Health and Medicine in the Hindu Tradition

Continuity and Cohesion
PRAKASH N. DESAI

This work analyzes the religious and philosophical underpinnings of the traditions of medicine and the health ideals of Hindus, taking account of their historical and developmental moorings. Hindu concepts of the self and the body are explored to locate the themes of illness, wellness, sexuality, and relationships, on the one hand, and the traditions of curing, on the other. Ayurveda, the principal Hindu medical tradition, is examined from both classical and textual as well as folk and experiential perspectives.

Unlike other volumes in the Health/ Medicine and the Faith Traditions series, which have been written by ethicists, church historians, and theologians, this one is the work of a psychiatrist born in India and long resident in the West who deals quite candidly and personally with the tensions in his own life between traditional ways and modern medicine and the difficulties of adherence to Hindu beliefs and values while living in a non-Hindu culture.

PRAKASH N. DESAI is a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago and chief of psychiatric service at the VA West Side Medical Center in Chicago. He has also held appointment on the Committee of South Asian Studies of the University of Chicago.



Contents

Foreword by Martin E. Marty			ix
Acknowledgments			xiii
1.	Prologue: A Pilgrimage Begun		1
2.	Historical and Cultural Overview		5
3.	Samsara: The Stream of Life		17
4.	The Self		35
5.	The Body		47
6.	Sexuality		58
7.	Ayurveda: The Hindu Medical Tradition		73
8.	Kanna, Death, and Madness		93
9.	Gurus as Healers		104
10.	Epilogue: Being Together and Being Well		113
Notes			119
Glossary			135
Bibliography			139
Index			145

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