Ayurvedic Technical Studies and Herbal Cosmetics of Ancient India

Exploring ancient Sanskrit texts for their scientific aspects adopting modern methods of rigorous investigative approaches can be said to have begun only recently. Two ancient sciences of India that can be said to be alive still in the old formats are Ayurveda and Gandharvaveda. We do have extensive ancient literature on these two as well as practical applications. In this book Ayurvedic Technical Studies and Herbal Cosmetics of Ancient India, five studies are presented. The first one deals with ecological resource management that the great Canakya mentions in considerable detail in his famous Artha Shastra. This is followed by a very technical study in Chapter 4 of an equally topical value that is concerned with cosmetics and perfume preparations as another famous person of Indian history, Varahamira deals with in his Brhatsamhita. The other three studies are concerned with an attempt of devising a rather new methodology of pharmaco-linguistics to solve the vexed problem of settling the botanical identity of ancient plant names of Ayurvedic texts on some rational basis. The last chapter presents the text of a paper on Exploring Plant Wealth in Sanskritic Works a paper presented by the author at the National Conference on Ethno-pharmacology held in Mysore.