Skip to main content

The semantics of pain in Indian culture and medicine

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry volume 15, pages 19–43 (1991)Cite this article

Abstract

An interpretive perspective offers a counterpoint to the behavioral orientation in the social scientific literature on pain. The present paper develops a meaning-centered approach which focuses on three interconnected aspects of the experience of suffering: (l) the cultural construction of pain sensation; (2) the semiotics of pain expression; (3) the structure of pain's causes and cures. These connections are explored through a variety of linguistic and semiotic forms, including metaphors, etymologies, gestural codes, taxonomies, and semantic networks. The study of metaphor has special value in revealing the cultural construction of pain, especially its sensory qualities, such as temperature, weight, and movement. The concept of semantic network provides a complementary tool for understanding pain experience; the analysis makes pain sensation the center of the network and argues that multiple meanings attach to this sensory core.

The paper examines these perspectives in the context of North Indian culture and medicine, specifically Unani Tibb, or Greco-Arab medicine. Pursuing questions of the “fit” between everyday belief and traditional medicine, the essay traces continuities in the “language of pain” in North Indian culture, classical Unani Tibb, and contemporary Unani clinical practice.[/ p]

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

43,34 €

Price includes VAT (Finland)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

References

  • Ali, Ahmed 1966 Twilight in Delhi. Bombay: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bates, Maryann 1987 Ethnicity and Pain: A Biocultural Model. Social Science and Medicine 24(1):47–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brena, Steven F. and Stanley L. Chapman 1983 Management of Patients with Chronic Pain. New York: Spectrum Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Browne, E.G. 1962 Arabian Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chaturvedi, Mahendra and Bhola Nath Tiwari 1982 A Practical Hindi-English Dictionary. New Delhi: National Publishing House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daniel, E. Valentine 1984 Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Egnor, Margaret Trawick 1983 Death and Nurturance in Indian Systems of Healing. Social Science and Medicine 17(14):935–945.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elgood, Cyril 1970 Safavid Medical Practice. London: Luzac.

    Google Scholar 

  • Engel, George L. 1959 Psychogenic Pain and the Pain-Prone Patient. American Journal of Medicine 26:899–918.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fabrega, Horacio, Jr. 1974 Disease and Social Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fabrega, Horacio, Jr. and Stephen Tyma 1976 Language and Cultural Influences in the Description of Pain. British Journal of Medical Psychology 49:349–371.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fagerhaugh, Shizuko Y. and Anselm Strauss 1977 Politics of Pain Management: Staff-Patient Interaction. Menlo Park: Addison-Wesley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fordyce, W.E. 1983 Behavioral Conditioning Concepts in Chronic Pain. In John J. Bonica et al. (eds.). Proceedings on Pain. Pp. 781–788. New York: Raven Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Futehally, Zeenuth n.d. Zohra. Bombay: Hind Kitabs.

  • Ghalib 1977a Ghazaliyat-e-Ghalib. New Delhi: Ghalib Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghalib 1977b Urdu Ghazals of Ghalib. Yusuf Husain, tr. New Delhi: Ghalib Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Good, Byron J. 1977 The Heart of What's the Matter: The Semantics of Illness in Iran. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 1(1):25–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • Good, Byron J. and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good 1981 The Meaning of Symptoms: A Cultural Hermeneutic Model for Clinical Practice. In Leon Eisenberg and Arthur Kleinman (eds.). The Relevance of Social Science for Medicine. Pp. 165–196. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Government of India 1981 Indian Systems of Medicine and Homeopathy. New Delhi: Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hameed, Hakim Abdul n.d. Physician-Authors of Greco-Arab Medicine in India. New Delhi: Institute of History of Medicine and Medical Research.

  • Helman, Cecil 1978 ‘Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever’ — Folk Models of Infection in an English Suburban Community. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 2:107–138.

    Google Scholar 

  • Helman, Cecil 1984 Culture, Health and Illness. Bristol: Wright.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoch, Erna 1960 A Pattern of Neurosis in India. American Journal of Psychoanalysis 20(1):8–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hosain, Attia 1979 Sunlight on a Broken Column. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ibn Rushd (Averroes) 1980 Kitab-ul-Kulliyat [The Book of the Whole]. New Delhi: Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ibn Sina (Avicenna) 1930 The Canon of Medicine. In O.C. Gruner (ed.). A Treatise on the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna. London: Luzac.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jaggi, O.P. 1981 Medicine in Medieval India. Delhi: Atma Ram.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kakar, Sudhir 1981 The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kakar, Sudhir 1982 Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors. New York: Alfred Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kleinman, Arthur 1980 Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kleinman, Arthur 1986 Social Origins of Distress and Disease: Depression, Neurasthenia, and Pain in Modern China. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kotarba, Joseph A. 1983 Chronic Pain: Its Social Dimensions. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson 1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leslie, Charles 1976 The Ambiguities of Medical Revivalism in Modern India. In Charles Leslie (ed.). Asian Medical Systems. Pp. 356–367. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lipton, James A. and Joseph J. Marbach 1984 Ethnicity and the Pain Experience. Social Science and Medicine 19(12):1279–1298.

    Google Scholar 

  • Markandaya, Kamala 1954 Nectar in a Sieve. New York: New American Library.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marriott, McKim 1980 The Open Hindu Person and Interpersonal Fluidity. Paper presented at the meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, Washington, D.C., March 21, 1980.

  • Melzack, Ronald and W.S. Torgerson 1971 On the Language of Pain. Anesthesiology 34(1):50–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Melzack, Ronald and Patrick Wall 1982 The Challenge of Pain. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nichter, Mark 1981 Negotiation of the Illness Experience: Ayurvedic Therapy and the Psychosocial Dimension of Illness. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 5:5–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Obeyesekere, Gananath 1976 The Impact of Ayurvedic Ideas on the Culture and the Individual in Sri Lanka. In Charles Leslie (ed.). Asian Medical Systems. Pp. 201–226. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Platts, John T. 1982 A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Premchand 1962a Miss Padma. In Norman H. Zide et al. (eds.). A Premchand Reader. Pp. 58–66. Honolulu: East-West Center Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Premchand 1962b Kafan [The Shroud]. In Norman H. Zide et al. (eds.). A Premchand Reader. Pp. 99–109. Honolulu: East-West Center Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Premchand 1966 Burhi Kaki [Old Aunt]. In Mansarovar. Part 8. Pp. 147–156. Allahabad: Sarasvati Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pugh, Judy F. 1983 Astrology and Fate: The Hindu and Muslim Experiences. In Charles F. Keyes and E. Valentine Daniel (eds.). Karma: An Anthropological Approach. Pp. 131–146. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • 1984 Concepts of Person and Situation in North Indian Counseling: The Case of Astrology. In E. Valentine Daniel and Judy F. Pugh (eds.). South Asian Systems of Healing. Contributions to Asian Studies 18:85–105.

  • Rosaldo, Michelle 1980 Knowledge and Passion: Ilongot Notions of Self and Social Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sargent, Carolyn 1984 Between Death and Shame: Dimensions of Pain in Bariba Culture. Social Science and Medicine 19(12):1299–1304.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Margaret M. Lock 1987 The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly (New Series) 1(1):6–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schimmel, Annemarie 1976 Pain and Grace: A Study of Two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth Century Muslim India. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sternbach, Richard A. 1974 Pain Patients: Traits and Treatment. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Szasz, Thomas S. 1959 Language and Pain. In S. Arieti (ed.). American Handbook of Psychiatry, Vol. I. Pp. 982–999. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Victor W. 1967 The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Verma, R.L. and N.H. Keswani 1974 Unani Medicine in Medieval India — Its Teachers and Texts. In N.H. Keswani (ed.). The Science of Medicine and Physiological Concepts in Ancient and Medieval India. Pp. 127–142. Delhi: All-India Institute of Medical Sciences.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wadley, Susan S. 1975 Shakti: Power in the Conceptual Structure of Karimpur Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wadley, Susan S. 1983 The Rains of Estrangement: Understanding the Hindu Yearly Cycle. Contributions to Indian Sociology 17(1):51–85.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1968 Philosophical Investigations. 3rd edition. New York: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolff, B. Berthold and Sarah Langley 1968 Cultural Factors and the Response to Pain: A Review. American Anthropologist 70:494–501.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zborowski, Mark 1952 Cultural Components in Response to Pain. Journal of Social Issues 8(4):16–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zborowski, Mark 1969 People in Pain. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimmermann, Francis 1978 From Classic Texts to Learned Practice: Methodological Remarks on the Study of Indian Medicine. Social Science and Medicine 12:97–103.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimmermann, Francis 1980 Rtu-satmya: The Seasonal Cycle and the Principle of Appropriateness. Social Science and Medicine 14B:99–106.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University, 48824, East Lansing, MI, U.S.A.

    Judy F. Pugh

Authors
  1. Judy F. Pugh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

My research on Unani medicine in India was funded by a Senior Fellowship from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute from January to August 1983. An earlier version of this paper was prepared for the Ninth European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Heidelberg University, July 9–12, 1986, for a panel organized by Dr. Beatrix Pfleiderer on “The Cultural Context of Health Care in South Asia.” I am grateful to Dr. Patricia Jeffery of the University of Edinburgh for presenting the paper for me. I would like to thank Mohammed Sultan Yar Khan and his family, Hakim Mohammed Razzack and Hakim Umul Fazl of the Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine, and Hakim Abdul Hameed of the Institute for History of Medicine and Medical Research, for their aid and advice in India. I would also like to acknowledge Arthur Kleinman for his comments on the paper, and Vandana Goswami, Vasavi Gowda, and Khalida Zaki for our discussions about “pain” in South Asia.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pugh, J.F. The semantics of pain in Indian culture and medicine. Cult Med Psych 15, 19–43 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00050826

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00050826

Keywords

  • Traditional Medicine
  • Pain Experience
  • Pain Sensation
  • Sensory Quality
  • Semantic Network