Any attempt to introduce local health traditions is handicapped from the start due to their oral nature and the seeming absence of a theoretical foundation. It would seem that the test of their efficacy lies only in empirical evidence. In other words, for the most part they are merely considered to be a somewhat more sophisticated version of the trial-and-error method based on keen local observations. It is observed that many village healers do not care to generalise about how or why their method works. This is seen as evidence that the local traditions lack the theoretical rigour of either Ayurveda or modern medicine.

One way of addressing the issue — and this is part of the approach of this book — would be to assert that the local traditions are empirical manifestations of the underlying theoretical structure of the classical tradition itself. There is no doubt that village healers often use procedures, the elaborate explanations of which are located in chapters and verses of Ayurvedic texts. This gives us an immediate sense of the marvellous interpenetration of the classical and village traditions — villagers perhaps know that theoretical explanations are frequently justifications of what they are doing. It has been repeatedly found that, having observed procedures being performed by a village healer, researchers work backwards merely to find their elaborations located in the classical tradition.