body of systems. It is conceptualized as being composed of five constituent parts (mahabūta), seven bodily substances (dhatu) and three regulating qualities (doṣa). According to Ayurvedic theory, by addressing the imbalances between these principles in a body, health can be promoted and disease averted. Ayurvedic concepts of doṣas – vata, pita and kapha can be seen in the West today promoting teas, soaps and massages.
But of course there are many other different conceptions of the human body. There is the tantric understanding, often confused with that of Ayurveda. Tantra focuses on the concept of energy channels (nāḍīs) that have particular centers of concentration along a line down the center of the body (chakra). The traditional Chinese model, on the other hand, emphasizes the dynamic principles of ying and yang as essential to health. Meanwhile, indigenous healing in many traditional cultures identifies issues between the individual and the larger social and metaphysical context as the cause of illness.
Competing medical systems
So what determined the dominance of one medical thought system over another? The answer is much more complex than the “correct” or “most accurate” answer.
This complexity is embodied by the central piece of the exhibition, one of the few illustrations of classical Ayurvedic systemic descriptions of the human body. This 16th century drawing, like that of Dominik Wujastyk to research showed, was probably produced at the request of a wealthy Nepalese patron by a learned physician, scribe, and painter, none of whom was fluent in the original Sanskrit source. The Nepalese artist was clearly influenced by Tibetan medical illustrations.
We don’t know how this image was originally used or what its influence was, but its creation depended on patronage and cross-cultural exchange. It is therefore from this mixture of cultures that one of the most emblematic visual presentations of the “Indian” Ayurvedic body was born.
Economic and political powers have a strong influence on the form and popularity of Indian concepts of the body today. Yoga is currently the most popular Indian approach to promoting body health. It is booming globally. Millions of people attest that yoga makes them feel better and Ayurvedic concepts are often promoted as an integral part of yoga practices.
But it is not well known that contemporary global interest in Ayurveda and yoga is partly the result of India’s colonial mismanagement. This point is creatively illustrated in Wellcome’s new show through an interactive commission from artist Ranjit Kandalgaonkar. Millions of lives were lost throughout the colonial period due to the forced redistribution of food and other resources away from local Indian populations, to meet what were considered the Empire’s greatest needs. British.
As I argued somewhere else, reactions to the tragic deaths of millions of Indians have transformed yoga. Swami Vivekananda was inspired by the effects of famine and pestilence to redefine Karma Yoga as a mission of social service. Many leaders of India’s independence movement, including Mahatmas Gandhi and Mohan Malaviya, promoted Indian approaches to medicine and health.
Thus, the establishment of the modern Indian nation was intertwined with the health of millions of individual Indian bodies through “Indian” healing systems. This continues today as demonstrated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi through his association with the popular Indian “yoga-televangelist”. Swami Ramdev and the elevation of traditional medicine to that of a independent government service.
The promotion and preservation of Indian medical knowledge is commendable. But it’s important not to oversimplify complex and sophisticated descriptions rooted in different worldviews. Economic imperatives often turn traditions into marketable exports – and cross-cultural exchange enriches and confuses our patterns of understanding.
many understandings
So should there be an answer, a dominant understanding of the body? I am currently part of a team look for overlaps between yoga, Ayurvedic medicine and Indian longevity practices (rasāyana) over the past 1000 years. Our research emphasizes a plurality of understandings over time. Both yoga and Ayurveda are characterized by a diversity of practices, as well as an internal conceptual coherence. Millennia of intercultural exchanges have created problems to assert national ownership of traditional medical knowledge.
All medical systems have common interests in promoting human health and longevity. But it is important to understand the differences as well as the similarities. As early as 1923, Indian commentators were concerned about the possible biomedical “extraction” of traditional remedies for unique active ingredients. A commentator in Usman Reporta pan-Indian survey of more than 200 indigenous doctors, asks the question: “Does this amount to quackery” on the part of biomedical doctors?
Today, our mental picture of our body is largely an image constructed from dissection and, more recently, X-rays and various other scans. Yet, in practice, we understand our body as a changing system. We monitor our energy levels. We adjust how we feel with food, drink, sleep, exercise, and medication. The system-oriented Ayurvedic body, therefore, may not be so far removed from most people’s everyday experience. So how might we better visualize our bodies based on our lived and somatic understandings?
Ayurveda is a rich and complex tradition that has always encompassed influences from a variety of cultures while retaining very specific local applications. Ayurveda cannot be reduced to a simple definition, a marketing slogan or a quantifiable national export. Welcome new show explores these complicated relationships and raises important questions. If we don’t want to become charlatans ourselves, we must continue to resist reductions of the human body to a single visual model.
