Abstract
Archaic religious medicine dating back to 2000 BC was practised in ancient Greece, Persia and India. Early forms of indigenous medical systems probably emerged around the sixth century BC and continued to have an anchor in a holistic approach based on humoral theories, while modern Western medicine departing from its roots in philosophy and psychology has adopted the Cartesian dualism of body and mind. Three approaches in modern psychology may bridge the gap between the indigenous and Western health systems. These are the developmental approach, health psychology and positive psychology. In this chapter, I discuss four prominent indigenous systems in the Indian subcontinent—Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Tibetan medicine—focusing on childcare practices prescribed therein.
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Notes
- 1.
The Upanishads (lit., ‘sitting at the feet of’, to imply students receiving esoteric knowledge at the feet of their teachers) are a collection of texts in the Vedic Sanskrit language, and contain the earliest emergence of some of the central religious concepts of Indic religions. More than 200 Upanishads are known and the principal Upanishads predate the Common Era, probably written around 600–200 BCE.
- 2.
In the Hindu mythology there are thousands of gods. To simplify, these may be described as follows. There is a trinity of gods: Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (maintainer of life) and Shiva (the destroyer). They have their consorts: Brahma’s consort, Saraswati (the Muse); Shiva’s consort Parvati, and Vishnu’s consort, Lakshmi (goddess of wealth). However, Vishnu has 10 avatars including Rama (of the epic Ramayana) and Krishna (of the epic Mahabharata) and one of them being even the Buddha. Shiva and Parvati have their benevolent and malevolent forms. There are also children of the trinity and their consorts. The next are groups of gods (sura) and of demons (asura). The gods are immortal while demons are not. There are also gods who are personifications of natural elements. These could be the five elements, planetary constitutions and many others along with the sages of the yore. On the other hand, the variety of demons are evil forces that need to be destroyed. Many of the above beings find mention in indigenous medical texts. In the Tibetan religion, there are many Buddhas but the Medicine Buddha is considered the originator of Tibetan medicine.
- 3.
Galen, or Galen of Pergamon (c. 130–210 AD), was a prominent Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman empire. Galen influenced the development of various scientific disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology, as well as philosophy and logic. Rhazes (or Rasis, or Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi Persian (854 CE–925/935 CE) was a polymath, physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher and important figure in the history of medicine. Ibn Sina (Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Sīnā) (c. 980–16 August 1037) was a Persian polymath regarded as one of the most significant thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age. He has been described as the father of early modern medicine. As well as philosophy and medicine, Ibn Sina or Avicenna’s corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics and poetry.
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Kapur, M. (2016). Introduction: Indigenous Healthcare Systems in India. In: Psychological Perspectives on Childcare in Indian Indigenous Health Systems. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2428-0_1
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