India's Medical Heritage

Photo: Prasad

Satawari (Asparagus racemosus) a plant used in traditional Indian medicine, is commonly found in the Himalayan region. A forest official displaying the freshly harvested root at Don forest East Champaran, Bihar.

Abstract: The Indian medical heritage flows in two streams—folk and scholarly. The first is an immensely diverse, ecosystem specific, community based tradition and the other a codified one, yet both are symbiotically related with around 6,581 medicinal botanicals.

The author is Vice Chancellor, Trans-Disciplinary University, Bangalore. darshan.shankar@tdu.edu.in. The article should be cited as Shankar, D. 2019. India’s medical heritage, Geography and You, 19 (15): 14-19.