Wrong Facts and Overstated Concepts
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has published a textbook for class 11 on the Knowledge Traditions and Practices of India. The chapter on Ayurveda in this textbook has both factual and conceptual errors. A few are pointed out here with the hope that NCERT will correct them in future editions of the book. The chapter titled Introducing Ayurveda, the Science of Health and Disease says in its second paragraph that “codified Ayurveda would be at least 4000 years old or 1500 years prior to Hippocrates, the father of Western Medicine.” This information is erroneous. Authoritative sources date even the earliest ayurveda classics to circa 600 BCE,[1] though a few scholars suggest dates ranging from 1000 BCE to 500 BCE. Without citing any supporting source, the textbook chapter advances these dates rashly by a full 1000 years. The chapter has conceptual errors too. It speaks of “the subtlest domains of consciousness intra-connected by the levels of awareness defined by the Panchakosha.” This is a confusing interpolation of a concept elaborated in the Vedantic text called the Taittiriya Upanishath. The concept of Panchakosha does not figure in the Ayurveda classics at all. More concerning is the chapter’s overplay of ancient Ayurvedic theories as being representative of “systems approach to health.” The tridosha concept is declared as being “comprehensive, addressing all causative features and incorporating all the therapeutically relevant parameters.” The facts are otherwise. Ayurvedic concepts like the tridosha theory are basically rough-and-ready models (heuristics) that the ancients devised to systematize their medical experience. Heuristics, being products of commonsensical reasoning are useful, but they are also susceptible to misfires. The methods of science developed precisely to check such limitations of commonsensical reasoning. Therefore, in current times, it is wrong and dangerous to construe Ayurvedic concepts as being “comprehensive and incorporating all the therapeutically relevant parameters.” When rough-and-ready models get misconstrued as comprehensive theories, the results would be wrong diagnoses and mismanagement of medical conditions.[2,3] The systems biology approach to medicine is a relatively recent trend in medical research that emphasizes holism as the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. This approach is sometimes contrasted with the reductionist approach of molecular biology. Its tenet that cellular and organismal constituents are interconnected so that their structure and dynamics must be examined in intact cells and organisms rather than as isolated parts is aimed to promote a more holistic understanding of life processes. Needless to clarify, the suggestion of this new NCERT textbook that ancient Ayurvedic theories are the results of such an approach is too overblown to merit attention. Anatomy and physiology contained in the ancient Ayurvedic classics were too rudimentary to facilitate such advanced approaches. Only this much is a reasonable claim: the idea that a full knowledge of the whole can scarcely be acquired from an isolated study of its parts has clear philosophical antecedents in the Ayurvedic classics. But philosophical antecedent is one thing; real-world science is quite another.[3] The intent of NCERT to introduce Ayurveda to class 11 students is welcome. But that introduction should not have been factually and conceptually misleading. Data availability statement Not applicable. Author contribution Concept and writing by the author. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.
Author: G L Krishna
Language: English
Subfield: Complementary and alternative medicine
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4408691620