Introduction

The history of medicine in India can be traced to the remote past. The earliest mention of medicinal use of plants is to be found in the Rigveda, which is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, repositories of human knowledge, having been written between 4500 and 1600 B.C. The advent of Buddhism in India brought considerable change in the practice of Ayurveda. Surgery, the performance of which is invariably associated with pain, was treated as a form of himsa or violence, and therefore, its practice was banned. To compensate for this loss, and to alleviate the sufferings of ailing humanity, more drugs were added during this period to Ayurvedic materia medica. After the period of the Tantra and Siddhas, the glories of Hindu medicine rapidly waned and declined. During the invasion of India by the Greeks, Scythians, and Mohammedans successively, no original works were written, and Hindu medicine gradually began to decay.