Article from The Times of India

Ancient Ayurveda now in Cds

BHUBANESWAR: Suffering from arthritis? You can now have a ready reckoner in the form of a CD with the medical advice culled from the ancient texts of India. Madhava Chikitsa, Vaidya Kalpalata, Vaidya Sarvaswa and Ayurveda Ratna, some of the treasures of Ayurvedic literature, are now available in digital format.

The Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS) recovered these rare manuscripts from individuals and organisations from across the state and converted them into CD and DVD form for future use.

"Orissa has a huge collection of manuscripts on the goodness of ancient Ayurveda. Unfortunately, a large number of Ayurvedic texts lie unexplored and trapped in palm-leaves, which are decaying. Many unique and valuable information contained in these texts are being lost, so we decided to preserve them in CDs," said deputy director of CCRAS, M M Padhi.

He further said, the institute is also planning to set up a manuscript library to preserve these rare documents.
Around 2,000 manuscripts have already been catalogued and around 1,000 among them have been digitised, said Padhi.

Besides palm leaf manuscripts, many paper and metal manuscripts were also recovered. The manuscripts were found in individual and organisational possession in different districts of Cuttack, Khurda, Puri, Nayagarh, Bhadrak and Jajpur.

"The main aim of the project is to preserve the oldest record of medicinal theories and applied utilities available in the manuscripts. From the manuscripts, many rare texts describing the treatment of arthritis, asthma, piles, chronic wound were found. They were written by vaidyas hundreds of years back. Similarly, Vaidya Kalpalata is a rare script that describes many proven and tested treatment procedures," said nodal officer of the project, Bikartan Das.

Niranjan Brahma, an individual collector from Puri, said, "From these manuscripts it is evident how rich was Orissa in Ayurveda. Many of these texts are still unpublished, while a huge quantity was damaged in disasters like floods and cyclone and due to lack of proper care."