Abstract
During nonemergency appointments at traditional sites of āyurvedic healthcare in Kerala, South India, classically trained Brāhmaṇa physicians and their patients seldom exchange anything of substance (whether medicinal or monetary). The physician-patient interface instead routinely involves an exchange of knowledge. Interactions between physicians and patients in these meetings evoke the highly theorized notion of the “Indian gift” and the question of prestation in South Indian societies. This article explores the nature of exchange in the supply and reception of healthcare among physicians and patients at traditional sites of āyurvedic treatment (that is, sites not affiliated with governmental or private hospitals or clinics) in contemporary Kerala. Drawing on classical treatises about the dharma of gifts (dānadharma) and the Sanskrit medical classics of Āyurveda, it examines reciprocity, ideal preconditions of givers and receivers of gifts, and the possibility of a “pure gift” in the appraisal and production of wellbeing.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Miriam Benteler for her collaboration and encouragement to produce this special volume of IJHS. Miriam and I co-convened a panel on the gift in 2014 in Tallinn, Estonia for the 13th annual conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, which was the impetus for this project. Accordingly, thanks also go to the presenters on our panel, from which two papers (Rolf Goesbeck and Karin Polit) have been revised for this volume. Many thanks go to my colleagues, friends, and informants in Kerala for their generosity and spirited conversation. And lastly, I thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for supporting two stretches of fieldwork on which this research is based and the time that went into editing this volume.
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Cerulli, A. Gifting Knowledge for Long Life. Hindu Studies 22, 235–255 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-018-9229-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-018-9229-1