South Asia, also known as the Indian subcontinent, extends from the Himalayas south to form a huge triangle that juts into the Indian Ocean with the Arabian Sea on one side and the Bay of Bengal on the other. India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and the small Himalayan countries of Nepal and Bhutan are included in this area. South Asia can be divided roughly into three parts, beginning with the triangle-shaped Deccan Plateau, moving north to the fertile plain along the Ganges and Indus rivers, and finally extending to the northernmost section at the foot of the Himalayas.

Background: The Ancient Indian Texts

The Ayurvedic Texts

Ancient Indian Medicine had close ties with philosophy and religion. The basic texts of Hinduism are the four Vedas: Rg, Sam, Yajur, and Atharva. Ayurveda, meaning the “science of life,” is considered to be the fifth of these texts and as important as the other four. All of the first four Vedas have sections that deal with healing and the prevention and cure of sickness. Yet the approach is usually magical or by prayer to the deities of the Vedic pantheon.

The Ayurvedic texts, by contrast, are of later origin and tend to attribute disease to divine causes less frequently. The codification of Ayurveda probably occurred around the sixth century B.C., and the texts presumably took their defined forms, in which they are still available, by the sixth or seventh century A.D. They were compiled in the northwestern part of India and in areas that today include Pakistan and Afghanistan, although, with the spread of the Aryans and their culture, Ayurveda came to be practiced over much of the country.