ABSTRACT
The interface between print and nattuvaidyam (indigenous medicine) brought in a series of players and institutions and enhances the naturalising of an Ayurveda from assorted ayurvedas. Hitherto personalised learning techniques and knowledge dissemination became a social production and transmission through institutions and individual practitioners. Print opened up a public space to articulate the concerns and knowledge of literate practitioners. Further, the non-literate and neo-literate practitioners also used the potential of print media to assert their agency in the formation of a particular rationalised Ayurveda. Through vaidya magazines, journals, newspapers and vaidya organisations, the elite nattuvaidyam practitioners asked the vaidyas from other classes to disseminate or reveal their secret knowledge in vaidyam in order to preserve them for the future generation. They reasserted the supremacy of Sanskrit and textual knowledge by separating practitioners as kriya vichakshanar (practice oriented) and sastra nikshnathar (experts in the theory of practises). The chapter looks at the series of processes that ended up in clubbing together classical Ayurveda with upper-caste practitioners, textual tradition with canonical Samhitas and Sanskrit language. The process incorporated knowledge from vernacular and oral traditions through a simultaneous weeding out of these practitioners (knowledge bearers) and claimed secularisation of the new Ayurveda.
