Concept of rasayana in Rasa shastra

Abstract

In all the literatures of Rasa shastra, the word Rasayana has been used in two senses, one for medicine as a whole for example "Kupipakva Rasayana" and for whole group of medicines having mercury or other minerals in them. Others have used this word for "rejuvenation" while describing the properties of a substance or in specific chapters entitled Rasayana. So going through our rasa shastra texts, we find an extensive description of Rasayana with better herbo-mineral combinations. There is need to go through the concept of rasayana in changing environment with modernization during the developing era of Rasa Chikitsa as it is more of value in present context since the statistics of occurrence of diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and diabetes mellitus etc. are still uncontrolled. Moreover, latest techniques of drug analysis have been developed so in present scenario we can study rasayana in a more scientific way.