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.The Stagnation of Indigenous MedicineVaidyas carve out not only a unique space for their knowledge but also a temporal-ity that is distinct from that assumed by biomedical doctors.We have seen one casein which indigenous practitioners defend the slow action of their drugs in responseto Koman s critiques.They make this point often, for example with reference to amedicine called Salmali in Sanskrit or Mullilavamaram in Tamil. This slow actionof the indigenous drugs with permanent results is highly to be preferred to thequick action of the drugs of the British pharmacopea with fleeting results. 53 Thisclaim that British medicine brings quick but only temporary relief, while the indig-enous systems bring slower but permanent cures, is common throughout siddhaand ayurvedic literature, and was often repeated by patients and doctors alike whenI was conducting my research as a refrain on the superiority of traditional medi-cines.This attitude transposes the perceived endurance and longevity of traditionalIndian knowledge onto its medicines and their effects, while denigrating the curesof an immature, fledgling biomedicine as transient and short-lived.The values asserted in this temporal view can and were easily inverted.A cor-nerstone for British claims to possess a medicine more advanced than that of theircolonial subjects was their conviction that European history advanced while Indiansciences had stagnated since classical times.To some degree, this view of stagnantIndian sciences was supported by both Tamil revivalists and Indian nationalists,who tended to regard history as a process of decay from an original perfection, aperfection that might be reestablished with the restoration of cultural and racialpurity.This notion of history as degeneration in South Asia has precedent in theidea, first described in Sanskrit texts, that history proceeds as a succession of fourepics (yugas), devolving from the first, utopian age to our present degenerate times,the Kali Yuga.History, however, does not just devolve but is circular, as the KaliYuga ends in a great conflagration, followed by a time of regeneration, awakening creating space for traditional medicine 33again into the first, glorious, age.Similarly, formulations of Indian nationalism andIndian medicine, while narrating a history of decay, affirm the potential to reestab-lish the glory of Indian medicine in an independent state.54Biomedical doctors seized upon Orientalist scholarship that told of the degen-eration of Indian civilization from its ancient, Aryan roots, and asserted that55indigenous practitioners had much to learn from British doctors.In August 1918,A.G.Cardew, minister for medicine, objected to government plans to fund a schoolof indigenous medicine.Ayurveda, he argued, is only of antiquarian interest tothe colonial government. It is interesting as an old survival, just as the dodo wasan interesting survival in the island of Mauritius when that bird was still alive.Asan archaic system it is of interest.But unfortunately it has stopped still at thatstage and the enormous progress which science has made in the last century hasbeen a closed book to it. 56 Like many colonial and biomedical authorities, Cardewconsidered Indian medicine to be of literary and historical, but not scientific,interest.Understanding medical difference through an evolutionary hierarchy ofknowledge, he assumed a natural progression of history, a prognostic view accord-ing to which the eclipse of indigenous medicine by allopathy was inevitable.Likethe dodo bird, which was not up to the demands of the new imperial world, indig-enous medical knowledge lacks the strength to resist the force of truth, embodiedin biomedical reason.Its time is past, and so it must, as all survivals from the past, succumb before long. In their Reply to the Report on the Investigation into the Indigenous Drugs,vaidyas respond to Cardew s views.Long ago Ayurveda developed a system of its own and reached a pointbeyond which it had become practically impossible to proceed.And thatis why it is even now accused of having become stagnant long ago
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