Vol VIII, Issue 3
Date of Publication: July 02, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20529/IJME.2023.001
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Letters
Do Ayurveda students need a course in Medical Astrology?
Abstract:
Ayurveda is based largely upon two classics — Charaka-Samhita, representing the school of medicine, and Sushruta-Samhita representing that of surgery. These two texts mark the historic switch in the Indian medical tradition, from faith-based therapeutics to its reason-based variant [1]. The Charaka-Samhita, which acquired its present form in circa 1st century CE, uses two remarkable terms to designate the distinctness of these approaches: daiva-vyapashraya (literally, dependence on the unobservable) and yukti-vyapashraya (dependence on reason) [2].
Copyright and license
©Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 2023: Open Access and Distributed under the Creative Commons license ( CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits only non-commercial and non-modified sharing in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Scholars in India assume Astrology as superstition. IT is easy to call some branch of knowledge as superstition because we don’t understand it!!
An important issue, clearly illustrated.
Incidentally, today is the birthday of Swami Vivekananda. Let the ruling dispensation, which claims to derive inspiration from him, pay heed to his wise words.
“Excessive attention to the minutiae of astrology is one of the superstitions which has hurt the Hindus very much.
I have seen some astrologers who predicted wonderful things; but I have no reason to believe they predicted them only from the stars, or anything of the sort. In many cases it is simply mind-reading. Sometimes wonderful predictions are made, but in many cases it is arrant trash.
If you can get an explanation of a phenomenon from within its nature, it is nonsense to look for an explanation from outside. If the world explains itself, it is nonsense to go outside for an explanation. Have you found any phenomena in the life of a man that you have ever seen which cannot be explained by the power of the man himself? So what is the use of going to the stars or anything else in the world?…All these ideas such as astrology, although there may be a grain of truth in them, should be avoided.
If you want your nation to live, keep away from all these things.”
– Complete works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 8, Man the maker of his destiny