The Siddha school recognizes these 96 Tatwas and further adds that the body comprises 72,000 blood vessels, 13,000 nerves, 10 main arteries, 10 vital airs, Pranan, all forming a network which through possible imbalance of the three humours, equivalent to the doshas of the Ayurvedic system, becomes liable to 4448 diseases!

The Siddha theory explains the causes of disease, the amelioration of diseases and their symptoms and presents a guide to relevant therapy. The theory also very much takes into account dietary considerations, both in the cause of diseases and indeed in their cure. This may be exemplified by the following quotes from chapter 95 of the great work Thirukkural by the Sage Thiruvaluvar, "No need of medicine to heal your body’s pain, If what you ate before digested well, before you eat again", and perhaps more specifically, "Diseases befall in plenty on one who takes abnormal food ignoring the power of fire within."

The reputation of the Tamil culture was well known to the Aryan invaders and they clearly wished to enrich their own culture by using Tamil knowledge. It is recognized that the Aryan compilers of the Ayur Veda sent learned men to the South and East of India to gather material to be assimilated in their developing Ayurvedic system. The man who sent to the South, i.e., the Tamilnadu region, was the sage Agasthiya, a fact lying hidden in the traditional Indian story of the marriage between Siva and Uma.

Ayurveda is the name the Aryans gave to the science of medicine. The Vedas became the four ancient sacred books of India, the oldest being the Rigveda, then Samaveda, Yajurveda and the youngest, Atharva Veda. These were handed down by word of mouth and it is a Hindu belief that man never composed them. It was believed that Gods taught them to the Sages who were considered the seers of the truth. In truth, there is no Veda called Ayurveda. It derived from the Atharva veda, in which is revealed 114 hymns describing disease and medicine topics.

Lord Brahma is believed to have taught the principles of Ayurveda to Prajapati and he in turn to several sages including Agnivesh. The Agnivesha manuscript was later re-edited by Charaka and became known as the Charaka Samhita, which contains 12,000 verses, in 8 Volumes encompass 120 chapters. During the Charaka period, medicinal plants were characterized into four classes, direct fruiters, creepers, flowery fruiters and herbs. Many different parts of the plants were described as being the source of the plant drugs.

Original Sanskrit Ayurvedic texts describe in total approximately six hundred different medicine plants. It was taught by Charaka and demonstrated by Jivaka, the Royal Physician of King Bimbisara of Mahadha, who was appointed by the king to supervise the health of Gautama providing that we know how to use it correctly.

But we also need to take into account that both the Siddha and the later Ayurvedic systems of medicine, in a similar way to traditional Chinese herbal medicine, take a holistic approach to health: and diseases, for example, also pays an important part in general health regimes.

At heart of the Ayurvedic system are three primal forces: prana, the breath of life; similar to the Chinese Qi; tejas or agni, the fire of life; and ojas or soma, a manifestation of harmony, integration and love.

Within the system there are the Five Great Elements from which all beings are formed; earth which represents all solid matter, water, which is representative of all liquids and air which represents all gaseous elements. Fire is an element that possess that power to change other elements from one state to another and either, which although a rather nebulous element, is considered the source of all matter and the space in which is exists. Agni, the fire of life, into the three doshas, converts these five elements.

These three doshas, kapha, pitta and vata are considered to be active, but waste products of the Five Elements. Kapha is formed from water and earth, pitta from fore and water and vata from air and ether. The doshas are invisible forces that may be only be demonstrated by inference, but nevertheless it is their balance that is responsible for the general health and well being of the individual whilst, conversely, their imbalance will cause an imbalance of the mind and chaos amongst other constituents and organs of the body.

The prescription of herbal medicines is therefore designed to correct any imbalance of the doshas. As such, all herbal medicines are described in terms of their activity in correcting excess kapha, pitta or vata qualities. As all foods are also categorized in this way, diet also forms an important part of any Ayurvedic treatment regime. Additionally, taste is considered important and Ayurvedic texts describe six basic tastes, madhura, sweet, amla, sour, lavana , salty, katu, pungent, tikta, bitter and kasaya, astringent. A healthy diet should thus contain a good mixture of the six tastes and any herbal treatment should be supplemented by suitable dietary considerations.

Ayurveda may be considered, as much a code for healthy life and longevity as it is a medicinal system! Indeed, the word comes from two Indian words ayul, life, and veda, or knowledge.

Sharangdhar Samhita lists many ways of preparing plants for medicinal use. Extracts, Kashaya or Kwath, infusion, Fant, Him, paste, Kalka, and powder, Churna are regularly prepared from crushed plants. The herbs and their solutions may also be formulated into tonic jams and linctus, Leha, Avleha, Modaka, Paka or Chatan; fermented extracts or medicated wines, Asava or Arishta and pills, Gutika. The pills may be made by cooking the powdered herbs with jaggery or sugar, or by mixing with a liquid such as honey or guggulu. , A natural resin from Commiphora mukul. Medicated fats, Grit and oils, Taila also provide suitable vehicles for the administration of the active herbal compounds. Naturally, the herbs should be fresh wherever possible. Dosage is generally dependent on each individual case but considered very important as example by the following quote, "an under-dose medication cannot cure the disease just as a small quantity of water cannot quench a great fire...."

Having prepared the herbs and their dosage forms, their administration to the body may either be through any of the body’s openings or topically, i.e. through application to the skin. One interesting variant of topical administration particularly appeals to me and is described by Charaka thus, "If a king or prince is suffering from a ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ fever, he should embrace a luscious woman whose body had been through smeared with the paste of sandalwood or agaru (Englewood)". What a pity that this particular form of administration is not available on the NHS!

INDIAN HERBS - a proven pedigree

Indian plants have been known for many years to posses medicinal properties for example, Dioscorides refers to many Indian plants including Datura species, which were smoked to relieve asthma and Pliny referred to, and seemingly complained of the costly import of Indian drugs and species as being a drain on Rome’s reserves of gold. Perhaps the Roman Empire also suffered from a negative trade balance!

Some native Indian plants already form the basis of modern allopathic drugs, for example, psyllium seed, the husk of which is used to ameliorate bowel problems; reserpine, one of 30 alkaloids extracted from the root bark of the plant Rauwolfia serpentina, sarpaghanda, is alleviate diarrhoea, is currently being used in China as an anaesthetic and muscle relaxant. But perhaps the most important modern discovery is a chemical, forskolin, isolated from the traditionally Indian medicinal herbs, Coleus forskolin. This has been shown to be particularly effective in the activation of adenosine monophosphate which acts as a cardiotonic. Perhaps not surprisingly, the classical Sanskrit texts recommended Coleus forskolin for treating heart disease.

Gymnema sylvestre, madhuvinashini, which may be translated as ‘killer of sweetness’ has been used in India since the 6th Century B.C. for the treatment of the condition known as ‘honey-urine’. It would seem that hundreds of years before Western physicians knew what diabetes was, the Indians knew both its diagnosis and a suitable treatment. Recent reports (2) would seem to confirm that an aqueous extract of the plant effectively doubled the number of beta cells in the pancreas, which are responsible for insulin production. No allopathic drug has been able to regenerate these beta cells which have been previously been though to be irreplaceable once destroyed in diabetes. Clinical trials seem to confirm the effectiveness of this traditional treatment which is said to have additional benefits of repairing cell damages in liver, kidney and muscles.

Eclipta alba, another Indian medicinal plant, traditionally used for the alleviation of inflammation and certain liver injury, has recently been reported as an effective anti-inflammatory, allegedly acting through the suppression of prostaglandin and cyto-kinin production (3). Similar confirmation of its traditional use as an anti-inflammatory agent for the treatment of arthritis has also been gained for Nyctanthes arbor tristic, night jasmine (4) where the effect is gained without the side effects normally noted with steroids anti-inflammatory and Embelia ribes has been demonstrated to be a potent analgesic, equivalent in strength to morphine but without the narcotic side-effects (5).

Other plants mentioned in these ancient Indian texts are being specifically investigated for effectiveness against bronchitis, an immunomodulators, antibiotics and male contraceptives and many Western pharmaceutical companies are now researching the medicinal properties of Indian plants utilizing High Throughput Screening (HTS) techniques.

REDISCOVERY of the finding of original Siddha texts and search for the plants

Although may of the Sanskrit texts describing Ayurvedic medicinal herbs have survived relatively unscathed through the centuries, generally due to their safekeeping by Indian priests, the Brahmans, some also found their way to Nepal and Tibet in the hands of fleeing monks following the invasion of Northern India by the Muslims. On the other hand, many of the Tamil scripts describing the more ancient Dravidian Siddha medicinal herbs have been lost, many during the flight South following the invasion of the Aryan hordes. Some survived, however, and are to be found in libraries and museums in the West, including the Vatican Library, Polish Institute of Oriental Studies etc., (1).

Some 5 years ago, a Japanese scholar and researcher of the Tamil language found, in the Bibliotheque National in Paris, a treatise on cosmetology by the Siddha sage Bogar dating from about 12 A.D. This text described herbal remedies for the treatment of a variety of hair and skin disease and conditions.

It then became a detective-like hunt by the Dr M Balasubramaniam Plant Medicines Research Institute to track down and identifies the plants described in Bogar’s treatise and to mass cultivate them naturally or to mass tissue culture the components, which could then be, translated to 20th century cosmetics’ active ingredients. The following data sheets described some of the treatments described in Bogar’s treatise and the plants used in them.

References : -

1.		V.R.Madhavan ed., Siddha Medicinal Manuscripts in Tamil (1984), Intl. Inst. of Tamil Studies, Madras 113
2.		J Ethnopharmacognacy, 30 (1990) 265 - 279
3.		Fitotherapia 58 (1), 1987, 23 - 32
4.		J Ethnopharmacology, 11 (1984) 319-330
5.		J Ethnopharmacology, 11 (1984) 309 - 317

Other Recommended Reading

Naveen Patnaik, The Garden of Life - An Introduction to the Healing Plants of India, (Nov 1993), Doubleday, New York, ISBN 0-385-42469-8 and references therein

Selected Medicinal Plants of India, A Monograph of Identity, Safety and Clinical Usage, Chemexil, Basic Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals & Cosmetics Export Promotion Council, Bombay (1992)

Medicinal Plants of India, vols. I & II, Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi 1987

Siddha Herb products :
96 Tatwas | Primodial Siddhars | Balada Turagagandha | Bijaka | Bimbi | Gorga | Jambu | Kovil Tulsi | Mahakanni | Mahanimba | Maka | Malkangni | Sala | Shripala | Sunisannaka | Udumbara | Vaipillai | Vasa Kovil Tulsi |