The Entextualization of Ayurveda as Intellectual

International Journal of Cultural Property (2012) 19:313–343. Printed in the USA.
Copyright © 2012 International Cultural Property Society
doi:10.1017/S0940739112000197
The Entextualization of Ayurveda
as Intellectual Property
Matthew Wolfgram*
Abstract: This article documents the practices of pharmaceutical creativity in
Ayurveda, focusing in particular on how practitioners appropriate multiple
sources to innovate medical knowledge. Drawing on research in linguistic
anthropology on the social circulation of discourse—a process called
entextualization—I describe how the ways in which Ayurveda practitioners
innovate medical knowledge confounds the dichotomous logic of intellectual
property (IP) rights discourse, which opposes traditional collective knowledge
and modern individual innovation. While it is clear that these categories do
not comprehend the complex nature of creativity in Ayurveda, I also use the
concept of entextualization to describe how recent historical shifts in the
circulation of discourse have caused a partial entailment of this opposition
between the individual and the collectivity. Ultimately, I argue that the method
exemplified in this article of tracking the social circulation of medical discourse
highlights both the empirical complexity of so-called traditional creativity, and
the politics of imposing the categories of IP rights discourse upon that
creativity, situated as it often is, at the margins of the global economy.
INTRODUCTION
The opposition of individualized creativity and ownership (which is modern, rational, and progressive), with common knowledge shared by a community (which
is traditional, nonrational, and static) is a central underlying assumption of the
so-called “efficiency arguments” 1 for the expansion of privatized IP into new and
controversial domains. The rationalization is as follows: The most effective way to
inspire innovation is for the state to confer property rights to individuals over
their new and original creations. The inducement of profit, then, institutionalized
*Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama. Email: [email protected]
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by the legal apparatus of private property, can serve as the rational motivation for
innovation. Thus, innovators are motivated to do so because their right to profit
from their innovations is legally secured, and in consequence, the relationship between individual innovation and individual profit is stabilized as an emergent and
rational feature of the market.
It has been argued that the concept of creativity employed in these efficiency
rationalizations is based upon a rarified conception of the individual as a creative
agent, who heroically works in isolation—separate from other persons, texts, and
contexts—and thus, whose innovations are original manifestations of inner genius, encapsulated in the mind of the individual person.2 Scientific discoveries are
often represented in just this way, as flashes of insight within the minds of great
scientists, but empirical research in their labs evidences the incremental character
of the discovery process, in which innovations are based in part on historically
prior research.3 Innovators often, perhaps always, draw inspiration from other
sources, many times explicitly so, and this social and intertextual nature of human
creativity is reflected and originates in the social and intertextual nature of thinking 4 and discourse 5 more fundamentally.
In spite of the dubious evidence for a heroic concept of the autonomous creative process, the commitment to high individualism has been ideologically central to the expansion of IP rights to encompass the knowledge of communities at
the periphery of the capitalist world system. Knowledge in these societies is represented as shared, common, and traditional, and as part of the set of beliefs and
practices that constitute how people produce a living. The socially transmitted and
nonindividualized nature of knowledge is represented as an exemplification of precisely what is wrong with these traditional societies—they lack the inducement of
private property and in consequence, they lack the pattern of innovation that characterizes modern, free-market societies.
The international legal response to the asymmetrical privatization of the knowledge of so-called traditional societies—as typified by the biopiracy of medical
knowledge by pharmaceutical capitalists—has relied heavily upon a particularly
exotic representation of the qualities of knowledge in such societies. Traditional
knowledge is often represented in international legal discourse as disembodied
cognition (i.e., pure ideation), for example as in the United Nations Education,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) concept of “intangible culture
heritage.” 6 While represented in that text as intangible, this culture, I argue,
is only realized and known through its manifestation of material artifacts,
embodied practices, and social relations. This idealist framing of culture is
part of the basis of what the United Nations (UN) World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has
called “Traditional Knowledge” (TK)—that is, knowledge held by a homogeneous and deindividualized collectivity that is believed to be a characteristic
of premodern societies.7 The irony here is that the extension of IP rights to
collectivized knowledge involves identifying a set of TK bearers—who are, of
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course, individual persons. There is a consistency of this logic in that the only
kind of culture capable of being a feature of such a deindividualized collectivity
is, of course, a generalized disembodied cognition (once knowledge is understood as embodied, it must also be understood as individualized, social mediated, and material). An additional irony of this idealist representation of TK is
that the copyright laws designed to protect such knowledge often require that a
material artifact form be tied to the claim 8 —that is, the laws require as an authentication the very materiality—individualized and socially mediated as it is—
that their own categories tend to obscure. As I argue below, neither the collectivity
nor the disembodied knowledge has any ontological reality, but they form a tautological and mutually reinforcing ideological representation. It is this representation of individual creativity and its opposite, TK, which dominates the discourse
of the expansion of IP rights.
Legal anthropologists and anthropologically oriented legal theorists have made
excellent headway in documenting the effects of IP law on societies on the margins of the capitalist world system.9 However, the response from anthropology in
general to the privatization of TK has not been critical enough of the binary logic
of modernization theory, with modern individuals with proper IP rights on the
one side, and traditional collectivities with ironic and problematic IP rights on the
other.10 The Ayurvedic pharmaceutical practices that I observed in Kerala (south
India) do not conform well to this private versus public, individual versus collectivity opposition. There, individual innovation is quotidian, and these individuals
profit by constraining the circulation of those innovations as the “secrets” (rahāsya) of their “lineage” ( prambara), or, conversely, they increase their “fame”
( praśasta), and thus, their clientele, by the disclosure and wide circulation of their
secret knowledge.
In this article, I document this case of creativity in Ayurvedic medicine by tracking some of the complexities of what linguistic anthropologists have called
“entextualization” 11 —that is, how practitioners appropriate and deploy the texts
and talk of expert and lay individuals and groups, and in doing so, also innovate,
inscribe, and circulate their own emergent medical knowledge. The role of texts as
authorities and as tools of the trade has been well documented for the “scholarly
medical traditions,” including Galenic, classical Chinese, and Ayurvedic medicines.12 However, the concept of entextualization that I draw upon and develop
here is not limited to the writing and deployment of text but rather the appropriation, circulation, and transformation of discourse more generally (that is, it
includes but is not limited to text). For example, while contemporary Western biomedicine is excluded from the text-based “scholarly medical traditions” documented by Don Bates and his colleagues, it is, in fact, the case that clinical
encounters in contemporary biomedicine involve a great deal of reports of other
peoples’ discourse. All participants in such clinical encounters, including patients,
their copresent social relations, doctors, and other medical professionals, tell stories about themselves and about others that often reference or report prior dis-
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course from other social domains. Participants report the discourse of prior clinical
encounters or of encounters with other medical professionals and patients, and
they cite research and other sources of medical knowledge to bolster their claims,
including professional journal articles, the Internet, and TV, and what they have
been told by other interlocutors. Clinical encounters frequently include a great
deal of such talk about talk. The entextualization of talk in biomedical clinical
encounters is often re-entextualized in other subsequent contexts, either through
more talk about talk or through bureaucratic entextualizations, such as notes
in the patient’s file used to document the diagnosis and treatment for the purpose of billing an insurance company and/or to document that professional and
legal ethical guidelines are being followed. Discourse from clinical encounters is
also entextualized in research reports (and re-entextualized thereafter), and the
present text that you now read is itself one such entextualization of Ayurveda
discourse, as are the IP discourses that I will discuss below. So, while entextualization seems to refer to a process common to medical discourse generally,13 we
shall see that its processes and consequences take forms that are particular to the
history of Ayurveda. This claim that the historical particulars of Ayurveda effect
the circulation of medical discourse will not be too surprising or controversial.
In this article, however, I make the additional argument that the particular process of this circulation of discourse in Ayurveda is itself a mechanism of historical change.
Entextualization is a concept that I use to describe moments of creativity, when
the words and texts of other speakers and of other authors are joined with one’s
one voice. This is a generative process in that the act of entextualization itself is
the production of discourse, and thus, creates the conditions for other future entextualizations. Indian medical practitioners entextualize in their daily clinical and
intellectual activity by drawing upon and coordinating various sources, including
their codified textual tradition, the talk and texts of their teachers and peers, and
their own clinical experience.
There are two features of entextualization that I want to foreground as particularly relevant to the debate on the expansion of IP rights. One is that entextualizations involve a representation of the ultimate authority of an utterance,
what Erving Goffman has called the “Principal.” 14 An utterance’s Principal may
in some cases contrast with the person who designed the utterance (the Author)
and the person who utters the utterance (the Animator). Representations of
Principal-hood are the basis of the production of value and of property claims
over such value. The entextualizations of medical knowledge that I will describe
below often involve hybrid projections of Principal status, combining the authorities of particular individuals, social groups such as lineages and tribes, institutions such as laboratories and temples, God, the tradition of Ayurveda, and the
Indian state.
The second relevant feature of entextualization practice that relates to property claims is that entextualizations are not only representations of the Principal
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317
of a claim to knowledge, but they are authentications of the value of that knowledge. This is one of the important relationships between language and political
economy argued by Judith Irvine as central to the development of a critical anthropology of value.15 Language is multifunctional, and one of its functions is
to refer to the world, that is, the property of reference. The authentication of
reference is based on a “linguistic division of labor,” 16 which in this case is constituted by experts such as Ayurveda doctors, drug producers, and scientists of
various sorts, who entextualize the value of that reference. These experts create
documents or perform testimony that a particular drug is made of certain ingredients in specified amounts (and not of other ingredients in different amounts),
and that the drug will help with a particular health problem (and not harm the
person or do nothing at all). Entextualizations are thus discourse performances
and text inscriptions that authenticate the value that is the basis of a property
claim. As we shall see below, only some entextualizations of value produced by a
linguistic division of labor are recognized by the current global patent regime.
This article will track the “natural histories of discourse” 17 created through
the entextualization practices of Ayurvedic medical practitioners in Kerala. This
analysis will make clear that creativity in Indian medicine is not well understood
by the current discourse of privatization and its countercritique. The article also
documents, however, two historical shifts in the entextualization of Ayurveda
knowledge that have entailed a partial imposition of the public/private dichotomy. First, I describe a reification of the opposition between “codified received
knowledge” (śāstra) and its “interpretation” (vyākhyāna) based on “experience”
(anubhava) that occurred in the late British colonial period. The second shift in
entextualization involves the dual adoption in India of the World Trade Organization (WTO) patent regime (through Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights [TRIPS])18 and the CBD, which entail, respectively, the individual
and the community as the units of ownership. These shifts in Principal-hood
represent a partial imposition in Ayurveda of the public/private, collectivity/
individual conception of knowledge that is indicative of the IP rights discourse.
These shifts also demonstrate a key theoretical innovation of this article, that
entextualization is not only subject to the particulars of history, but it has important historical consequences in itself. Thus, the concept of entextualization
refers to a mechanism of historical action with particular consequences in the
age of IP law and discourse.
I propose that more research on the intertextual character of innovation can
shed light on the complexities of creativity in different societies—complexities that
will likely trouble the received categories of modernization theory. I also argue
that this focus on entextualization can expose the processes involved in the imposition of those categories on the knowledge-production practices of societies at
the margins of global capitalism. However, before delving into the case of creativity in Indian medicine, we should consider in more detail the categories promoted
by the discourse of privatization.
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INDIVIDUALISM AND ITS OTHER IN THE
DISCOURSES OF PRIVATIZATION
The imposition of the international patent regime in India through the adaption
of TRIPS expanded a legal concept of individualized IP. The international legal
response to this institutionalization has been to assert the predominately common and social nature of knowledge in societies situated at the geopolitical margins. The legal theorist James Boyle defended the intellectual basis for this collectivist
framing of TK.19 He argued against the heroic concept of innovation central to IP
theory, that innovations can be understood as created solely by individual persons. Rather, inventors draw upon a “cultural commons,” the so-called public domain, which provides the raw materials out of which innovation is fashioned. He
also suggested that TK is a form of cultural commons, and he developed the metaphor of “cultural environmentalism” to suggest that the conservation of this common knowledge was a benefit to humankind that was worthy of recognition and
protection under IP law. Boyle’s metaphor provided a needed basis for the legal
recognition of the knowledge of the Global South. “Paradoxically, however,” as argued by Madhavi Sunder in her excellent critique, “the concepts of ‘traditional
knowledge,’ the ‘public domain,’ and ‘cultural environmentalism’ are now proving
to be obstacles to understanding poor people’s knowledge as intellectual property.” 20 The reason for this unintended consequence is because these concepts assume a form of knowledge that is static and devoid of a generative process of
innovation. These categories represent the possessors of such TK as the stewards
of the raw materials that might form the basis of novel innovations. These stewards of the cultural commons are not themselves innovators, however. And the
denial of innovation, as Vandana Shiva argued, is the central and defining feature
of the act of biopiracy.21 While the creation of the legal category of TK provided
a basis for recognizing a previously obscured source of innovation, the particular
static and collectivist framing of the concept left intact the opposition of tradition
and modernity—that is, between knowers and innovators—at the basis of the asymmetrical structure of IP discourse.
Consider, for example, the definition of culture in the UNESCO Convention
for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage:
The intangible cultural heritage means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith—that communities, groups
and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage
(emphasis mine).22
The individual is the marked and exceptional category in opposition to the unmarked and normative culture-bearer categories: communities and groups. The
definition is not clear regarding how it is possible for intangible culture to be a
definitive feature of communities and groups but for it to be only an occasional
feature of the individuals within those communities and groups. I suspect that
THE ENTEXTUALIZATION OF AYURVEDA AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
319
this privileging of the collectivity relates to the second problem in the definition,
its idealist framing of culture. In fact, intangible cultural heritage is mainly described in ideational terms as “. . . representations, expressions, knowledge, skills. . . . ”
However, such “intangible” ideation is only realized through its social-material forms
of (1) “practices,” (2) in terms of the idea’s objective and spatial materializations
as “. . . instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces . . . , ” and (3) mediated by
bodies in the context of social relations, “. . . communities, groups and, in some
cases, individuals. . . . ” How does this idealization of culture affect the legal institutions designed to coordinate an international approach to IP rights?
UN WIPO aims to expand IP to reward creativity, which includes the international coordination of IP laws. Another goal is the extension of IP law to include what they call traditional knowledge (TK). WIPO amendments on the
protection of TK have focused on ensuring that IP rights are not given to those
who are not the customary TK holders. WIPO definitions of TK include the “knowhow, skills, innovations, practices, and learning which is collectively generated, preserved and transmitted. . . . ” 23 Note the predominantly idealist framing of TK, which
is produced “in a collective framework including codified knowledge systems. . . . ” 24
There is, however, an important material component to the WIPO framing of TK,
which is its representation of TK as “part of a collective, ancestral, territorial, spiritual, cultural, intellectual and material heritage” (emphasis mine).25 This last component, the “material heritage,” is part of the bio-ecological nature of TK, as
“intrinsically linked to biodiversity natural resources.” 26 Thus, the link between
TK, the collective, and the ecology is essentialized, and TK itself is represented as
“inalienable, indivisible and imprescriptible” 27 from the people who have produced it. This last statement belies the rather obvious fact that knowledge produced in any context, including the TK context, can take a discursive form, and it
is thus alienable, which is precisely the reason for the extension of IP rights to TK
knowledge holders. The CBD has left the TK category undefined but encourages a
conception of TK as a community’s relationship to their environment. “Traditional lifestyles” and “[local] knowledge,” described in Article 8(j) of the Convention, is to be protected by national legislation because of its relevance “for the
conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.” 28 The Nagoya Protocol
of the Convention on Biological Diversity specifically develops this theme of TK
and TK holders as bound to nature (in effect, TK as nature).29
These representations of TK approximate very closely the foundational concept
of culture in the history of anthropology and sociology, classically defined by Emile
Durkheim as a shared set of publically available symbols that serve the function of
binding persons together in social solidarity.30 In this framework, TK is acquired
as common knowledge by members of the group and the role of the individuals
within the group is to embody and reproduce that knowledge. All members of the
society have equal access to the knowledge, and everyone has equal use rights. Of
course, this Durkheimian perspective overemphasizes the shared and homogeneous
qualities of culture. This problem became obvious to the first and later genera-
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tions of anthropologists who attempted to develop Durkheim’s ideas,31 who found
that individuals in other societies cannot be collapsed into pure collectivities and
that a more complex and hybrid concept of social solidarity was required. Also
problematic, however, is the idealization of culture at play in the concept of TK.
Knowledge, represented as common, is a concept that lacks any embodiment within
a social context. What are the social and material conditions of the entextualization of this knowledge, its creation, circulation, and use? This idealist concept of
culture is based on the Cartesian conception of knowledge as pure cognition—
separate from objective, tangible, bodily materiality. This idealization of culture
has certainly been the subject of a rather sustained critique, especially from Marx
and the traditions following him: Soviet psychology, literary studies, and British
cultural Marxism.32
In the history of American anthropology, a debate took place specifically about
this issue of the ontology of culture, between the first-generation Boasians: Alfred
Louis Kroeber and Edward Sapir.33 Kroeber argued that culture is superorganic in
nature, and thus, that it exists independently of the individuals in a society. Sapir
responded, quite rightly from the perspective of current anthropology, that it is
individuals who produce, change, and transmit culture, that there is considerable
individual and social variation of culture within a society, and that individuals
present their culture differently depending on the social context. Likewise, TK
should be seen not as a superorganism but rather the embodied knowledge, skills,
and practices that are realized in social and material contexts.
While there are strong conceptual grounds for a more materialist and individualized concept of culture, the empirical evidence of individualization in Ayurveda
makes the case more clear. In the conclusion of this article I return to anthropology’s
potential roles in debates about IP, but first, in the sections that follow, I demonstrate the more complex nature of the relationship between individual and society
in the context of Ayurveda. I first develop this case in terms of the practices and
ideologies related to the codified, received tradition in Ayurveda—the domain of
knowledge most closely associated with the community of medical practitioners.
BETWEEN “RECEIVED KNOWLEDGE” (ŚĀSTRA)
AND “EXPERIENCE” (ANUBHAVA)
There is a rich literature in the anthropology and history of medicine that focuses
on the processes of innovation in Indian medicine, particularly concerning the
practice of cross-disciplinary appropriation between Ayurveda and other South
Asian medical practices, and between Ayurveda and biomedical science and medicine. The work of the anthropologist Charles Leslie is particularly important to
mention because he was the first to explicitly center medical pluralism as an object of study, specifically by foregrounding the processes of syncretism between
medical traditions.34 This was a radical insight when Leslie first documented the
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321
process of medical syncretism in the early 1970s. Anthropologists of that day had
uncritically accepted a purist ideology of Western medical hegemony in India, assuming that plural medical systems were abnormal, historical survivals of a premodern culture. Leslie’s countercritique framed some key questions about the
history and practice of Ayurveda that continue to motivate a great deal of productive inquiry, including the present inquiry. Almost every anthropologist of
Ayurveda has had to deal with the syncretistic nature of contemporary Ayurveda
and the plural context of healing in India, and there are many excellent works that
analyze specific syncretistic projects 35 and plural medical systems.36 Also, Jean Langford’s excellent monograph provides us with an ethnographically detailed account
about how various doctors, differently positioned, inhabit and contest the hegemonic discourses and boundaries of Ayurveda.37 Leslie understood the asymmetrical nature of the relationship between Ayurveda and biomedicine, and thus, his
work anticipated many of the events and social movements of twenty-first-century
Ayurveda. These include medical tourism,38 the New Age movement,39 pharmaceutical industrialization and biotechnology,40 and the globalization of Ayurveda
knowledge.41
So, it should be clear that the theme of medical innovation is well developed in
the anthropology and history of South Asian medicine. However, such innovation
is not limited to syncretism, and it is not only historically recent, as the overwhelming focus in the literature on the hybrid character of Ayurvedic modernity
would have us assume. The anthropologists Gananath Obeyesekere and Margaret
Trawick, for example, have documented the more quotidian forms of medical innovation, including experimentation with different drugs or combinations of drugs
to treat patients with complex or novel symptoms, and the process of discussing
and debating such treatments with colleagues.42 Likewise, it is clear from the work
of the Sanskrit medical historian Francis Zimmermann, that such quotidian and
disciplinary forms of medical innovation were central to the historical development of Ayurveda’s epistemology.43 While it is the case in this epistemology that
certain sources of knowledge are considered to be highly privileged (and even divine), they are not understood by practitioners to be beyond question and further
development.
The most privileged of the epistemologically authoritative sources of truth in
Hindu philosophy is the divinely authored and transcendent knowledge of the
four vedas. Ayurveda is considered a “sub-Veda” (upaveda) of the third veda, the
Atharvaveda, and like many other traditions of learning in India it claims a Vedalike transcendent authority by tracing an unbroken “lineage” ( parampara) back
to a divine source.44 Contemporary practitioners of Ayurveda are not exclusively
Hindu, but they nevertheless understand how Ayurveda is related to this historically ancient tradition. As such, their formal training in Ayurveda colleges involves
the many hours of work necessary to acquire some competency in classical Sanskrit, and to study and to learn to interpret the authoritative texts of their tradition. The most respected sources of knowledge in Ayurveda are a set of “compendia”
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(samhitā)
ខ
known as the “great three” (bខrhat-trayı̄ ), which are Carakasa mhitā
ខ
(c. 300–200 bce), Suśrutasamhitā
ខ
(c. 200–100 bce), and Aខsខtāṅgahខrdaya (c. 600
ce).45 These texts constitute Ayurveda’s epistemologically authoritative corpus of
codified knowledge. Such knowledge is collectively known as śāstra.
The term śāstra has a variety of meanings and, depending on both the context
of use and the political orientations of the practitioner, the term can be translated
into English in a number of ways that might seem contradictory. These translations include both “scientific knowledge” (in the cosmopolitan and historically
Western sense) and “sacred knowledge” (in the Hindu religious sense), or simply
“a discipline of knowledge,” scientific, sacred, or otherwise. Ayurveda practitioners, however, who would themselves deploy the term in these myriad ways, emphasized to me that śāstra is knowledge that is “handed down”—handed down
from God, from their lineage, from the texts, and/or from prior vaidya trained in
the tradition. Śāstra is thus time-tested knowledge. Practitioners with Marxist or
modernist inclinations (both not uncommon in Kerala) tend to interpret this “history” (caritra) as the basis of Ayurveda’s scientific status, whereas others interpret
the time depth of Ayurveda as a sign of the knowledge’s descent from a divine
cosmological source (and in my experience, many practitioners hold some combination of both positions). Whatever an individual’s orientation toward such issues, to become an Ayurveda practitioner, students must (quite literally) embody
śāstra by committing large amounts of text to memory. This process can be seen
depicted above in Photograph 1, which shows a group of female students at an
Ayurveda college studying for an exam by repeatedly reciting the assigned verses,
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323
emphasizing with their steps the conclusion of each hemistich as they pace back
and forth along the hallway. Students learn how to produce these verses in their
distinctively metricalized form and to interpret them as key points of Ayurveda
knowledge. The citation of such verses is a common practice in classroom pedagogy and scientific debate and is often deployed to evidence the speaker’s “interpretation” (vyākhyāna) of the tradition.46 Ultimately, and again this is a point made
very systematically by the work of Francis Zimmermann, Ayurveda doctors embody their acquired knowledge of śāstra through their daily clinical practice.47 This
occurs whenever they apply the basic principles, such as the “three humors” (tridoខsa)
and others of importance, to the work of healing patients from the uniquely “ecological” perspective of Ayurveda.48
Śāstra—vaidya-śāstra (medical science) in particular—is different from other
forms of sacred or “spiritual” (devika) knowledge that originated from or are understood to be a comment upon the transcendent authority of the vedas. The function and healing of the human body is a decidedly “worldly concern” (laukika). As
a consequence, the śāstra of medicine must deal quite directly with the complexity
and contingency of human persons, environments, and social contexts. Thus, vaidya
do not (in fact, cannot) apply the knowledge of śāstra in a law-like manner, but
rather, they must employ both “reason” ( yukti ) and their “experience” (anubhava) acquired through clinical “practice” ( prayoga), to construct an “interpretation” (vyākhyāna) that is appropriate to the contingencies of the particular patient
and context.
This process of particularizing śāstra to the complexities and contingencies of
the clinical context is also the process of individuating the clinical style and creativity of particular practitioners. In Kerala, one common term for an expert practitioner in any field is an anubhavastan, meaning “one with experience.” Vaidya
with decades of experience often acquire considerable “fame” ( praśasta) within
the “medical community” (vaidya sampradāya) and within the community at large.
Still today, these individuals are shown great respect with rituals of bodily deference. Such vaidya are bhahūmanappettarar, or “respected persons,” who are often
addressed by the respect term “(proper name)-sar” and referenced with the respectful third-person pronoun ādeham (lit., “that body”). The testimony of learned
and sagely individuals (āptoupadeśa) is described in the classical texts as a valid
source of true knowledge because the perception of these rare persons is not constrained by “delusion” (tamas) and “passion” (rajas).49 “Experience” is thus a key
concept employed by vaidya to cognize their individual relationship with their
tradition and their particular interpretation and style of practice.
Some practitioners acquire a degree of local and regional “fame” ( praśasta) as
healers, and in consequence, they benefit from an expanded clientele. Their patients sometimes ascribe an enhanced mystical efficacy to the medicines of these
special healers. One doctor I worked with was reputed by her patients to possess
a considerable degree of this mystical efficacy, her “hand fruit” or “hand luck”
(kaiphala). These patients would receive the drugs only directly from her hand,
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and they would come in droves on days of the week and month associated with
increased auspiciousness in the Hindu calendar. This doctor encouraged and benefited from this stylization of her clinical practice, but she did not believe in the
mystical concept of kaiphala or that drugs purchased on more auspicious days
were more effective. Rather, the drugs were effective because she prepared them
with expertise according to śāstra. The specific preparations delineated in śāstra
are not always available, however, on account of supply shortages in medicinal
plants or because the plant is no longer extent or its botanical identity is now
unknown. In such cases, which were quite common, she would innovate by adding other ingredients with similar “qualities” (guខna). Such innovations were
commonly practiced by all but the most novice vaidya I knew in Kerala. This
pharmaceutical creativity is based on “research” (gavēខsnខ a) in the form of clinical
experimentation and observation, and on the application of Ayurveda’s “theory
of material qualities” (dravya-guខna-vijñāna), which relates an “action” (karma)
of a substance to its “savors” (rasa), “qualities” (guខna) and “properties of hotness
and coldness” (vı̄rya).
This form of pharmaceutical innovation is facilitated by the material complexity of Ayurveda drugs. The ingredients themselves have several qualities and effects, and every drug is a combination or “juncture” ( yōga) of multiple ingredients,
which are processed together in different ways that change and enhance the drug’s
clinical effect. This resembles what James Boyle has referred to as the property of
“high modularity,” 50 which allows for different individuals to contribute to different parts of a materially complex product (e.g., open-source software code).
Based on experience, research, reason, and the novel extension and application of
the theory of material qualities, doctors innovate by tailoring the drugs described
in the codified tradition of śāstra to meet the contingencies of the healing context.
Such innovations are developed in the context of practice and repeatedly entextualized in subsequent clinical encounters and in discussions and debates with
other practitioners.51 Historically, one method used to inscribe the insights of clinical practice was the process of “redaction” ( pratisamskara), which is the reproduction of a text while also filling in gaps and contributing new information to
the text. The redaction of śāstra is a method for encompassing one’s knowledge
and innovation within śāstra. This is in contrast with the Ayurveda genre of “interpretation” (vyākhyāna), which makes a clear metatextual distinction between
the śāstra as the ur-text and the interpretation-text. The three main texts of the
Ayurveda śāstra are primarily associated with their most prominent author, but
those individuals were themselves redactors of prior texts, and they are recognized
as such. Caraka redacted the text of Atreya, for example, and the text now bears
the name Carakasamhitā,
ខ
which has been redacted since by Drខdខ habala. There are
likely many others who are unnamed who have contributed their knowledge to
śāstra through the process of redaction. Pratisamskara is thus a process of entextualizing knowledge gained through various pathways and inscribing it as tradition. In some cases the authorship is identified, but in most cases it is not.
THE ENTEXTUALIZATION OF AYURVEDA AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
325
Redaction appears to have been a common practice in Kerala up until the printing of edited versions of the “palm-leaf manuscripts” (tali ōla grantha) of locally
relevant Malayalam medical texts. For example, the edited and printed version of
Cikitsamañjari (Collection of Treatments) was compiled from three main palmleaf manuscripts that were in the possession of lineages of high-caste practitioners
called Aខsខtaviadyan-s. The text went through two rounds of editing, and the first
printed version of the Cikitsamañjari was published in 1934. The second editor of
the printed Cikitsamañjari describes in the preface how each of the three manuscripts had differences because of redactions made by the practitioners in those
lineages.52 To my knowledge, this editor was the last redactor of that text. He compared the three versions to reconstruct the most complete text and then, without
adding his own insights, he checked the reconstruction against a number of other
versions of the text. Unlike the palm-leaf manuscripts, the printed text is inexpensive to reproduce and widely available in Malayalam bookstores that specialize in
Indian culture.
The printed book became the privileged version of the text, which is used in Kerala in the education at Ayurveda colleges. Government Ayurveda colleges throughout India established publications departments charged with the task of editing,
translating, and publishing rare Ayurveda manuscripts for the purpose of Ayurveda
education. The Government Ayurveda College in Thiruvananthapuram and the
Arya Vaidya Sala in Kōtខខtakkalខ have been prolific in their publication efforts. Charles
Leslie described the canonization of Ayurveda literature that occurred with the national standardization of Ayurveda education.53 The required and recommended
texts were delineated in the national curriculum. One consequence of this process
was that the Carakasamhitā
ខ
was nationalized as the pan-Indian text of Ayurveda for
education in the colleges—and this was a historically novel innovation in Kerala
where the Aខsខtāṅgahខrdaya continues to be the favored text.
Another important implication of this canonization, however, is more subtle
than the standardization of the tradition taught in colleges. The cessation of the
historical process of redaction closed an avenue for the expansion of the tradition
and thus, led to the increase of the bifurcation between śāstra and its interpretation. It stabilized śāstra by closing down the process used to incorporate innovations within the textual tradition. The edited printed versions visually manifest
the distinction between the original text and expansions and interpretations included through redaction. The text and commentary of the printed Cikitsamañjari have separate lines and margins on the page. I had been studying the printed
text for some time, and this visual regimentation of text and commentary did not
strike me as historically radical. This changed the moment I sat in the manuscript
library at the University of Kerala and held my first palm-leaf manuscript. The
scribe had used every available space on the leaf. Sentence boundaries were not
marked, and there was no visual-spatial demarcation of the text and its commentary. Thus, the textual objectification of śāstra through printing also entailed an
increased visualization of the opposition of text and commentary.
326
MATTHEW WOLFGRAM
With this closure of śāstra, vaidya have had to develop new ways of entextualizing their experience. Since the colonial period, vaidya have used small handheld
hardcover notebooks (note bookŭ) in which they enter their “research” (gavēខsnខ a)
notes from their observations of clinical practice. Doctors in Kerala can frequently
be seen with a note bookŭ in hand, often a recycled datebook. In some cases, practitioners share these notes with novices in their lineage, or with students from the
college in a practical study in their clinic. In the clinics and colleges where I conducted my fieldwork, I would occasionally observe a senior practitioner signal the
students to gather and open their note bookŭ, and at these moments all students
would do so promptly and with great bodily deference, recognizing the gift of
experience that was being given. Part of the motivation behind such entextualizations of experience is the belief in the possibility of rediscovering lost panaceas, or
“divine drugs” (divya-auខsadha), which are very “simple drugs” (oគrគramūli ) with
miraculous healing effects. Carakasamhitā
ខ
records the names and wondrous effects of such “divine drugs,” but their botanical identity is unknown to today’s
practitioners.
With the increasingly wide availability of print and digital technology, some
practitioners have published their experiences, for example, K. D. Kuññurāman
Vaidyan’s Cikilsa Anubhavaṅṅaខl (Treatment Experiences).54 Likewise, professors at
the Ayurveda colleges would sometimes type up their “anubhavaṅṅaខl” (experiences) as handouts, and students would often treat the computer printout itself
with an aura of respect that might be given a rare palm-leaf manuscript. Thus,
with the closure of the textual tradition, vaidya have developed novel modes for
entextualizing their experience. The continued expansion of the publishing industry in postcolonial Kerala caused the birth of many new genres of Ayurveda literature. This generic diversification includes Ayurveda “translations” (tarjama),
“dictionaries” (nighantu), “encyclopedia” (vijñānakōśa), “textbooks” ( pāខthapustaka),
“pamphlets” (laghulekha), and books oriented toward the public on special topics. None of these new genres are śāstra, but they all represent śāstra in new forms
and thus provide new venues for authors to entextualize their knowledge.
So far we have addressed the local ideologies of truth in the Ayurveda practiced
in Kerala and how experience is entextualized as tradition. It should be clear that
Ayurveda is an example of TK that is common to the community of practitioners,
and at the same time that individual innovation is viewed as central to the practice of that tradition. Importantly, both strategies of encompassing experience
within tradition through anonymous redaction and through asserting individual
authorship, either as a known redactor or as an interpreter, are historically ancient
in Ayurveda literature. The institutionalization of Ayurveda colleges with national
standardized curriculum and the development of an Ayurveda print industry were
part of the historical process that caused a partial bifurcation of text and context,
community and individual, public and private, and tradition and innovation. To
be sure, colonialism, nationalism, print capitalism, educational bureaucratic institutionalization, and scientific modernity in India did not create authors and in-
THE ENTEXTUALIZATION OF AYURVEDA AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
327
dividuals where before there was only the total encompassment of tradition.
However, the closure of the authoritative texts did cause significant changes in the
entextualization of experience in Ayurveda, most notably, an increased externalization of the genres of experience and interpretation from the now unified genre
of śāstra. But again, this is a partial bifurcation, and the next section addresses
how it is possible to profit from the porous boundary between the individual innovation and traditional codified knowledge. I will focus in particular on the case
of one highly successful Siddha Ayurveda practitioner. The case illustrates how
practitioners encompass their innovations within the tradition, a representational
practice that is an effective entrepreneurial strategy to profit from novel clinical
insights.
ENTEXTUALIZATIONS OF INNOVATIONS AS
“RECEIVED KNOWLEDGE” (ŚĀSTRA)
When Ayurveda practitioners in Kerala talk about the topic of Ayurveda they often
speak in a voice that unifies śāstra, interpretation, reason, and experience into a
singular perspective of “the tradition.” Examples 1 and 2 are utterances taken from
a Malayalam television program where an Ayurveda doctor is discussing the procedures for insuring a healthy pregnancy. The ultimate authority for these utterances (that is, the Principal) is linguistically ambiguous.
Example 1:
in the first months nourishing food . . (I) am saying to eat clarified butter and milk
ādhya m
ខ māsaṅṅal pōខsaខna m
ខ āhāra m
ខ . . atāyiyatŭ neyi pal kaគlikkān
paគrayunnuខnខtŭ
Example 2:
it is on the basis of the content inside it . . (I) am saying that it is MEDICATED ghee . .
atinakattŭ CONTENT anusariccŭ āខnŭ . . atum
ខ MEDICATED ghee āខnŭ
paគrayunnatŭ . .
(I) am recommending that it not be eaten without purpose
atŭ veគrute kaគlikkān alla uddēśikkunnatŭ
In my translation I have included the first-person pronoun in parentheses so that
the English text will not sound awkward or overly vague. However, the pronouns
are absent in the Malayalam utterances. Unlike in English, Malayalam pronouns
may be easily dropped in situations where authority or status distinctions might
be usefully left ambiguous. Thus, the doctor does not distinguish with pronouns
her own authority as an Ayurveda doctor (as an experienced practitioner and interpreter of the tradition) and the authority of Ayurveda as a codified textual tradition. Furthermore, Malayalam has lost its person and number verb terminations,
328
MATTHEW WOLFGRAM
which contrasts with the closest related Dravidian language Tamil, as well as with
the Sanskrit-derived languages of North India (Hindi, Bengali, etc.). In Example
1, the auxiliary and main verb forms “saying to eat” (kalគikkān parគayunnunខ ខtŭ) lack
any morphological or pronominal indicator of Principal. The same is true of the
verbs in Example 2, “parគayunnatŭ” and “uddēśikkunnatŭ,” which I have translated
as “(I) am saying” and “(I) am recommending,” but which lack the linguistic determination of the speaker as the Principal (and the segments also lack any indication that the tradition is the Principal as well). Malayalam pronouns would
distinguish the doctor as the authoritative voice, whereas a variety of institutional
and social identity noun forms could be used to ascribe authority to the tradition
itself.
Ayurveda doctors often speak in this voice, which is neutral or ambiguous as to
whether the Principal of the utterance is the tradition of Ayurveda (that is, śāstra)
or whether it is the individual practitioner. In utterances such as these, she does
not separate herself from the received tradition—the textual tradition is not distinguished from her interpretation of it (i.e., context)—which is an authoritative
style used to represent “the tradition” and one’s expertise as unified. Similar to the
epic voice of literature,55 the voice of expertise in Ayurveda represents a unified
tradition and collapses the tradition’s multivoiced complexity. Certainly such differences exist—differences in the interpretation of texts, differences in applying
the tradition in clinical experience—and practitioners often foreground them in
debates and other contexts. However, there is a clear tendency for practitioners to
represent their knowledge “as Ayurveda,” rather than their particular individualized perspective or interpretation. I asked a retired professor at an Ayurveda college why novel clinical insights are sometimes represented by practitioners “as śāstra”
(śāstriyamāyiខtខtŭ), and she explained that this is an example of the conservative
nature of the “Indian personality” (bharatı̄ya svabhava), to attribute things of value
(even apparently novel things of value) to the golden age of Indian history. There
is a particular political orientation to this conservatism, which I describe elsewhere.56 However, I focus here on the role of this practice of encompassing innovations within the tradition not as a sign of a particular type of person but rather
as an entrepreneurial strategy. It is one important way in which practitioners profit
from their innovations.
Ganesh Vaidyan is a lineage-trained Siddha medical practitioner, which is popular in Kerala’s neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. He is also a pharmaceutical
entrepreneur who lives in the rural hinterland of Kerala’s capital city of Thiruvananthapuram. He makes a living as an itinerant drug hawker, and my attention was originally drawn to his pharmaceutical operation in large part because
of its astounding success. In two large Humvee trucks, Ganesh Vaidyan and his
staff would travel to the major cities of southern Kerala to hawk his drugs in
markets, outside temples, and in large, crowded bus stands. I observed these events
throughout the course of my research. As soon as Ganesh Vaidyan would start
his sales pitch, a large crowd would invariably gather, and on such occasions
THE ENTEXTUALIZATION OF AYURVEDA AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
329
commerce was often quite swift. His operation became so successful that he was
able to start marketing his drugs in some of the “English” biomedical pharmacies in Thiruvananthapuram, where his drugs were shelved next to designer brand
Ayurveda cosmetics such as herbal hair tonics and soaps.
In interesting ways, his operation is a marginal case in the region’s plural political economy of medicine. Siddha texts are written in the Tamil language. The
practitioners and apologists of Siddha who live in Tamil Nadu tend to emphasize
the exclusively Tamil origin of the practice, which is linked with Dravidian nationalist conceptions of the primordial Tamil nation. This nation is constituted in
opposition to the Aryan and Sanskrit civilization which, they say, spread southward throughout the subcontinent as an aggressor. In contrast, in Kerala, the Sanskrit tradition of Ayurveda is known to be among the most historically robust in
India, and the practice is extremely popular throughout the region, which is one
of the few places in the subcontinent where patients see Ayurveda doctors as their
primary care physicians. So, in the Kerala context, the Dravidian nationalist representation of Siddha’s opposition to Ayurveda and Sanskrit culture is a relatively
ineffective entrepreneurial strategy, and the few Siddha practitioners that I observed catered to a mainly Tamil clientele. This is in large part on account of Ayurveda’s ideological hegemony and popularity in the regional political economy of
medicine. Thus, Ganesh Vaidyan has adapted a bivalent representation of self and
his medicine, as a practitioner of Siddha Ayurveda, which in Kerala is both foreign and exotic, and local and culturally legible (the strategy is apparently common in the Kerala-Tamil periphery).57
In Photograph 2, we see the spatial organization of Ganesh Vaidyan’s performance of this bivalency, the staged drug-hawking event. The scene is being made
ready for his arrival and performance. In the left corner, a worker is preparing
Ganesh Vaidyan’s main commodity, a medicinal oil used to treat vāta conditions
such as rheumatism. In the center of the photograph are 108 medicinal-plant ingredients displayed in little boxes, reminiscent of a natural history collection without the labels. To the right of the photograph, a salesman interacts with customers.
Ayurveda and Siddha medicines are famously complex, produced from a composite of a great number and variety of constituent ingredients. However, 108 constituents are far more than typical, and in consequence, the “medicinal oil” (tailam)
ខ
that results is a dark odorous viscos substance, full of many “qualities.” Ganesh
Vaidyan was very clear in my discussions with him that he enhanced the drug
taught to him by his father by adding common folk-medical ingredients that he
learned about since moving to Kerala and other ingredients that he took from
other drugs used in his tradition. His drug sales pitch referenced a few of the folk
medicines included in the tailam
ខ as a strategy to identify with the audiences’ regional botanical “folk knowledge” (natŭ-aគrivŭ). He encompassed his knowledge
within the codified tradition of Ayurveda, a point which was emphasized in the
speech that he delivered to an audience of about 150 onlookers one night outside
the main temple in Thiruvananthapuram’s historic fort complex:
330
MATTHEW WOLFGRAM
1
This is Ayurveda. 2 When I speak of Ayurveda it is often asked. 3 “No
dear Vaidyar . . . Who discovered this Ayurveda?” 4My father . . . my father’s
grandfather and so on were Vaidya. 5 No one among us has discovered
(Ayurveda). 6 Who (then) discovered Ayurveda? 7 In the (ancient) time
when the Gods lived they had sickness. 8 (When) all of these Gods ran
together where did they arrive? 9 They arrived next to (Lord) Brahmāvŭ.
10
The advice given by (Lord) Brahmāvŭ to the Gods is the Veda. . . .
Ayurveda. 11 The Veda is . . . the advice that Valខខlŭ, Varakāsuri, Dhanvantari, Kūpam
ខ , and all the rest of the 18 sages discovered. 12 It was the Siddhars who discovered it. 13 It is nature’s treasure.
1
itŭ āyurvēdamāខnŭ 2 āyurvēdamennŭ ñān samsārikkumpōខl cōdikkum
ខ
3
“alla vaidyarē . . . ı̄ āyurvēda m
ខ ārŭ kaខnខtupiខticcŭ?” 4 enគrគre acchan . . .
acchanគrគreapupan okke vaidyanmārā 5 ñaṅṅaខlārau m
ខ kaខnខtupiខticcayallā
6
āyurvēdam
ខ ārŭ kaខnខtupiខticcŭ? 7dēvanmāគr jı̄viccirikkunna oru kālakhaខtខtattil
dēvammāគrkkŭ āsukha m
ខ 8 ı̄ dēvammāគrellā m
ខ kūខti ōខti eviខte cennu?
9
brahmāvinគrគre aខtuttŭ cennu 10 brahmāvŭ dēvammāគrkkŭ upadēśiccŭ
koខtukkappeខtខta vēdamāខnŭ . . . āyurvēdam
ខ 11 vēdamāខnŭ . . . upadēśamāខnŭ
vaខlខlŭ varakāsuri dhanvantari kūpam
ខ tuខtaṅṅiya patineខtខtŭ ācāryanmāគr itŭ
kaខnខtupiខticcaŭ 12 siddharkaខlāខnŭ . . . itŭ kaខnខtupiខticcatŭ 13 itŭ prakខrtiyuខte
sambattāខnŭ
This vision of śāstra emphasizes the practitioner’s identity as a member of a lineage ( parambra), which extends back to the original sages who were themselves
taught by the God of creation. The name of the drug, Vātarōga Siddha Maគrmmāខni
Tailam,
ខ which he references in the following transcript and elsewhere throughout
the corpus, marks the drug as emerging from the Siddha tradition, which focuses
on the treatment of vital spots (or maគrmmā). He also refers to the sages who re-
THE ENTEXTUALIZATION OF AYURVEDA AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
331
ceived Ayurveda from God as Siddhars (lines 11–12), although the list includes
individuals referenced in the Sanskrit canon, the most prominent of which is Dhanvantari, who is sometimes worshiped as the “God of Ayurveda.” At the same time,
however, Ganesh Vaidyan identifies the drug as Ayurvedic, and his knowledge as
descended from a lineage going back to the original sages who received the knowledge from Lord Brahmāvŭ. He thus encompasses his own knowledge within the
divine origin narrative of Ayurveda. The drug, in this way, is represented as both
the familiar, trusted, and popular Ayurveda, as well as the foreign and exotic Siddha.
On account of the passage of time and because of the limited and faulty nature
of human persons in the present epoch—the “final and degraded epoch” (kāliyuga)
of Hindu cosmology—much of the perfect knowledge of health and long life given
by God to the original sages is believed to be lost. A claim of an unbroken lineage
extending back to the original encounter with God suggest the possibility that
some of this now-lost perfect and transcendent knowledge of health has survived
as the “secret” (rahāsya) of the particular family and vaidya. Traditional vaidya such
as this one are often suspected of possessing this secret knowledge—and they guard
it carefully. Patients would sometimes complain about this reticence, explaining
that it was typical for vaidya to withhold such knowledge even from the disciples
within their lineage. They explained to me that vaidya would teach their disciples
the craft but that they would omit the most essential ingredients of their most prized
drugs, which they would disclose in a dramatic fashion just prior to the moment
of their death. Local scholars lament this practice which, they argue, has inevitably
led to a great loss of knowledge from the tradition.
Ganesh Vaidyan, as the embodiment of such secret knowledge, emphasizes to
his audience how all 108 drugs are necessary, and that two full measures of each
drug are added to the cauldron and prepared publicly right in front of the crowd’s
eyes. Through his disclosure of the ingredients—his “secrets”—Ganesh Vaidyan
represents himself as a trustworthy person who prepares the drug publically, not
in the privacy of his “hospital” (vaidyasala). His sales pitch itself, and also the
performance context of the public manufacture of the drug, constitute an “authentication of value,” 58 that is, a performative certification of the authenticity of
reference (i.e., the constituents of the drug):
1
dear friends. 2 should (we) not add these 108 medicines, let me ask that.
can you substitute oil with water? 4 mustard oil is needed . . . gingerly
oil is needed . . . castor oil is needed 5 all the medicines seen are needed.
6
then this many medicines are added. 7 I prepare the oil. 8 each drug (I)
take and make good. 9 which ever part of the body there is a pain, sprain,
dislocation, seizure, or frozen muscles. 10 these 108 medicines (which you
are) seeing right there . . . two measures (of each) are added together,
taken and pressed. 11 these 108 medicines (which you are) seeing, two
measures (each) right in front of your eyes are taken (and prepared).
12
publicly itself (they are) pressed. 13 publicly itself (they are) powdered.
14
publicly in it (the bottle) (they are) distilled and filtered. 15 the name
of this oil is Vātarōga Siddha Marគmmānខ i Tailam
ខ.
3
332
MATTHEW WOLFGRAM
suhខrttukkaខlē 2 ı̄ nūគrគr iyeខtខtŭ marunnukaខl cēគrkkaខnខtē ñān cōdikkaខtខtē
eខnnខ akkŭ pakaram
ខ veខlខlamoគlikkān okkūō? 4 kaខtueខnnខ a vēខnam
ខ . . . nalleខnnខ a
ខ vēខnam
ខ
vēខnam
ខ . . . āvaខnakkeខnnខ a vēខnam
ខ 5ı̄ kāខnunna muគluvan marunnukaខlum
6
appō itrē m
ខ marunnukaខlu m
ខ cēគrttā 7 ı̄ taila m
ខ ñān tayyāគr ceytatŭ 8 ōrō
marunnukaខl eខtuttōខlū 9 śārı̄rattinគrគre ētŭ bhāgattŭ oru vēdanayō vilakkamō
uខlukkō piខtittamō kōccŭ 10 ı̄ kāខnunna nūគrគriyrខtខtŭ marunnukaខlum
ខ dā . . .
ı̄ raខnខtŭ kaគlañcŭ vı̄tam
ខ . . . cēគrkkayā eខtttŭ iខtikkū 11 ı̄ kāខnunna nūគrគriyeខtខtŭ
marunnukaខlum
ខ ı̄ raខnខtŭ kaគlañcŭ vı̄tam
ខ . . . dā niṅṅaខluខte kaខnnខ inគrគre mumpilvaccŭ eខtuttŭ 12 parassyamāyi tanne iticcŭ 13 parassyamāyi tanne poខticcŭ
14
parassyamāyi itil kācci aricceខtukkunna 15 ı̄ tailattinគrគre pērāខnŭ vātarōga
siddha maគrmmāខni tailam
ខ
1
3
Ganesh Vaidyan is a pharmaceutical innovator and the embodiment of a tradition
of received knowledge. His entrepreneurial strategy for profiting from this knowledge is one of public disclosure and the presentation of himself as a local and
trustworthy vaidya. Some in the audience were skeptical, noting to me that the oil
in the caldron (see the left side of Photograph 2) was not the oil being distributed,
which was itself premanufactured and bottled as a “readymade” medicine. Perhaps he had not revealed his secrets; perhaps he had. At a hundred Rupees a bottle
(about US$2.20 at the time), many in the audience were willing to give the medicine a try—and Ganesh Vaidyan’s rapidly expanding operation was plenty evidence of the success of his strategy.
Thus far this article has documented the ideologies of knowledge in Ayurveda
and some patterns of pharmaceutical innovation employed commonly by practitioners. We have also documented strategies for representing such new knowledge
as traditional and for profiting from innovations by the disclosure of “secrets.”
Next, I present some recent shifts in the entextualization of knowledge and innovation in Ayurveda that were developed in response to TRIPS and the CBD.
BUREAUCRATIC ENTEXTUALIZATIONS OF INDIAN MEDICINE
At the start of my research, I found the Ayurveda institutions of the colleges, hospitals, and laboratories that were administered or sanctioned by the government
of Kerala to be closed to outsiders such as myself. Prior to my identification of the
proper gatekeeping procedures, my inquires at these institutions were constantly
routed to vaidya in private practice or to the margins of the institutions. I described my experience of this to the State Director of Ayurveda Education. He
explained that the reason for the reticence was that Westerners have been known
to enter Kerala under the false pretense of an “interest” in Indian medicine and,
later on, found to be misappropriating Ayurveda’s knowledge of medicinal plants
for personal economic gain. They behaved “as the Gopikas” (goppikamāyiខtខtŭ), the
cow herdswomen of classical Hindu mythology who playfully sneak about and
tease their lover Lord Krខsខnខ a. The director and his assistant, who was working at a
PC in the corner, smiled and laughed at this clever characterization of the bio-
THE ENTEXTUALIZATION OF AYURVEDA AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
333
prospector as sneaky and motivated by desire but also, the analogy implies, playful, harmless, and, ultimately, all in good fun. Of course, while certainly motivated
by desire, the main legal instrument of biopiracy—TRIPS—was imposed in India
in the full light of day and with great public fanfare, as a requirement of all member states of the WTO.
I learned that the assistant in the corner was actually transcribing the handwritten contents of a notebook into an Excel document. The director explained
that, when the computer was not being used for office business, his staff worked
on building a medicinal plants database, “to prevent people from taking our
knowledge.” Murphy Halliburton has documented the ambivalence of Ayurveda
practitioners in Kerala associated with such projects of translation and documentation.59 This ambivalence is apparently well warranted given the unintended consequences of TK documentation which, when made public, provides easy access
to potential bioprospectors of previously secret medical knowledge.60 If the CBD
could be enforced, then such documentation would be necessary to certify a history of prior knowledge and use by the community, which in turn could protect
Indian medical knowledge from international bioprospectors and patent claims.
The threat of biopiracy under the global patent regime and the certification of
prior ownership under the provisions of the CBD were two of the reasons given
by the President of the University of Kerala, Dr. B. Ekbal,61 for publishing the English translation of Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein’s compendious
12-volume Latin compilation of Kerala medical knowledge, Hortus Malabaricus.62
Databases compiled from such translations can also be used by researchers of the
Indian state to develop and profit from the knowledge, which is the model employed by a government research lab that I will discuss below. However, medical
knowledge translated and rendered into the database is more amenable to bioprospecting by international pharmaceutical companies with the scientific resources to profit from the knowledge and the legal resources to defend its IP claims.
Inaction is often in this context preferable to active resistance—leave the knowledge where it is, untranslated and contained within out-of-print books and palmleaf manuscripts.
Later, I was able to observe part of the chain of entextualization that resulted in
this TK digital database. In a room in the Government Ayurveda College, a group
of six doctors and a linguist sit around a table. Each has a palm-leaf manuscript
or an old printed book, and each has a pencil and large note bookŭ. The notebooks
are organized with columns for vernacular plant names, the scientific plant name,
and the symptoms or illness that the drug is used to treat. Stacked in the middle
of the table are medicinal plant reference manuals, such as the two-volume compendium of medicinal plants written in Malayalam titled Auខsadha Sasyaṅṅaខl,63
which was used to translate the botanical classification of the vernacular plant
name. The linguist worked as the others, culling from the text the connection between drugs and symptoms, and then translating the plant name, and entering
the data into his notebook. He also helped with problems of transliterating the
334
MATTHEW WOLFGRAM
script variants used to write old Malayalam into the contemporary script. Ultimately, this transliteration was again transliterated into the Excel file using a system facilitated by the English keyboard. This entextualization process detaches the
knowledge from its social and historical context, and represents it as the common
knowledge of an undifferentiated tradition of Kerala Ayurveda. A dramatic shift
in Principal occurs, erasing the particular textual and social contexts of practice,
and situating the government as the steward (i.e., the Principal) of this undifferentiated TK. This domain of decontextualized knowledge of traditional Indian medicine is a historically novel innovation, entailed by the entextualization practices
employed at government institutions to safeguard Indian knowledge under the
CBD.
The binary logic opposing the communal and the individual does not connect
well with the complexities faced by Ayurveda doctors in India who work to protect their knowledge or to insure that they, rather than others, profit from it. Dr.
George is an Ayurveda doctor who works at a government pharmaceutical laboratory. He and his colleagues are working to develop the medical “folk knowledge”
(nāខtខtaគrivŭ) of “forest dwellers” (adivasi )—the tribes scheduled by the government of India for special recognition and protection—by using biochemistry and
clinical trials to establish the “scientific basis” (śāstra-adhiខsខthāna) of their medicines. This research might ultimately lead to the production of new “English
marunnŭ” (cosmopolitan biomedicines) or ready-made packaged herbal drugs for
consumption by the burgeoning Indian middle class and for circulation on the
global industrial-pharmaceutical and New Age health-commodity markets.
During my first visit to his office and on subsequent occasions, Dr. George
emphasized to me that although he worked as a scientist, he was actually trained
in Ayurveda, both in an Ayurveda college, as well as in the lineage of a famous
practitioner. His colleagues, who were botanists, chemists, pharmacologists, and
biomedical doctors, would often mention his presence at the lab as a sign of the
collaborative nature of their research, joining together cosmopolitan science and
Ayurveda. However, his work did not involve the practice of Ayurveda. Rather,
he was responsible for collecting pharmaceutical information from Kerala tribesmen and non-Ayurvedic folk doctors, and for the scientific development of their
knowledge into pharmaceutical commodities. Below I present my translation of
a speech Dr. George gave at a scientific conference focused on the scientific development of biomedical drugs based on Indian medical knowledge. It is clear in
this example that, as a liminal figure between the worlds of cosmopolitan and
Indian medicine, that the oppositional categories of IP rights discourse are not
adequate to encompass the nature of creativity in Ayurveda. Such knowledge is
not purely shared, public, or common, and it is equally not purely the private
property of individuals. He describes the problems associated with diagnosing
corporate versus individual authorship in the context of his recent investigations
into a promising drug employed in a ritual vomiting practiced at a Goddess temple in Kerala:
THE ENTEXTUALIZATION OF AYURVEDA AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
1
You need to see a three-minute case study. 2 We want to look at cases in
which knowledge is documented and studied scientifically. 3 You are all
aware of compendia of useless folk knowledge that have not recorded
the name of the plant and its applications. 4After the new biodiversity
policies arrived . . . 5 After the new biodiversity policies arrived this knowledge is now of two types. 6 Which types? 7 There is the type that is said to
be disclosed. 8 There is the type that is said to be undisclosed. 9 In the
case of the disclosed form they cannot protect [the knowledge] when it
enters the public domain. 10 Whoever wishes may take the knowledge
and make use of it. 11 But because of this we are working out a new policy. 12 What this means is that if there is some folk knowledge that was
told to us, if whoever that was is documented and [scientific] research is
conducted, then the profit of that study will be returned [to them]. 13That
14
is like what we did in the case of Arōgyappacca.
N
Then for that type [of
undisclosed knowledge] we will record [in our notes] that in such and
such a place there is a person who knows a medicinal plant that is good
for a particular disease. 15 Then, if research is conducted related to that
plant, after following this approach the people of our research institute
or in industry make a contract [with the person or group who provided
the knowledge]. 16 They [the scientists] may conduct a lot of research
and make products, so in order to protect that [effort], we want to return the wealth to them. 17 Now you are going to see that in this situation. 18 There is a goddess temple where they are doing vomiting therapy.
19
When we saw that treatment we thought it was very simplistic. 20 But
after doing research on the plant [there is a potential] that we may receive many very new benefits. 21 Then if profit comes from that it will be
given to the temple. 22 If that is not the case then we need to decide who
are the owners of [the folk knowledge]. 23 What will be given from the
temple to those owners? 24 [The prescription] that they described [at the
temple] included many ingredients that were all joined together indiscriminately. 25 Then that is what needs study. 26 These plants include Nilatāṅṅi and Nilakāññiram
ខ but we do not have these in our Ayurveda.
27
These are plants that are not used in our medical science. 28 Then how
do they [know how to] use them? 29 When [I/we] investigated the origin
of this [practice] there was a relation existing to the Ulខខlālខr tribe of forest
dwellers. 30Temple legend identifies when this relationship with the Ulខខlālខr
tribe occurred. 31But who [among the tribe] is it from? 32They [the Ulខខlālខr]
believe that a sidhan came there. 33 He showed them [some people in the
tribe] a long time ago, that is what [the Ulខខlālខr] said [to the researchers].
34
After that he [the Sidhan] described the method [of preparation and
application].
1
oru mūnnŭ minutŭ oru CASE STUDY āyiខtខtŭ niṅṅaខl kāខnaខnam
ខ 2appam
ā aគrivinē ādhāramākki entellām
ខ śāstrı̄yamāya paខthanaṅṅaខl naខtattām
ខ ennŭ
ខ atinគrគre
nammaខl nōkkaខna m
ខ 3 allāte veគrutē oru PគlANT-inគrគre pēru m
upayōgavu m
ខ eគlutivaykkunnatallā naខtខtaគr ivuśēkharaខna m
ខ ennŭ niṅṅaខle
ខ vannu kaគliññappōខl
bōdhyappeខtuttān 4 putiya jaiva vaividya niyamam
5
putiya jaiva vaividya niyamam
ខ vannappōខl ı̄ aគrivukaខle nammaខl ippōខl raខnខtŭ
tarattilāខnŭ 6 eṅṅane? 7 DISCគlOSED paគraññŭ tarunnatŭ 8 UNDISCគlOSED
paគraññŭ tarāttatŭ 9 DISCគlOSED FORM-ilŭ avarkkŭ atŭ PUBLIC DOខ eខtukkān
MAIN varumppōខl avarkkŭ parirakខsakiខtខtillā 10 atŭ ārkku m
upayōgikkām
ខ 11 pakខsē putiya oru niyamam
ខ nammaខl entinŭ WORK OUT
ceyyunnatŭ 12ennŭ vaccāl atŭ paគraññŭ tanna nāខtខtaគrivukaខl āខneṅkilum
ខ atine
335
336
MATTHEW WOLFGRAM
ādhāramākki āreṅkilum
ខ paខthanam
ខ naខtattukayāខneṅkil atinគrគre guខnam
ខ tiriccŭ koខtukkaខnam
ខ 13 nammaខl ārōgyappaccāyil ceytatupōle 14 celatŭ pinne
paគraññŭ tarāttatāខneṅkil nammaខleគlutu m
ខ inaខtattŭ orāខluṅខtŭ inna inna
auខsadha ceខtilkaខlekkuriccŭ ayāខlkkaគriyām
ខ inna inna rōgaṅṅaខlkkŭ koខlខlām
ខ
ខ naខtattaខnameṅkil
ennŭ paគrayum
ខ 15appōខl atumāyi bandhappeខtខtŭ paខthanam
nammaខluខte gavēខsaខna sthāpanaṅṅaខlō vyavasāyakarō ayāខle APPROACH
ceytukaគliññāl oru dhāraខnāpatram
ខ uខnខtākki 16 avarkkŭ atineppaគrគri kūខtutal
paខthikkukayum
ខ ulppannaṅṅaខl uខnខtākkukayam
ខ ceyyām
ខ enniខtខtŭ atinគrគre
parirakខsa uគrappuvaruttā m
ខ enniខtខtŭ atinគrគre guខna m
ខ namukkŭ tiriccŭ
koខnខtuvarikayum
ខ ceyyām
ខ 17 ini ippōខl niṅṅaខl kāខnān pōkunnatŭ 18 oru (place
name omitted) mahādēvakខsētrattile oru śadhippikkal cikilsayāខnŭ 19 appōខl
ā cikilsa namukkŭ kāខnumpōខl vaខlare SIMPLE āyi tōnnum
ខ 20 pakខsē atil
gavēខsaខnam
ខ ceytukaគliññāl namukkŭ orupāខtŭ putiya putiya kāryaṅṅaខlŭ
ខ vannāl atŭ ā ambalattikaខnខtuvarān paគrគrum
ខ 21 appōខl aṅṅane oru guខnam
lēykkŭ ā guខnam
ខ eṅṅane koខtukkām
ខ 22 alleṅkil atinគrគre uខtamakaខl ārennŭ
ādyam
ខ niścayikkēṅខti varum
ខ 23 atinគrគre uខtamakaខlāya āttaram
ខ āខlukaខle amខ cerum
ខ ennāខnŭ
balattil ninnŭ entŭkoខtukkaខnam?
ខ 24 avarŭ paគraññatŭ ellām
appōខl vēខnខtunna cēruvakaខl ellā m
ខ koខtukkā m
ខ 25 appōខl atinŭ paខthana m
ខ
ខ pakខsē nammuខte āyurvedattil
āvasyamāខnŭ 26 ı̄ ceខti nilatāṅṅi nilakāññiram
ខ uppaគrayunna nilatāṅṅiyō nilakāññiramō
ខ allā 27 oru vaidyaśāstrattillum
28
ayōgikkātta oru ceខtiyāខnŭ appōខl ı̄ ceខti avareṅṅineyāខnŭ upayōgikkunខ ennŭ nōkki pōkumbōខl uខlខlāខlr
natŭ? 29 eviខteyāខnitinគrគre ulbhava m
ādivāsikaខlumāyiខtខtāខnŭ itŭ bandhappeខtខtŭ kiខtakkunnatŭ 30 kāraខna m
ខ
kខsētrattinគrគre aitihyam
ខ uខlខlāខlr ādivāsikaខlumāyi bandhappeខtខtŭ vannappōខl
31
oru pakខsē avaril ninnāខnō? 32 atallā avar paគrayunna oru sidhan aviខte
ខ ı̄ ceខti kāខniccu koខtukkayāyirunnu ennum okke
vannu ennum
ខ 33 adēham
āខnŭ paគraññatŭ 34 atŭ kaគliññiខtខtŭ avar ceyyunna rı̄ti eṅṅane ennu paគraññāl
This new model of profit sharing is vexed by the logic of property claims given by
TRIPS. The knowledge cannot be protected as property without the proper authentication of its value using scientific procedures of biochemistry, pharmacology, and so on. The government of India, by virtue of having coordinated the
labor necessary to authenticate the claim, becomes the claim’s Principal, on behalf
of bearers of the knowledge in its traditional form. The government, as a social
institution of coordinated labor, becomes the owner of TK, which is represented
as devoid of individual ownership. To whom, then, should the heads of the lab
redistribute a share of the profits? Scientists and administrators become responsible for determining, and potentially, remunerating individual versus corporate
interests. These shareholders include the scientists who developed the drug, but
also the priests and administrators of the goddess temple, a few of whom will be
the person or persons who disclosed the knowledge to Dr. George. There is the
Uខlខlāខlr tribe, with medical practitioners and with its local political system, and then
there is an unknown Siddhan and his lineage. All along this chain of circulations
are potential owners with rights of remuneration based on the profit-sharing model
emerging in the scientific community in Kerala.
One resolution to the trap of this dichotomy that I observed is for financial
redistribution to be directed to the corporate governing bodies of the community,
who are then encouraged to spend the money on community projects, and then
THE ENTEXTUALIZATION OF AYURVEDA AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
337
stage highly public ceremonies of recognition for the particular individual practitioner(s) who disclosed the knowledge to the agents of the scientific institution.
At the same scientific conference, for example, Dr. George introduced one folk
medical practitioner from the hills outside of Thiruvananthapuram who had disclosed some of her knowledge, which was currently the subject of research. His
introduction included flowery praise and significant deference, and he even referenced her using the third-person double-plural pronoun (avarkaខl), which I have
only observed in Kerala used to reference divine persons such as the yoginı̄, Mātā
Amrខ tānandamayı̄ Devı̄. There was a standing ovation when Dr. George presented
her with an award for her service to the community, and the press took photographs of the event and re-entextualized the story of the selfless practitioner whose
TK was being authenticated by cosmopolitan science. In a sense, the profit-sharing
model being developed by Dr. George and his colleagues has adapted a traditional
model for the circulation of knowledge, exchanging praise for the disclosure of
secrets. And, as we saw previously of the Siddha Ayurveda drug-hawker Ganesh
Vaidyan, such good fame as the honest teller of secret knowledge can indeed be a
lucrative presentation of self.
CONCLUSION: BETWEEN TRADITIONAL CREATIVITY
AND INDIVIDUAL INNOVATION
Part of the logic of the discourse of modernity is its need for its opposite—a premodern, precapitalist, preindividualistic, corporate, traditional, primordial society. This ideology is central to TRIPS and the privatization discourse more generally.
And then, the characterizations of intangible cultural heritage and of TK—by the
UNESCO, WIPO, and the CBD—have articulated modernity’s opposite. A few legal
theorists are starting to come around to the idea that TK is at least in part a dynamic and innovative phenomenon (e.g., see Madhavi Sunder’s critique of James
Boyle’s metaphor of “cultural environmentalism” 64 ). However, it is anthropology
that is in the best position to develop an empirically robust critique of the binary
logic that has controlled the IP debate so far. Anthropologists can force the debate
beyond these categories by maintaining a commitment to ethnographic work that
demonstrates the hybrid and complex nature of creativity, authorship, ownership,
and the use and circulation of knowledge in all societies.
As I have shown in this article, the models of creativity and authorship employed in Ayurveda articulate rather poorly with the oppositional logic of the
discourse of privatization and its liberal progressive countercritique. Individual
innovation is common in the Ayurveda practiced in Kerala, and it is recognized
as such. Vaidya do not blindly reproduce knowledge as anonymous units within
a collectivity; and equally true, they do not create their knowledge from scratch,
as the heroic inventor at the center of the privatization discourse. While this is
clear from the evidence, it is also clear that historical and ongoing changes in the
338
MATTHEW WOLFGRAM
entextualization of Ayurveda knowledge have had consequences, some of which
have accentuated the opposition between the individual and the collective that is
central to the discourse of modernity. Shifts in entextualization entail new Principals and new linguistic divisions of labor to authenticate the value of those
Principals’ knowledge. These shifts in the circulation of discourse are both problematic and incomplete in contemporary Ayurveda, but they are also historically
novel and significant.
Thus, the analysis presented in this article demonstrates for the case of Ayurveda’s encounter with IP discourse that the discourse practices described here as
entextualization are not only the subject of historical contingency (and they certainly are), but they are also methods of action that have produced significant
historical consequences. Of course, as is understood of the concept of property
more generally,65 IP rights are projections of social relations, and as such, the
analysis of such relations requires an account of their production and transformation. It is clear that the social relations of IP—like all social relations—are
fundamentally and primarily mediated by discourse, and thus, I suggest that approaches to the relationship of language and political economy developed in linguistic anthropology should be seen as more relevant to debates on cultural and
intellectual property in legal and economic theory. In particular, I argue that
research on entextualization provides us with a methodological tool to enter into
such debates. This is the case because a focus on the circulation of discourse
highlights both the hybrid complexity of creative processes (contra the reductionistic dichotomies of IP discourse), and at the same time, it highlights the politics
of imposing such ideological dualisms upon that creativity. It is on account of
this possibility to provide an empirically robust critique of the categories and
transformative effects of IP discourse that I suggest that entextualization has the
potential to be a key concept in the analysis of the politics of knowledge production at the margins of the globalizing economy.
ENDNOTES
1. Boyle, “The Second Enclosure Movement.”
2. Boyle, “The Second Enclosure Movement”; Rose, Authors and Owners.
3. Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought; Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory Life; Merton,
“The Matthew Effect”; Pickstone, Ways of Knowing.
4. Vygotsky, Thought and Language.
5. Voloshinov, Marxism.
6. See UNESCO, Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
7. United Nations, Convention on Biological Diversity.
8. See Aragon, “Copyrighting Culture for the Nation?,” this issue.
9. Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties; Anderson, Law, Knowledge Culture; Geismar, Treasured Possessions.
10. See the critique developed in Halliburton, “Resistance or Inaction?.”
11. Bauman and Briggs, “Poetics and Performance”; Silverstein and Urban, Natural Histories of
Discourse.
THE ENTEXTUALIZATION OF AYURVEDA AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
339
12. Bates, Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions.
13. Kuipers, “‘Medical Discourse’ in Anthropological Context.”
14. Goffman, “Footing.”
15. Irvine, “When Talk Isn’t Cheap.”
16. Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning.’”
17. Silverstein and Urban, Natural Histories of Discourse.
18. World Trade Organization. Overview: The TRIPS Agreement.
19. Boyle, “The Second Enclosure Movement” and Shamans, Software, and Spleens.
20. Sunder, “The Invention of Traditional Knowledge,” 106.
21. Shiva, Biopiracy.
22. UNESCO, Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2.
23. WIPO, Protection of Traditional Knowledge: Draft Articles,1.
24. WIPO, Protection of Traditional Knowledge: Draft Articles, 1.
25. WIPO, Protection of Traditional Knowledge: Draft Articles, 1.
26. WIPO, Protection of Traditional Knowledge: Draft Articles, 1.
27. WIPO, Protection of Traditional Knowledge: Draft Articles, 1.
28. United Nations, Convention on Biological Diversity, art. 8(j).
29. United Nations, Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources.
30. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society.
31. See, e.g., Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific.
32. Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy; Vygotsky, Thought and Language; Voloshinov,
Marxism and the Philosophy of Language; Williams, Marxism and Literature.
33. Kroeber, “The Superorganic”; Sapir, “Do We Need a Superorganic?.”
34. Leslie, “Interpretations of Illness” and “The Ambiguities of Medical Revivalism in Modern
India.”
35. Cohen, “The Epistemological Carnival”; Tabor, “Ripe and Unripe”; Naraindas, “Of Spineless
Babies and Folic Acid.”
36. Nordstrom, “Exploring Pluralism”; Weiss, Recipes for Immortality.
37. Langford, Fluent Bodies.
38. Langford, Fluent Bodies.
39. Zimmermann, “Gentle Purge.”
40. Banerjee, “Power, Culture and Medicine”; Bode, “Taking Traditional Knowledge to the Market.”
41. Alter, Asian Medicine; Wujastyk and Smith, Modern and Global Ayurveda.
42. Obeyesekere, “Science, Experimentation, and Clinical Practice”; Trawick “The Ayurvedic Physician as Scientist.”
43. Zimmermann, 1985.
44. Pollock, “The Theory of Practice and the Practice of Theory in Indian Intellectual History.”
45. Wujastyk, The Roots of Ayurveda.
46. Wolfgram, “Truth Claims and Disputes in Ayurveda Medical Science.”
47. Zimmermann, 1985.
48. Zimmermann, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats.
49. Jaggi, History of Science and Technology in India, 124–26.
50. Boyle, “The Second Enclosure Movement.”
51. For a specific case of the epistemological authority of narratives of anubhava, see Wolfgram,
“Truth Claims and Disputes in Ayurveda Medical Science.”
52. Śrı̄mān Nambūtiri, Cikitsamañjari [Collection of treatments].
53. Leslie, “Interpretations of Illness”; “The Ambiguities of Medical Revivalism in Modern
India.”
54. Kuññurāman Vaidyan, Cikilsa Anubhavaṅṅaខl [Clinical experiences].
55. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination.
56. Wolfgram, “Ayurveda in the Age of Biomedicine.”
57. Weiss, “Divorcing Ayurveda.”
58. Irvine, “When Talk Isn’t Cheap.”
340
MATTHEW WOLFGRAM
59. Halliburton, “Resistance or Inaction?.”
60. Cases of such unintended consequences are well documented, see Reddy, “Making Heritage
Legible.”
61. Ekbal, “Preface.”
62. Manilal, Van Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus [Garden of Malabar].
63. Nēśamanខ i, Auខsadha Sasyaṅṅaខl [Medicinal plants].
64. Sunder, “The Invention of Traditional Knowledge”; Boyle, Shamans, Software, and Spleens.
65. Hallowell, “The Nature and Functions of Property as a Social Institution.”
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