Ayurvedic Cure For Pandemics

The word 'pandemic' is derived from the Greek term 'pandemos', where 'pan ' means inclusive of all and 'demos' depicts people i.e. an outbreak of a disease covering global proportions. The struggle of the world to deal with such unanticipated eruptions has always been a challenge due to a number of reasons, such as, the novelty of causative organisms, its unexpected virulence, delayed detection, rapid widespread, lack of treatment, and many more. As a result, consequences are devastating i.e. manifold rise in morbidities and mortalities.

As old as is the cycle of occurrence of such pandemics, its description along with the ways to combat such crisis are also described in the ancient texts. Let us try to decode the mystery of such catastrophes from the golden verses of the very ancient science of healing: Ayurveda.

In Chapter-3 of Vimana Sthana of Charak Samhita, Sage Atreya explains his disciple Agnivesha, the causes of such crisis along with the simple and feasible ways to fight them under the term 'janpada udhwamsa' where ‘janpada’ depicts a large group of people and ‘udhwamsa’ means to destroy.

Evamvaadinam bhagavantamaatreyamagnivesha uvaacha– Uddhritaani khalu bhagawan! Bhaipanjyaani, samyagvihitaani, samyagavachaaritaani cha; api tu khalu…

Agnivesha (to Atreya): Despite the fact that all human beings on earth differ from one another in every aspect i.e. temperament, food, body, immunity, mind, age, etc., still how a single disease has the power to affect one and all equally?

Atreya replied:

Tamuvaacha Bhagavaanaatreyaha:

Evamasaamaanyevataamapyebhiragnivesha!

Prakrityaadibhirbhaa

vairmanupyaanaamyeanye…

Agnivesha! Despite everyone being physically different from one another, they also share four common elements i.e. air (vayu), water (jala), space (desha), and time (kala); and when imbalance erupts among these common elements, it leads to janpada udhwamsa.

Then, Agnivesha questioned Sage Atreya that what is the cause of this imbalance occurring in nature?

Atreya explained: