Vanaspati: Plants and Plant-Life as in Indian Treatises and Traditions c7: Conclusion
Vanaspati: Plants and Plant-Life as in Indian Treatises and Traditions c7
- Language
- English
Conclusion
c7.1
The thesis submitted is but a part of a larger work which is to follow. It is intended to serve as a mere sample of the kind of work which can be produced with the materials that can yet be gathered from the unexplored field of Indian literature and current traditions. The indebtedness of human civilisation to plants and the study of plant-life is indeed very great. There is hardly any department of human culture, or any phase of human civilisation, whether it be pure poetry or pure philosophy or pure religion, science, art, language, dress and ornament, trade or agriculture, where plants and the study of plant-life have not played an important part.
c7.2
Our thesis contains, we hope, sufficient evidence to show that the knowledge of Botany developed on three different lines, first, in and through various philosophical speculations; secondly, as *Bheshaja Vidyā*, in and through the Science of Medicine; and thirdly, as *Vrikshāyurveda*, in and through the Science of Agriculture. There are quotations from sources referring to some independent treatises, or manuals of the Science of the medicinal properties of plants, those of the Science of Agriculture, as well as works dealing with the treatment of plants and other topics falling within the province of Botany. We have only glimpses of these manuals and works through the summaries and incidental references in other treatises which are non-Botanical. Even that which survives or remains, clearly indicates that the division of knowledge by water-tight compartments was yet unknown.
c7.3
The inter-relation among the sciences was universally recognised, and the sciences and arts developed together. The obstacle in the path of development of the Botanical Science as a full-fledged science, was that scientific cognition and results of observations were not kept sufficiently distinct from the popular notions, guesses and superstitions.
c7.4
Our study tends to prove that the Science of Plants and Plant-life in India is one of the earliest, if not the earliest one. With it developed such collateral sciences as those of Medicine and Agriculture. We know a good deal more of the Science of Medicine than of the Science of Agriculture, its sister, and of the Science of Plant and Plant-life, its mother. Our survey, however, shows that all these shared the same fate of a brilliant beginning, a marked progress to a certain stage, and a tragic stagnation.
c7.5
The field is vast, our survey is brief but enough, we think, to hold out the prospects of a rich harvest that can be reaped by the modern inquirer. The value of the work is primarily historical no doubt, enabling one, as it does, to be acquainted with the circumstances and the difficulties through which human knowledge and art grew up, but its value also consists in discovering different systems of nomenclature and classification, suggestive of different trends of human thought and national culture.