50 Fun Facts About Ayurveda

Ashwagandha's Sanskrit name describes the strong odour of its root as resembling which animal?

Horse: ashva means horse and gandha means smell, a reference to the root's horsey reek. Its Latin species name, somnifera, means 'sleep-inducing', and the shrub is a nightshade, kin to the tomato.

Formal Ayurveda study at Indian public institutions leads to a BAMS degree; the final S stands for what?

Surgery: the degree is the Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery, a reminder that two of the tradition's classical branches are surgical. Its legal standing is still not equal to that of conventional medicine.

In Ayurvedic legend, Dhanvantari rose from the churned Ocean of Milk carrying a pot of what?

Amrita, the nectar of immortality, was the prize of the Samudra Manthana, churned with Mount Mandara as the rod and the serpent Vasuki as the rope. The asuras snatched the pot before Vishnu won it back.

In southern India, chewed twigs of which tree, a mahogany relative, serve as a disposable toothbrush?

Neem twigs double as a teeth-cleaning stick in southern India and the Middle East. At the Karnataka new year, Ugadi, its bitter leaves are mixed with jaggery as 'bevu bella' to stand for the bitter and the sweet of the year ahead.

Which rhizome, 'Indian saffron' to medieval Europe, is smeared on bride and groom before many Hindu weddings?

Turmeric paste is applied to bride and groom at the haldi, Bengal's 'yellow on the body' rite. A ginger-family rhizome, it was found at Farmana in the Indus Valley dating to 2600–2200 BCE.

In the Ayurvedic treatment shirodhara, a steady stream of warm oil is poured onto which part of the body?

The forehead receives the warm oil in shirodhara, one of many Ayurvedic uses of oil that also include head massage, anointing, drinking it and oil pulling.

Ayurveda credits all digestion and metabolism to a force that shares its name with which Vedic god?

Agni, Sanskrit for fire, is Ayurveda's name for the digestive force, split into jatharagni in the gut and later stages after absorption. Ghee is offered to the same fire in Vedic yajna rituals.

Which Ayurvedic consumer giant did a physician who sold his remedies by bicycle found in Kolkata in 1884?

Dabur began when S. K. Burman formulated Ayurvedic medicines for cholera, constipation and malaria in Kolkata and pedalled them around Bengal; the name is his patients' portmanteau of daktar (doctor) and Burman.

In India's AYUSH ministry acronym, A is Ayurveda, Y is yoga, U is Unani and S is Siddha; what is the H?

Homoeopathy, a German-born system, shares the ministry with India's own traditions. The department was elevated to a standing ministry under Narendra Modi on 9 November 2014.

Which dosha does Ayurveda describe as a blend of earth and water, the nourishing maker of the soft organs?

Kapha, the heavy, cold and slow humour, also carries nutrients and shapes the perception of taste. A person's natural mix of the doshas is their prakriti, said to set both constitution and personality.

Alongside earth, water, fire and air, which element completes the panchamahabhuta of Ayurveda's classic treatises?

Ether completes the list, which the classic treatises share with the medicine of classical antiquity. Every substance also carries paired qualities such as heavy and light, hot and cold, unctuous and dry.

Ayurveda counts how many dhatus, the body tissues running from chyle and blood through bone to marrow?

Seven dhatus — chyle, blood, muscle, fat, bone, marrow and semen — sit beside the malas (wastes) and the doshas in Ayurveda's model of the body, each said to nourish the next in sequence.

The classical division of Ayurveda into components, first attested in the Mahabharata, counts how many of them?

Eight components run from general medicine and toxicology to the eyes, ears and nose, though the great compendia never follow the scheme in their own chapter divisions. The Mahabharata reference dates to about the 4th century BCE.

Bhuta vidya, the Ayurvedic branch concerned with disturbed minds rather than the body, aims to pacify what?

Possessing spirits and the minds they trouble are bhuta vidya's domain, a branch that sits beside toxicology and paediatrics in the classical scheme. Ayurveda treats mind, body and personality as three parts of one whole.

Vajikarana, the Ayurvedic branch that also takes on infertility, is best known for which class of remedy?

Aphrodisiacs and fertility treatments make up vajikarana, which shares the classical scheme with rasayana, the branch of tonics for lifespan, intellect and strength.

Kaumara-bhritya, one of Ayurveda's eight classical branches, corresponds to which modern medical specialty?

Paediatrics is kaumara-bhritya, which also takes in midwifery, prenatal care and even choosing a baby's sex, intelligence and constitution; the Kashyapa Samhita remains its key text.

Madya, which Ayurvedic texts classify by raw material and fermentation process, is the term for what?

Alcoholic drinks called madya come in sugar-, fruit- and cereal-based classes and tonic wines, described as fast-acting and able to clean the body's minute pores. Opium, too, appears in a handful of classical recipes.

Ayurveda holds that all matter carries how many gunas, qualities paired off as heavy and light, hot and cold and so on?

Twenty gunas form ten opposed pairs, from unctuous and dry to slimy and non-slimy, minute and gross, viscous and liquid. Ayurveda shares these ideas with the Samkhya and Vaisheshika schools.

What does Ayurveda call the body's vulnerable points, whose study it treats as a discipline of its own?

Marma points are peculiar to Ayurveda; the related srotas are channels thought to carry fluids, which oil massage and fomentation are said to open when blocked.

In Sanskrit, the name Charaka, attached to Ayurveda's foundational compendium, is a term for what kind of person?

A wanderer, or sannyasi, is what charaka means, recalling the itinerant physicians who carried medicine and magico-religious rites from village to village. One scholar argues the name denotes a whole lineage rather than one man.

Sushruta wrote his Ayurvedic compendium after moving to which Ganges city, seat of his teacher Divodasa?

Varanasi, ancient Kashi, is where Sushruta settled after leaving his birthplace Kanyakubja; early Buddhist Jatakas remember Divodasa as a physician who taught there. The earliest manuscripts frame the whole text as Divodasa's discourse.

Before touching a patient, Sushruta's trainees practised the length and depth of incisions on what?

Vegetables and dead animals stood in for patients, and only after proving their skill were students allowed to operate. The course itself ran six years before hands-on training began.

The Sushruta Samhita devotes a chapter to finding, collecting and keeping which creatures, used to draw vitiated blood?

Leeches get their own chapter, down to telling good ones from bad, and at Kerala's Thottuva temple the idol of Dhanvantari, the divine physician, holds one in his left hand beside a conch.

Whose 7,120-verse Ashtanga Hridaya completed Ayurveda's classical triad of authorities with Charaka and Sushruta?

Vagbhata, placed around the 6th century CE and probably from the north-west of the subcontinent, wrote in verse; his work was translated into Tibetan, Arabic and Persian and excerpted in Penguin Classics.

The Charaka and Sushruta compendia both tell physicians to declare their allegiance to which Veda in particular?

Atharvaveda, with its hymns against disease and herb-based potions, is the Veda the medical texts claim as their inspiration, and medieval taxonomies file Ayurveda as a subsidiary Veda, or upaveda.

Which later editor completed the Charaka Samhita, adding 17 chapters of therapeutics and two whole books of his own?

Dridhabala, whose revision is dated to about the 6th century CE, supplied the Kalpa and Siddhi books plus 17 chapters of the Cikitsa section, and every surviving manuscript descends from his recension. The text runs to 120 chapters in all.

The Bower Manuscript, holding the oldest dated fragments of an Indian medical text, was written on which material?

Birch bark leaves, 56 of them in Gupta script, were dug from a Buddhist stupa near Kucha in north-west China and bought in 1890 by Lieutenant Hamilton Bower, who was chasing a murderer at the time.

In which Himalayan country did an estimated 75 to 80 percent of people use Ayurveda, its most popular medicine in 2009?

Nepal trains its practitioners to the same BAMS degree as India, and its National Ayurvedic Training and Research Centre promotes the country's medicinal herbs.

The word Ayurveda pairs veda, meaning 'knowledge', with ayus, a Sanskrit term usually translated as what?

Life, or longevity, is ayus, so the whole name reads 'knowledge of longevity'; some schools of thought even rank Ayurveda as an additional Veda in its own right.

Which endocrinologist quit a Boston hospital chief-of-staff post after meeting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1985?

Deepak Chopra resigned from New England Memorial Hospital to set up the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center, having first been steered towards Ayurveda by physician Brihaspati Dev Triguna in New Delhi in 1981.

Patanjali Ayurved, the Haridwar conglomerate founded in 2006, was set up by Balkrishna and which televised yoga guru?

Baba Ramdev, born Ram Kisan Yadav in Haryana, fronts the brand while Balkrishna owns 94 percent of it; analysts at CLSA rated it one of India's fastest-growing consumer goods firms in 2016.

Which Bangalore-based Ayurvedic firm, founded by Muhammad Manal in Dehradun in 1930, makes Liv.52?

Himalaya launched Liv.52, a liver protective, in 1955 after moving to Bombay, and it became the flagship product; the group's holding company is headquartered in the Cayman Islands.

P. S. Varier founded the Arya Vaidya Sala, a famous Ayurvedic institution, in 1902 in which Kerala town?

Kottakkal's Arya Vaidya Sala began as a small outpatient clinic and medicine shop, and since Varier's death in 1944 a charitable trust has run it under his will; India issued a postage stamp in his honour.

Which Gujarat city, seat of an Ayurved university since 1967, hosts the WHO's Global Centre for Traditional Medicine?

Jamnagar's Institute of Teaching and Research in Ayurveda was declared an institute of national importance in 2020, on a campus whose founding society translated the Charaka Samhita into English, Hindi and Gujarati.

India set up the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library of Ayurvedic formulations in 2001 to fight what?

Biopiracy became a national cause after India had US patents on a kitchen spice and on basmati rice revoked or limited in the late 1990s; patent examiners in Europe, the UK and the US gained access to the library from 2009.

Unani medicine, grouped with Ayurveda under AYUSH, takes its name from an Arabic word for which people?

The Greeks' four humours of Hippocrates and Galen underpin Unani, against Ayurveda's three doshas; the word traces to Ionia, the Aegean coast that Arabic and Persian speakers used as shorthand for all of Greece.

Siddha medicine, Ayurveda's southern sibling credited to the sage Agastya, has its original texts in which language?

Tamil is the tongue of Siddha's treatises, a southern system said to have passed from Shiva to Parvati to Nandi before reaching the 18 siddhars who shaped it.

Tibetan medicine, which absorbed Ayurvedic texts translated by Rinchen Zangpo in the 11th century, goes by what name?

Sowa Rigpa's Four Tantras were compiled in the 8th century under King Trisong Detsen after a council at Samye drew physicians from as far as Persia, India, China and Central Asia. India's government officially recognised the system in 2010.

When India first observed National Ayurveda Day in 2016, it was tied to Dhanteras, the opening day of which festival?

Diwali's first day, Dhanteras, is when Dhanvantari is worshipped and new gold, silver and utensils are bought; the Ministry of Ayush chose it for National Ayurveda Day, first observed on 28 October 2016.

Abhyanga, the head-to-toe Ayurvedic massage with warm herb-infused oil, traditionally uses which oil as its base?

Sesame oil is the classical base, though the blend is matched to a person's doshas and the season, and the massage is often followed by svedana, a sweat treatment, or a warm bath.

Rasashastra, Ayurveda's alchemical branch, gives its metal-based medicines as bhasma, a Sanskrit word meaning what?

Ash is produced by calcination, which the texts call shodhana or 'purification', and it is how mercury, gold, silver and lead are given; a 2008 JAMA study found detectable lead, mercury or arsenic in a fifth of 193 products bought online.

Ayurveda lists nadi first among its diagnostic signs, ahead of urine, stool, tongue and speech; what is nadi?

The pulse leads a list that continues with urine, stool, tongue, speech, touch, vision and appearance, so the practitioner is meant to diagnose with all of the senses; hearing, for instance, judges breathing and speech.

Which Ayurvedic powder blends the chebulic, beleric and emblic myrobalans in equal 1:1:1 parts?

Triphala, 'three fruits', ranks among the most commonly used Ayurvedic remedies and reached Tang-dynasty China via a Persian recipe, listed among the drinks on sale in the capital Chang'an.

Chyawanprash, the Ayurvedic jam the Ashvin twins first made for the sage Chyavana, is based on which fruit?

Amla, the emblic or Indian gooseberry, is rich in vitamin C and sacred to all three gods of the Trimurti; half of one was the emperor Ashoka's final gift to the Buddhist sangha.

Shatavari, a traditional Indian tonic for menstrual and pregnancy health, shares its genus with which vegetable?

Asparagus racemosus grows pine-needle-like branches and blackish-purple berries, rooting in gravelly piedmont soils from Africa through southern Asia to northern Australia.

Guggul, the Ayurvedic resin tapped from Commiphora wightii, smells almost identical to which related resin?

Myrrh and guggul are near-twins in scent, both from the Burseraceae family; guggul appears in Ayurvedic texts dating back to 600 BC and is now cultivated commercially in India and Pakistan.

Which European country, where the Maharishi opened a clinic in 1987, recognised a federal Ayurveda diploma in 2015?

Switzerland's first Ayurvedic clinic, opened by the Maharishi in 1987, came two decades after Ayurveda began to be advertised as alternative medicine in the West during the 1960s.

Shilajit, a blackish-brown exudate known as mumijo in Russia, is gathered by Ayurvedic collectors from where?

Mountain crevices and caves at high altitude yield shilajit, literally 'rock bitumen' in Sanskrit and 'oil of the mountains' in Mongolia, from the Altai and Caucasus to the Karakoram and Pamirs.

The Sushruta Samhita says Ayurveda's professors count 360 bones; how many does its own surgical science recognise?

300 bones — 120 in the limbs, 117 in the pelvis, sides, back, abdomen and chest, and 63 from the neck up — is the surgeons' tally, well above the modern anatomical count of 206.

Which guru, who brought Ayurveda to the United States in the early 1970s, inspired the Mount Madonna Institute?

Baba Hari Dass invited teachers including Vasant Lad to America, and practitioner Michael Tierra wrote that the history of Ayurveda in North America 'will always owe a debt' to his selfless contributions.