Vanaspati: Plants and Plant-Life as in Indian Treatises and Traditions c6.26

c6.26

The connection between the study of plant-life and the science of medicine has been intimate throughout the whole course of the genesis, development, and the culmination of the latter in India—from its genesis traced in the verses of the Rig Veda down to its culmination in the monumental treatises of *Charaka* and *Suśruta*. The application of plants as medicines as recorded in both these works are minute, exhaustive and extensive, and it is needless to reproduce the thing in detail. Here the study of the individual properties of plants, their application in diseases as means of cure, the collection of plants, the selections of plants, the preparation of drugs out of them, the selection of soils for plants to grow upon are excellently prescribed. No fewer than 26 forms of medicine derived from plants are mentioned. Instead of wasting space over what is common knowledge we turn to the more interesting task of tracing the historical development of the science of Medicine in Ancient India beginning from the earliest times down to its virtual stagnation.