A Concise History of Science in India c8.s8.t1.2

c8.s8.t1.2

In A.D. 1200 then, *Āyurveda* had long reached its peak, but the intellectual energy and creative research which had contributed to its growth and vigour were definitely things of the past; so also were dispensaries, hospitals and medical services maintained at State expense by past Buddhist and Hindu monarchs. The new generations of medical students had to depend upon largely on their personal teachers for practical and theoretical training, augmented no doubt by the great treatises. The main prerequisite of sustained intellectual development—prestige and security of the intellectual and professional classes in a politically stable and progressive society—was gone; for India was constantly overrun by powerful foreign hordes. The martial classes not only ruled the land; they had replaced the intellectuals as the dominant class in the social hierarchy.