Epistemology and Embodiment: Diagnosis and the Senses in Classical Ayurvedic Medicine

Abstract

The sensory perceptive capacities of Ayurvedic physicians play a key role in diagnosis. Drawing upon both classical Ayurvedic treatises and field research, this article examines the ways that some contemporary Ayurvedic physicians in Kerala describe their sensory diagnostic abilities in relation to diagnostic techniques of the past and present. These physicians are in a sensory negotiation, first, with diagnostic theory and practice as explained in classical Ayurvedic medical treatises, and second, with contemporary diagnostic technologies that are understood to both extend and attenuate sensory perception. In the course of my historical textual research, I interviewed a number of Ayurvedic physicians who explained their own capacity for sensory perception as limited, in relation to the authoritative teaching of the treatises and the idealized sensory capacities of authoritative individuals (aptas). Their experiences of inhabiting a present, informed by the authority of Ayurveda's textually codified past, and in an evolving relationship with contemporary diagnostic technologies, instantiate a larger narrative that Ayurvedic medicine is in a state of crisis in India. This relationship to knowledge and the senses entails a sensory negotiation converging on the physician's body as a site for the making of truth claims, and for the contemporary practice and experience of Ayurvedic medicine.