Sense and Evidence Ayurvedic Experiments and the Politics of an ‘Open-Minded’ Science

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140

brill.com/asme

Sense and Evidence Ayurvedic Experiments and the Politics of an ‘Open-minded’ Science

Ritika Ganguly Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB International) [email protected]; [email protected]

Abstract

This paper takes an ethnographic look at laboratory discourses and procedures in the scientific construction of contemporary ayurvedic research in India. It opens up for analysis an experiment in a ‘transdisciplinary’ research laboratory that seeks to understand the methodological and epistemic logic of ayurvedic pharmacology with the help of research methodologies specific to modern Science. In doing so, this paper unrav- els the various meanings that Science has for its different stakeholders. I examine—as participant, observer, and trainee—a ‘Sensory Analysis’ experiment conducted by scientists at a pharmacology and pharmacognosy laboratory for ayurvedic medicine in Bangalore. Postcolonial science studies have analysed the ways in which discourses of science lead to new knowledges and technologies as well as new ways of organising traditional medical knowledge. Yet the processes that reconcile traditional and modern methodologies of pharmacological and pharmacognostic research have received less attention. The experiment that I am discussing here revisits the ayurvedic doctrine of savours and qualities to standardise not only the parameters indicating the nature of a drug, but also standardise the human body itself as a tool to develop a specific ayurvedic methodology. I argue that in its association with the laboratory and the experimental method, the pursuit of ‘open-minded’ dravyaguṇa research conceptualises new research in Ayurveda in terms of the right tools, simplifies complex knowledge, and reorganises the relationship of modern ayurvedic research with classical scientific thought.

Keywords open-minded science – transdisciplinarity – standardisation – sensory science – rasa – dravyaguṇa – pharmacology – Ayurveda

Introduction

There is an intricate concept in ‘ayurvedic pharmacology’ (dravyaguṇa vijñāna)1 known as prabhāva. Prabhāva literally means a ‘specific effect’, and stands for the special property of a ‘matter’, ‘substance’, or ‘drug’ (dravya) that makes it behave in a specific way. Every drug, whether it be used as ‘food’ (āhāra), or ‘medicine’ (auṣadha), has five properties by which it acts; namely, its ‘taste’ (rasa), ‘property’ (guṇa), ‘potency’ (vīrya), ‘post-metabolic effect’ (vipāka), and ‘specific effect’ (prabhāva). Specific effects of certain drugs produce actions different from, and contrary to, those ascribed to both the individual and the combined effects of their other four properties; i.e. rasa, guṇa, vīrya, and vipāka. This can be explained by the theory of pañcamahābhūta—i.e., the five elements of ākāśa ‘space’, vāyu ‘air’, agni ‘fire’, pṛthvī ‘earth’, and āp ‘water’— that provide the material basis for all matter, whether animate or inanimate, and by the theory of tridoṣa.2 Both theories of ayurvedic pharmacology offer their own procedural logic and a way to explain all drug composition, their properties, and their effects on the body. However, there are certain drugs whose actions escape this procedural logic. This means that while the fundamental ayurvedic principles can explain the effects of the drug in terms of its composition and properties, certain drugs that are endowed with ‘inherent special properties’ (prabhāva) escape this known logic of pharmacological actions.3 In the ayurvedic body of thought, the prabhāva of a substance is an amīmāmsya,4—i.e., something that is not

1 Dravyaguna vijñāna or ‘ayurvedic pharmacology’ refers to the special body of knowledge of drugs/ materials, their properties and actions according to ayurvedic principles. For an introduction, see Sharma 1995. 2 The tridoṣa are a set of three existential elements—vāta, pitta, kapha—that make up the body. Once out of balance, they are considered pathogenic. 3 For example, the two drugs chitraka (Plumbago zeylenica) and danti (Croton polyandrum) have a similar rasa, i.e., they are both ‘pungent’ (kaṭu). They also share a similar guṇa—of being ‘light’ (laghu), a similar vīrya of ‘hot’ (usna), and a similar vipāka of ‘pungent’. However, the physiological effects of the two are dissimilar—while chitraka promotes digestion, danti is a powerful purgative. This inherent peculiarity of danti that makes it a purgative against and contrary to its logically inferred action is its prabhāva—its ‘specific action’. Several other drugs and food substances have identical properties but entirely different actions; different properties but similar functions. These are explained in ayurvedic pharmacology as doing so because of their prabhāva—‘specific action’. 4 In Suśruta’s words, ‘Amīmāmsyānyacintyāni prasiddhani svabhāvatah’, quoted in Sharma 1995, p. 54.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 104 Ganguly capable of being submitted to critical investigation or reflection. For the group of ayurvedic scientists, practitioners, and researchers at the Center for Pharmaceutics, Pharmacognosy and Pharmacology (CPPP) where I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork, prabhāva remains ‘still unexplained’ because the ‘tools’ to explain its logic have not yet been invented. The CPPP is a transdisciplinary laboratory in Bangalore, India, invested in ‘new, creative, critical, open-minded research’ on the fundamental principles of ayurvedic thought. It is a lab that seeks to ‘re-open’ the texts of ayurvedic pharmacology. For several of the scientists here, the power to explain the inexplicable prabhāva rests with the ‘right tools’. As Professor P. V. Sharma, scholar of Sanskrit and ayurvedic medicine, writes:

(. . .) it never means that prabhāva can’t be explained. Constant efforts were being made to rationalize this aspect . . . but while assessing the achievements made by the Indian authors, one must keep in mind their limitations in terms of modern sophisticated instruments and laboratories.5

Similarly, Dr Dhyani states that laboratory tools help to show why ayurvedic principles work. Tools elucidate not the unknowable of ayurvedic knowledge, but the unknown of ‘modern’ biomedical knowledge. In his words, they illu- minate ‘the limits of our own knowledge about the rational explanation of drug action’.6 The various ways in which contemporary researchers of ayurvedic medicine articulate the problem of prabhāva demonstrate clearly how the notion of tools, and the very ‘rightness of tools’ is carefully constructed.7 Operating within the context of an international hierarchy of sciences where explanation, evidence, and truth are tied to a singular mode of scientific rational- ity and reason,8 identifying the instruments that will explain and reveal the ‘logic’ of foundational ayurvedic principles has become an important way for ayurvedic scientists to talk about the ‘scientificity’ and the innovativeness of their work. According to Anderson, it therefore becomes crucial for critical studies of postcolonial techno-science to investigate the role of tools in the

5 Sharma 1995, p. v. 6 Dhyani 2003, p. 123. His work as teacher and researcher in the Dravyaguna Śāstra has motivated the CPPP team as well as students of Ayurveda across the country to pursue scientific inquiry into the ayurvedic principles of drug action. 7 Clarke and Fujimura 1992. 8 Farquhar 1994.

asian medicineDownloaded from 9 Brill.com10/02/2021(2014) 102–140 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 105 practical articulation of what is known as ‘modern’ ayurvedic research.9 The notion of ‘modern sophisticated instruments’ holds practical appeal for those researchers who believe that the acintya, the ‘unthinkable’ of the classical texts, is only but an acintita, the (hitherto) un-thought of modern research.10 They speak to Professor P. V. Sharma’s call for ‘substituting properly’ the word ‘unthinkable’ with the word ‘unthought’, so that ‘the path of rational thinking is always open to dedicated scientists’.11 How is this open-ness to rational thinking put into research practice, and what are its implications for the research methods of ayurvedic medical thought? How is the desire to think the ‘unthought’ operationalised in modern ayurvedic pharmacological research, and to what effect? How are tools and instruments from modern science engaged in re-searching Dravyaguṇa Vijñāna, and what is the significance of this engagement for our critical understanding of the postcolonial laboratory? This paper enquires into some of these questions with a view to unraveling how the impetus amongst scientists to re-search, i.e., search again, is itself understood by scientists as a tool for securing the ‘growth’ of the ayurvedic knowledge system. It rummages through lab research projects, brainstorming sessions, discussions around the ‘translation’ of tools,12 and acknowledges the indispensability of western sciences and rationalities to representations of non-western scientific modernity. In doing so, I demonstrate how scientists who lead organised research on Ayurveda’s foundational dravyaguṇa principles serve to carefully sculpt the laboratory and other centres of expertise into objects that make possible new forms of evidence, new forms of value, new kinds of equivalence, new practices of calculation, and new relations between human agency and the non-human.13 I rely on ethnographic methodology as it has been used in postcolonial technoscience and globalisation studies that emphasise local, cultural processes of contestation at different sites,14 and that allows researchers to observe ‘culture’ in the laboratory.15 The paper draws on the theories and methods of Science and Technology Studies (STS) that point to the constructed nature of knowledge claims, scientific judgments, and scientific facts.16 However, as opposed

9 Anderson 2002. 10 Sharma 1995, p. v. 11 Ibid. 12 Prakash 1999; Chakrabarty 2000; Niranjana 1992. 13 Mitchell 2002. 14 Pigg 1996; Gupta 1998; Langford 2002; Banerjee 2002; Tsing 2005. 15 Traweek 1992. 16 Latour and Woolgar 1979, 1987; Galison and Stump 1996; Clarke and Fujimura 1992.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 106 Ganguly to older styles of analysis in science studies, the inquiry in this paper pushes towards a theorisation of the co-production of identities, tools, technologies, and cultural formations,17 and towards a study of non-Western sciences and ideological practices of science and technology in the context of global political differentials.18

‘Open-minded Science’ and the Transdisciplinary Scientist

The institutional practices and epistemic dispositions of the research initiatives at the CPPP19 are authorised by what its scientists have termed ‘open- minded science’. In an article published in 2007 in Current Science,20 the founder-director of this research institute of which the laboratory is a part, introduces the concept of an ‘open’ approach to knowledge. They state that the theoretical foundations of Ayurveda and modern science are different, as are the larger epistemological frameworks of which they are a part, and they recommend that different perspectives and ways of knowing cannot be right or wrong, or more superior, or less. Cultural differences in these two knowledge systems, they write, should be celebrated, but the ‘bridging will however only happen when sensitive, open-minded scientists from the two knowledge systems dialogue in a sustained way and institutions devoted to inter-cultural research are specially created to pursue such interactions’.21 Since the time of the publication of that article—which saw the first conceptualisations of ‘inter-cultural’, ‘open-minded’ research—the research institute of which the lab is a part, has itself gone through various re-articulations and identities. First established as the SPSS in 1993, the Foundation for the Revitalization of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT)—a non-governmental organisation with goals to ‘revitalize Indian Medical Heritage’—was re-named the Institute for Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine (with a catchy acronym I-AIM) in 2008, and the Institute for Transdisciplinary Health Sciences and Technology in 2013. The changing nomenclatures and vocabularies signpost the emergent and shifting discourses led by the ayurvedic élite at this institute, as well as the expanding

17 Anderson 2002. 18 Philip 2001. 19 The Center for Pharmaceutics, Pharmacognosy and Pharmacology, FRLHT, Bangalore. 20 Shankar, Unnikrishnan, and Venkatasubramanian 2007. 21 Ibid., p. 1500.

asian medicineDownloaded from 9 Brill.com10/02/2021(2014) 102–140 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 107 socio-technical network of contemporary Ayurveda that they depend on for institutional support.22 The CPPP uses metaphors such as the ‘bridge’ laboratory and the ‘traditionally-guided’ laboratory to describe itself. It seeks to be a lab that ‘looks to traditional medicine in order to develop relevant, modern quality standards for traditional medicine’.23 At the skylight filled lobby of the CPPP building, one is greeted by medicinal plant pots that are grouped according to modern disease categories and health conditions such as ‘diabetes’, ‘pregnancy’, ‘ane- mia’, ‘old age’, as well as according to popular market classifications such as ‘for skin and hair care’, ‘highly traded’, and so on. The building in which the lab is located is known as the Nagarjuna Block—Nagarjuna being an influential figure in Indian philosophy around 150–250 CE. Each of the buildings at this research institute follows a common naming logic. They are named after influential figures from Hindu philosophy, and the research units housed within these buildings have a contemporary, modern-institutional naming format, as if as a code for the ‘inter-cultural’, ‘open-minded science’ that the institute espouses. As is the norm for contemporary, modern-institutional research and knowledge-producing institutes, the lab, with the prefix ‘Center for’ is to be found within the Nagarjuna Block, where Nagarjuna himself is a figure to have been noted for combining religion and traditional medicine. He advocated and taught the philosophy of madhyamaka—‘middle path’—the bridge. The CPPP prides itself on being one of the few ayurvedic research centres in the country to have developed phytochemistry, microbiology, and molecu- lar biology laboratories in order to understand and further explain the foundational principles of Ayurveda. The objectives of the CPPP are represented as being transdisciplinary—as ‘demonstrating the contemporary relevance of Traditional Pharmacognosy (Dravyaguṇa Śāstra) and Pharmaceutics (Baishajya Kalpana)’.24 In a brainstorming debate among the top management (the director, the advisor, and the three joint directors of FRLHT) in 2008, the expression ‘trans-disciplinary’ was chosen over ‘inter-disciplinary’ and ‘multi- disciplinary’ since it was agreed that the prefix ‘trans’ had a theoretical and methodological inclination that would best suit their historical project of communicating across culturally different paradigms of science, communicating between inherited pasts and envisioned futures, and co-exploring shastra (śāstra, Hindu scriptures) and Science.

22 Pordié and Gaudillière 2014. 23 URL: , last accessed 24 August 2013. 24 Ibid.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 108 Ganguly

On a typical day, the lab sees ayurvedic vaidyas, botanists, chemists, bio- chemists, microbiologists, and Sanskrit scholars—young and very old— interacting on a number of research projects. CPPP researchers are informed, trained, and continually reminded in monthly lab meetings and other fora, of the larger framework of building bridges that their work is located within. Dravyaguṇa researchers work with scientists trained in one or more fields in the canonical European sciences on projects that aim to identify authen- tic and adulterant plant species through biochemistry, pharmacognosy, and bioactivity analysis. In the last few years, formal curricular programmes such as the Science and Śāstra programme25 have developed in order to explore the methods and tools of studying ‘nature’ in ‘Western’ and ‘Indian’ sciences. Through these programmes for PhD students, the lab has been congealing its ideas of transdisciplinarity around producing ‘creative’ knowledge about the theoretical, experimental, and functional relationships between the traditional Indian health sciences, biomedical sciences, and other basic natural and social sciences. The politics constitutive of ‘open-minded’ science, and the contingent and intimate relationships that it allows to be forged between shastra, dravyaguṇa śāstra, ‘global’ science, ‘Indian’ sciences, the Indian Medical Heritage, and Ayurveda—‘the main traditional health science of India’26—is a complex issue of cultural translation that has been discussed in detail elsewhere.27 In this paper, however, I will note that the discourse of ‘open-mindedness’ is a political performance in contemporary Ayurveda—an ideological discourse that authorises ‘bold’, ‘creative’ scientists to control a space and means for ‘relevant’ Ayurveda. Not all researchers in the lab or at the institute acknowledge the need for transdisciplinarity. Some fail to see how this science is ‘open-minded’, and many, in fact, steadily refuse to lend themselves to any of the goals of ‘open-minded science’. Nevertheless, for several of the junior research fellows who participate in the everyday life of the lab as open-minded scientists, ‘real, clinical practice’—and not Brine-Shrimp Assay facilities28—is the only way to

25 Cognate of the more recent Vaidya Scientist Fellow programme. See annex B. 26 Shankar et al. 2007, p. 1500. 27 Ganguly 2012. 28 This is a set-up that tests actions and interactions of drugs on living organisms. Brine shrimp are resilient creatures that make them excellent test samples in experiments for testing toxicity of chemicals. The CPPP has recently acquired the Brine-Shrimp Bio-Assay facility, and new pharmacology testing facilities are underway. For more on these facilities, follow http://ihstuniversity.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=184:cppp- details&catid=94:school-of-life-sciences&Itemid=539 (visited on 2 October 2013).

asian medicineDownloaded from 9 Brill.com10/02/2021(2014) 102–140 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 109 accumulate workable, new, scientific knowledge in Ayurveda. Further, since practitioners of ‘open-minded’ science often perform for a ‘global’ as well as ‘Indian’ audience, eminent academics and scientists in the natural and biomedical sciences at Ivy League American and European universities form the professionalising élite that drives this kind of discourse.29 Not only are the participants in open-minded science rarely equal in the international hierarchy of the sciences, the transdisciplinary community projected through the articulation of ‘open-minded science’ belies the heterogeneity of views in the practice of this science. Therefore, when the word ‘community’ gets used in official representations of contemporary ayurvedic science, we have to remember that there is no such unitary configuration to speak of, or to speak for. The necessary question for us as critics of postcolonial science then becomes: how and through what practices does an official ‘bringing together’ emerge that claims to represent such a unitary community of scientists?

Laboratory and the Creation of Tools

Dr Ram Manohar,30 ayurvedic physician and director as well as chief scientific officer at AVP (Arya Vaidya Pharmacy) Research Foundation, Coimbatore, notes in a recent publication31 that even though classical ayurvedic textbooks (saṃhitā) contain elaborate methods to study properties of drugs and develop new medical formulations and protocols, there is ‘no evidence of organized research activities in the evolutionary history of Ayurveda’.32 He adds, at least ‘nothing of the kind that can be compared with modern medical research’.33 What Ayurveda needs today, he continues, is ‘research in the modern sense of the word’.34 During the formative years of FRLHT, Dr Ram Manohar, then senior researcher, was one of the key influences on their vision of ‘traditionally guided’

29 Leslie 1973; Langford 2002; Prakash 1999. 30 Also a member of global science collaboratives such as the Ayurveda Global, Dr Ram Manohar was chosen as the Principal Investigator representing the ‘Indian side’ on the first ever NIH-funded research grant to scientifically study Ayurveda outside the United States. Dr Manohar’s work is exemplary of the research that the National Institutes of Health fund as CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) research, and ‘integrative medical research’. 31 Manohar 2013, pp. 34–5. 32 Ibid. 33 Manohar 2013, p. 34. 34 Ibid., emphasis mine.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 110 Ganguly laboratories. His vision—which he now formulates as ‘systematic research on the fundamentals of Ayurveda, especially with a focus on its epistemological premises’35—has helped to shape the CPPP and its unique narrative of the use of the tools of western science to strengthen ayurvedic epistemology. Modern tools (as used in lab discourse to refer to the research tools of the European sciences) are believed to bring about ‘standardisation’—a process that will generate precise norms, or criteria, for the assessment of something otherwise immeasurable. Applied to the lab’s own context, modern tools and methods of standardisation are understood as being capable of introducing the norms of repeatability and reproducibility to ayurvedic methodologies of understanding a dravya. In the next section of the paper, I will analyse a CPPP experiment that aims to develop precisely these standards for modern research in dravyaguṇa śāstra. But I want to emphasise here that this overlap of research and discursive strategy (wherein a novel, ‘bold’ use of ‘old’ yet ‘modern’ science tools becomes a marker of ‘open-minded’ research) has itself arisen out of the lab’s interactions with other standardisation attempts in ayurvedic research and development (R&D) and their academic critiques. The emphasis on tools for ‘relevant’ ayurvedic research has emerged in relation to the ‘limited’ research undertaken at bio-pharmaceutical or biotechnology company labs. The lab self-consciously avoids articulating its research as the search for new concepts from past intellectual traditions, or in terms of metaphors such as ‘mining’, ‘dredging’,36 and ‘estimating the reservoir’ of civilisational knowledge37 to talk about their global science. Furthermore, their present discourse on the use of standardisation techniques in order to strengthen Ayurveda’s own methodological and theoretical premises has replaced their own former discourses that invoked the use of ‘modern methods and tools for interpreting traditional knowledge in a culturally sensitive way’.38 Madhulika Banerjee’s important work on the pharmaceuticalisation of Ayurveda39 has suggested that the idea of the ‘herbal’ or the ‘natural’ that has evolved in the West in the last 20 years reduces Ayurveda to a rudimen- tary form of herbal medicine. Indeed, as Banerjee notes, laboratory research in/on ayurvedic medicine in postcolonial India has received the unstinting support of the State, the ayurvedic medicine manufacturing companies and

35 Ibid. 36 Goonatilake 1998, p. 21. 37 Ibid., p. 104. 38 Annual Report 2006–2007, p. 24. 39 Banerjee 2004, 2009.

asian medicineDownloaded from 9 Brill.com10/02/2021(2014) 102–140 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 111 non-governmental organisations to demonstrate the efficacy of Ayurveda to a global public. This has led to various strands in drug, literary, and clinical research on Ayurveda in the last 60 years or so. Pharmaceutical company labs frequently use the pharmacopoeia repertoire of ayurvedic pharmacology to discover multiple uses of ‘natural products as medicine’, and frame research within the narrative of Ayurveda offering a ‘less risk-prone route to drug development’.40 New ‘plural’ pharmacies cohabiting the classical ayurvedic pharmacy alongside factories with ISO standards for the pharmaceutical sector have emerged.41 These research initiatives can largely be said to conform to what Banerjee has termed the ‘pharmaceutic episteme’—an episteme that is focused on retaining Ayurveda’s usefulness as a supplier of new pharmaceuticals, but one that dismisses its worldview on the body, health, and disease.42 They excerpt a piece of traditional medical knowledge—such as information about medicinal plants, therapeutic cures, diet prescriptions, documented in textual ayurvedic traditions and in lived practice. They then evaluate it with the help of modern biochemical, phytochemical, pharmacological, and bio- medical43 clinical testing methods—such as thin-layer chromatography, high-performance-layer chromatography, gas chromatography, bioassays, and randomised controlled trials—in order to demonstrate and legitimise its efficacy. Anthropological studies have shown that this kind of excerpting is det- rimental to the original context or the knowledge system,44 making for the indistinguishability of ayurvedic pharmaceuticals from any other.45 The CPPP, for its part, critiques such studies as limiting their scope for Ayurveda’s own growth as a ‘global’ science.46 It inscribes instead new tools to scientise classical Ayurveda—one that calls for a new use of existing tools. With research that standardises formal methodologies contained in the classical texts of Dravyaguṇa, the lab manages the goals with which modern science tools are adopted or integrated into ayurvedic research. Their transdisciplinary

40 Valiathan 2006, p. 7. 41 Pordié and Gaudilliére 2014, p. 16. 42 Banerjee 2002, p. 1136. 43 Charles Leslie’s significant contributions to social science analyses of such research (1998) trace the historical changes in India from the nineteenth through early twentieth century that motivated ayurvedic physicians to reconcile humoral concepts with biomedical knowledge. 44 Langford 2002; Sujatha 2011; Banerjee 2004. 45 Banerjee 2008. 46 They use the word ‘global’ in the sense in which STS scholar Goonatilake prescribes: a vision to enlarge the world’s scientific knowledge base. For a pertinent discussion on European and non-European science and the road ahead, cf. Goonatilake 1998.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 112 Ganguly ayurvedic lab experiment titled ‘Sensory Analysis’ is exemplary of this creative use of familiar modernising tools. The Sensory Analysis experiment seeks out a method, an experimental criterion, from the various—scattered, as they were—epistemological principles, techniques, and norms of conducting scientific inquiry into matter. It seeks to develop, from ‘within’ the logic of the ayurvedic classificatory scheme for understanding dravya, a standard method of inquiry to investigate phe- nomena and acquire new knowledge about the logic of matter and efficacy of medicines. One of the lead conceptualisers of this experiment, a biochem- ist (I will refer to this person as scientist A) and the director of the lab with a background in the same trade, writes in a peer-reviewed journal that phytochemical (chemical compounds in plant drugs), and anatomical and molecu- lar standards have been used to screen and test ayurvedic medicines. These tests however, she writes, do not reflect the safety or efficacy of drugs since plant materials are complex systems that cannot be grasped by any one or a combination of instruments that modern science and technology have been able to offer. Human sensory evaluation of a material on the other hand, as laid out in Ayurveda, she argues, uses the human body and perception to study the properties (guņa) and actions (karma) of drugs (dravya), and generates knowledge about the full potential of the drug and its context and purpose of use. Knowledge about a particular drug and its five properties (explained earlier in the text) is derived from taste, colour, texture, sound, and smell. The rasa of a drug—its taste—is in particular an indicator of the composition, properties, and probable action of the drug.47 The practice of evaluating drugs sensorially to identify raw drugs and to prepare formulations has been in use by the ayurvedic drug industry and certainly among independent ayurvedic physicians, but the ‘protocols are not documented’, the ‘exact science or protocol to test these are not readily available nor understood’. Therefore, the ‘ayurvedic ways of drug discovery appear subjective’.48 As a way of dealing with this appearance of subjectivity, the trans-disciplinary team at this lab, led by two ayurvedic physicians, has initiated studies on ‘reviving traditional ways of drug discovery by using the human body and senses as the instrument.’ But what exactly is ‘exact science’? What does it mean to posit the sensory experiences of the human body as raw material for experimental science? How is the representability of the elaborate science of physical materials that co- constitute the animal body, plant, and mineral kingdoms, the physical universe

47 Sharma 1995. 48 Ibid., emphasis mine.

asian medicineDownloaded from 9 Brill.com10/02/2021(2014) 102–140 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 113 and all of matter, imagined in a way that would satisfy the conditions of ‘exact’ science? Furthermore, how is it rendered ‘readily available’ in a way that is not available already? How is this quest for exactness, clarity, and explicitness (used interchangeably with the ‘modern’ in modern science) negotiated by ayurvedic and modern scientists? Given the elaborate ayurvedic conceptual exposition on the intimate relationship of materials with the five sense faculties of the body, and inspired by the extensive use of sensory evaluation in the food and beverage industry as a quality control technology, this lab experiment asks why advances in modern sensory science, with their leads in sensory testing laboratories and standardised sensory evaluation facilities, and training, cannot be used to develop ‘indigenous’ technologies and ‘solutions to drug discovery’. The 2008–9 project report of the experiment defines sensory analysis as ‘the scientific discipline used to evoke, measure, analyse and interpret the reactions to characteristics of materials as they are perceived by the senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing’.49 It goes on to list these senses also as the ‘tools’ of sensory analysis and suggests that by a deeper understanding of the theoretical parameters and ‘medium of developing evidence’ in traditional/ayurvedic knowledge, and by integrating the techniques of modern sensory analysis into this knowledge, it will be possible to develop a scientific methodology to analyse drugs and formulations and predict the probable action of a drug from its rasa by fine tun- ing the body’s sense of taste.

Training to Touch, Taste, See, Smell, Hear—Or, Standardising Bodies as Tools

I trained at the CPPP lab as a ‘sensory analyst’ for over a period of 12 months. Our panel, known as the sensory panel, was composed of ten ‘human instruments’—six female and four male—and we were selected on the basis of a set of criteria of inclusion and exclusion. There were five panelists who were trained ayurvedic doctors,50 two young Sanskrit scholars, one Yoga practitioner and teacher, one organic chemist, and one anthropologist. Participating in this experiment as an ‘instrument’ as well as anthropologist of science was both enriching and draining. Regular interviews with the experimenters

49 Project Report, June 2009, p. 44. 50 That is, with BAMS—Bachelor in Medicine and Surgery degrees—and some with MDs in specialised branches of ayurvedic medicine as well. They are currently working in the lab, the clinic, and the informatics department of the institute.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 114 Ganguly reiterated that I was to approach the panel training exercise with the goal of eventually merging into a ‘standardised panel’ with other human volunteers. While at the same time, interviews with other panel participants and observations of the experiment itself restated the impossible ideal of standardising; i.e., matching my own sense responses with those of the others. Scientist A and scientist B’s optimism of a standardised panel that ‘thinks alike, says alike, analyses alike’ was premised on the idea that articulating and discussing our individual sensory response to (the stimulus of) a given material would, over time, ensure a sort of ‘normalising’ of these linguistic descriptors, and eventually produce a normalisation of our responses to the stimuli itself. ‘The instrument called panel’, in the words of scientist A, should eventually help us in ‘calibrating our senses’ and allow us to experience similar responses to similar materials; something that she described as speaking with ‘one voice’. However, despite this apparent similarity in approach, the two scientists diverged in their understandings of the purpose with which the experiment was being conducted. The significance of this difference for any anthropological analysis of modern ayurvedic research is not minor. For scientist A, ‘ayurvedic science’ has always had a deliberate character. If ayurvedic knowledge has been shown to be effective for generations, then how is it that its practitioners can cure us, but not tell us the ‘logic’ in the cure that has cured us? Deliberating on this question, Dr A offers an understanding of ayurvedic knowledge that has three tiers to it: tatva or ‘essence’, ‘logic’, ‘principles’, shastra—the ‘body of knowledge’, ‘rules of knowledge’, commonly used and translated as ‘science’—and vyavahār meaning ‘use’ or ‘practice’. Since these three levels are no longer integrated, that is, since ayurvedic practitioner- pedagogues are no longer the manufacturers of their medicines, only the vyavahār (i.e., ayurvedic practice) has thrived, depleted of the very ethos of tatva—or a drive for researching why it works. For this scientist, the sensory experiment will yield an answer to the key question of what the logic behind ayurvedic formulations are. Why in the proportion of 1:1; why the given combination of herbs, what is it about the taste of the drug that makes it interact with the body in this way or that? We will return to an analysis of the nature of these questions towards the end of the paper, but it is important to bear in mind that for the director of the CPPP, the objective of the Sensory Analysis experiments is not to evaluate individual drugs in a sensory way with the purpose of evaluating their quality per se, but rather, to be able to develop a method that can evaluate the quality of contemporary ayurvedic drugs so that the link between the rasa (taste), guṇa (properties), virya (potency), vipāka (post-metabolic effect), and prabhāva (specific/unique effect) of drugs and their pharmacological use may be explained scientifically.

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Scientist B, the designer and facilitator of this phase of the sensory study, is driven by the goal of generating an extensive and ‘complete list of all the defin- ing’ and distinguishing characteristics of raw drug/finished drugs in use by the industry and commonly prescribed by practitioners. In this sense, he empha- sises a practical vyavahār (use) dimension of ayurvedic knowledge, rather than the ‘why’ (tatva) line of questioning that drives Scientist A. In order to achieve this, he wants to stay as close as possible to the ayurvedic ways of acquiring knowledge of a material through the use of the five senses. He writes in the introduction of the final project report:

Ayurveda describes two major medium of developing evidence: pratyakşa and anumāna pramāņa (means of knowledge).51 Pratyakşa is direct cognition through the sense organs i.e., Rūpendriya (eye), Ghrāņendriya (nose), Rasanendriya (tongue), Shrotrendriya (ear) and Sparśanendriya (skin). The characters that are perceived directly through these sense organs are Pratyakṣa. This is experience. Indirect perception of the characters based on experience is Anumāna (e.g.: assuming fire after seeing smoke). Upamāna (comparison with well known objects) and Yukti (pre- dicting the past, present and future based on same/similar experience i.e. indirectly perceived through the sense organs) are the other pramāṇas used in Ayurveda. Based on the traditional and modern understanding of Sensory Analysis, we have developed methodology and guidelines to assess the typical characters of elected Ayurvedic products.52

Our immediate objective was to pass the ‘general training’ phase of the year-long panel training programme where we were going to learn to recog- nise colours of food materials, their brightness/dullness, darkness/lightness,

51 Pratyakṣa is a compound word of prati and akṣa, meaning ‘in front of the eyes’. Anumāna is a compound word from anu, meaning ‘afterwards/later’ and māna for ‘knowledge/ understanding’. Pramāņa stands for ‘means of knowledge’, having pramā as its root word, meaning ‘valid knowledge’. It is hard for the word pramāna to be thought of as ‘evidence’ or even methodology. As a means of knowledge derived by direct cognition through the senses the concept of ‘pramāna’, in a very Derridian sense, is not autono- mous. It emerges as a signified only in relation to other signifieds such as pramā—valid knowledge, prameya—object to be known, and pramata—the individual seeking knowledge. Further, the concept of pramāna is used in Ayurveda in ways very different from the philosophical body of work that the concept is derived from—the six schools of Hindu philosophy (ṣaṭ darśana, literally, the ‘six views’ or ‘six insights’) that are themselves born out of the Upaniṣads, which are, in turn, part of the Vedas. 52 Project Report, June 2009, p. 48.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 116 Ganguly glossy-ness/mat-ness; nature of odours—their sharpness, sweetness, pun- gency; their tastes—sweet, salty, spicy, pungent, bitter, astringent; and their textures—smooth/rough, soft/hard, tough/brittle, moist/dry. Along these parameters of colour, odour, taste and texture, we would be ‘profiling’ basic food materials such as juice and biscuits for their inherent finer attributes of brightness, pungent-ness, bitterness, roughness, and so on (see Figure 1). The procedure for profiling involved the examination of the material for the presence of each of the visual, smell, touch, and taste attributes of the product enumerated on the panel training sheets prepared by the lead scientist B, indicating the intensity of each of these perceived attributes on a 15-point grade scale. We were also required to note down any other qualitative attributes that were not already on the training sheets. We were reminded that our eventual goal as a ‘fully trained’ panel was to be able to detect even minute modifica- tions in the taste of a material. Unlike a ‘semi-trained’ panel that would be qualified enough only to test finished ayurvedic formulations and raw drugs for the presence or absence of each of the visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile attributes of a quality drug, a fully trained panel would be the tool that generated, from within dravyaguņa criteria of identification of drugs, a standard and universal list of these attributes in the first place.

FIGURE 1 Panel training sheet (CPPP, FRLHT, Bangalore).

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According to Dr B, such a list is necessary for negotiating an unreliable pharmaceutical industry that can, and does, get away with substituting the clas- sically recommended ingredients with other less expensive ones. According to him, the industry also substitutes these ingredients with more palatable ones, without altering the overall taste and look of the final formulation in any significant way. For our present purpose, the task of the fully trained panel would be to examine the raw drugs and their finished formulations according to their organoleptic attributes (as enumerated in the classical texts) in a way that a standard list of attributes could be distilled as the norm against which to evaluate the quality of any sample of that formulation. Dr B offered the example of honey—a key Cyavanaprāśa ingredient—that is typically replaced with jaggery since it is less expensive and generally sweet in taste. But jaggery, which has a completely different texture from honey, would be easily detectable even within a compound formulation that consists of over 40 ingredients if the ‘standards’ for evaluating the stickiness or jam-like consistency of Cyavanaprāśa were applied correctly.53 Dr B reiterates that within the sensory analysis experiments his intention was to be able to, first and foremost, enumerate all the attributes of Cyavanaprāśa on a sample of an ‘ideal formulation’ prepared by him and the lab on the basis of information about product preparation gleaned from the nighaṇṭu, and then compare with market samples of the same product. The attributes of Cyavanaprāśa here refer to the characteristics of Cyavanaprāśa as a drug; that is, its abilities to be identified by sensory inspection such as visual inspection (its colour, form), odour inspection (distinctive smells), tactile inspection (texture, stickiness), and inspection by taste (taste type, mouthfeel, etc.). The specific objectives of a ‘fully’ trained panel assume and require that the human body is capable of standardising its own responses to stimuli over time, as well as standardise its responses across other bodies in the panel. As Dr B explained to me in an interview, the idea was that once we (the panel) were able to differentiate and give precise attributes and sub-attributes, if possible numerically—four units for sweetness, two for sourness, six for astringency, and so on—we would be able to offer a fixed criteria, a fixed quality standard for a particular product (and then the statistical result would look like the result sheet in Figure 1b). That is, while a product or ingredient

53 Amla (Indian gooseberry; Latin name Embilica officinalis) or amalaki (Sanskrit name) is the most consumed botanical raw drug by the domestic herbal industry because of its high demand (Ved and Goraya 2007). Although an easy-to-grow tropical plant, usually any fruit that is predominantly sour in taste is used as its adulterant in ayurvedic formulations, such as the Cyavanaprāśa and Triphalā cūrna (powder formulation from three fruits). In extreme cases, even pumpkin has been used to replace amla in Cyavanaprāśa.

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FIGURE 2 Numerical attributes on training sheet (CPPP, FRLHT, Bangalore). would broadly have attributes of colour, form, shape, odour, each of these attributes would be amenable to further classification by the senses, resulting in sub-attributes such as type of colour, uniformity of colour, agreeability of odour, first taste, second taste, and so on, as can be seen in Figure 2. Within the attribute of taste itself, a single material may be distinguishable by a primary taste (the first, most predominant taste of the material), secondary taste (less powerful than the primary), and a tertiary, lingering but clearly distinguishable taste, produced by the material. Therefore, the question for the sensory panel was whether or not the sub- attribute of astringency in the ‘ideal’ formulation of Cyavanaprāśa was greater than the sweetness in it, and if so, by how much. Interestingly, when asked to articulate how these new quality standards would be different from those given in the classical literature for Cyavanaprāśa, Dr B states that:

even though in Ayurveda or our Indian systems of traditional medicine54 most standards that exist for identifying, collecting, storing and preparing

54 The expression ‘our Indian systems of traditional medicine’ is a familiar discursive way of securing the place of Ayurveda as representing ‘our’, ‘Indian’, and ‘tradition’.

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medicines are sensory, we are not given a proper set of standards for every formulation. For example, while the texts recommend the pāka lakshaņā of a good quality lehya [a drug in the form of a paste],55 these references do not enlist individual attributes for specific sets of lehyas. For example, they do not give us quality attributes specifically for cyavanaprāśa, or the kushmāndavaleha [another formulation in paste form] or the citraka har- itaki avaleha [a specific formulation in paste form]. They [the classical literature on materia medica] give only a few, general instructions, and it stops there. It is our duty to develop further.56

Sensory Experiments One of the most central elements of taste training in this experiment consists of the Principle Investigator (PI), the Co-PI, and the human volunteers acquiring an overall sense of the panel’s divergent and/or similar response(s) to sensory stimuli by comparing notes at the end of the testing session to ‘normalise’ our sensory responses with the others. The tests and procedures for conducting the experiment are derived and inspired by sensory training programmes that the PIs have themselves attended in international food science research institutes. Dr A and Dr R, another ayurvedic physician-scientist, who first had conceptualised these experiments in 2003, had their first interactions with modern sensory analysts at The Leatherheads School of Food Research, UK. Here they were introduced to the ‘systematic things’ to be observed during sensory analysis. Reminiscing the first day at the Leatherheads, Dr A speaks about it as an ‘ice breaker’, when the food sensory panelists were given blinded samples of apple juice in a cup and were asked to identify. Based on the taste of the liquid sample, all panelists present at the training facility concluded that the testing sample was a grape juice sample, with the exception of Dr A, who detected that it was actually a sample of (pink) apple juice. The trainers were impressed to see that Dr A’s inferring mind and sense of taste saw through the deceiving visual sense. A red artificial colouring agent was added to the apple juice to give it the visual appearance of grape juice, and some others present

55 That the paste should be of a consistency such that when pressed between the thumb and the index finger, a clear impression of the furrows of the finger should be left behind; when rolled between the thumb and the index finger it should easily form a wick; criteria to determine how the final formulation gains the textures, smells, tastes, and appear- ances of the individual ingredients that go into the final formulation; the stage at which the other ingredients are to be added to the jaggery or sugar-based paste so that when immersed in boiling water the paste dips rather than spreads; and, in many cases, the connections between the names of the formulations and its properties (of taste, smell, feel, sound, and appearance) from where the names are derived. 56 Emphasis of tone retained.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 120 Ganguly even recorded the product as wine. Neatly segregating the senses and reestab- lishing the possible ideal of a homogenous, standardised human panel, Dr A recollected that this introductory session at the food research sensory lab dem- onstrated to the panelists, a) how eyes may deceive the tongue into believing the sensory perceptions that it notes, and b) the mixed sensory composition of the panel—a diversity that would eventually be homogenised over several debating sessions following the experiment. As pioneers of the modern sensory evaluation for pharmaceuticals, Dr A, B, and R are aware that the scientific sensory tests and methods adopted to understand ayurvedic drugs have been developed by international sensory labs with food research in mind. Dr B’s key guidebooks through the length and breadth of the sensory project have been the Consumer Sensory Testing for Product Development,57 the Sensory Analysis and Consumer Science Approach towards Consumer Preference,58 and Sensory Evaluation Techniques.59 Our training exercises in the senses were standard panel-training procedures designed and recognised internationally for food science. Thus, even though we were not training on hedonicity tests,60 we were nevertheless borrowing scientific methods of sensory testing from a food industry context that privileged the goal of maximising product acceptance. Our training in learning to register, and to become sensitive to61 our own senses of tasting, seeing, and smelling followed the format presented in Figure 3. Not only was this the first time that the panel was being imparted the methods of recording on paper their own taste, their gaze, and their smell, but we were also learning to assign numbers to them. This meant, first and foremost, that we were learning to segregate our sensory perceptions. It meant that we were learning the importance of segregating our own sensory experiences of taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight from each other, even as we struggled to desegregate, unite, and normalise our sensory experiences with that of the other panel members. And since there were rules for how to experience the senses, there were also rights and wrongs. As Dr B writes in the final project report submitted to the Tata Trust a year later, ‘panel members have to

57 Var 1998. 58 Booklet published by the Central Food Technology Research Institute, Mysore, India, where Scientist B was sponsored by the IIA for professional training in sensory analysis. 59 Rousseau 2004. 60 ‘Acceptance’ or preference did not seem to the experimentalists to be valid criteria for medicine or food as medicine. 61 Latour and Woolgar 2004.

asian medicineDownloaded from 9 Brill.com10/02/2021(2014) 102–140 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 121 experience each attribute listed in the training manual, otherwise chances of error are very high’.62 He writes:

Ideally all the standard attributes should at least be perceivable by each panel member in each test. It is quite possible that because of various reasons, panel members may not be able to perceive it consistently in quality or quantity. This leads to errors in the result. There are basically two types of errors: Type I: [Where] some of the attributes actually do not exist but the panel members perceive them. This . . . appears if they were not properly trained, were not feeling healthy, were not in sound mood, were not interested, prejudice or predilection, etc. Type II: In this, some of the attributes actually exist, but the panel members are not able to perceive them. It appears if panel members have not been trained properly to perceive those attributes, are not sensitive enough to those attributes . . . opted for not marking the presence of those attribute/s thinking that it would be wrong though they did perceive, etc.63

Figure 3 demonstrates in particular the paradox that results from a format arising out of this understanding. The sensory format requires a human body to remember (from cultural, individual, linguistic, lingual memory) an ‘associative word’ that best identifies for her the smell of the sensory sample at hand, and places this remembering alongside a table that states the ‘correct identification’ of the smell; that is, one ‘revealed by the conductor (experimenter) ayurvedic’. Further, what sets this paradox apart from other scientific tools and methods in the lab that seek to create ‘un-biased’ and ‘objective’ conditions of knowledge out of the subjective perspectives and experiences of scientists is the desire to ‘standardise’ both individual experiences of sensing as well as the errors themselves.64 The final project report notes that:

62 Tata Report 2008–09, p. 52. 63 Ibid., p. 53. 64 This has deep resonances in the practice of Homeopathy. ‘Provings’—the process that first provokes a unique pattern of symptoms in a healthy individual with the help of a substance and then records these observations in a diary, taps into a similar quantifica- tion of individuals’ unique susceptibilities. A ‘proper’ homeopathic prescription ‘tunes’ an individual’s own ability to heal. Through the stimulation, recording, and cataloguing of the mental, emotional, and physical symptoms in a person, the homeopathic practitioner draws up an individual’s pattern in a homeopathic portrait of susceptibilities, imbal- ances, and antidoting influences. The substances that are taken to be antidoting arise from their qualities, and include aromatic substances such as gels containing camphor and menthol, strong mouth washes, pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, medicinal

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FIGURE 3 Training sheet for recognising odours (CPPP, FRLHT, Bangalore).

. . . since sensory evaluation is a highly subjective test and human members are the tools of this test, there is always a chance of either Type I or Type II errors creeping in. Therefore, it is important to ‘standardize’ the panel as a collective tool for sensory evaluation.65

This standardisation is meant to be achieved by repeated group discussions following the sensory experiments so that ‘incorrect’ observations may be debated, and paradoxically, through more associative words, language, subjective experiences, interpretations, and identifications, the degree of variation in panel observations may be checked and abated.

strength herbs, and supplements. Data about these are to be recorded in a patient’s diary meticulously, and the repertoire of ‘remedies’ of Homeopathy as a curative medicine is derived from these individual vibrational patterns of imbalanced or diseased states. 65 Tata Report 2008–09, p. 53.

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Sensory Stimuli and the Socio-cultural Rasa The experimental method deployed here that seeks to use modern sensory science tools towards strengthening Ayurveda’s own methods of developing evidence is known as the QDA, or Quantitative Descriptive Analysis. Geared to quantitatively represent qualitative data, this method is used to grade the intensity of our subjective experience of attributes. We were required to profile and examine the product for the given attributes of colour and appearance, texture, aroma, taste, and overall quality, and record these sensory experiences on the 1–15 grade scale provided under each of these attributes. Recording on the quantitative grade scale did not seem possible.66 We all seemed to be making the error of rating attribute intensity of the samples with reference to our own individual experiences and life memories of sweetness, sourness, astringency, and so on. Some of us were candidates for re-training. In fact, several months later, when I was studying the lab register maintained by Dr B to routinely document plans and progress of the sensory project, the section titled ‘Process and Results’ had two ‘wrongs’ next to my name. I was ‘incorrect’ in stating that sample A was saltier than B, and B sweeter than A. From the point of view of science studies, I had a ‘dumb’ tongue.67 The re-training would help me to become a nose that discriminated more and more subtle differences, educating a ‘dumb’ nose or a ‘dumb’ tongue that was unable to differentiate much more than just ‘sweet’ and ‘salty’. In this sense, through training sessions,

66 Drawn from food science, testing on juice and biscuits has become an accepted way of training visual, tactile, taste, and aroma sensibilities. For example, when I broke off a part of biscuit B and graded it for texture in terms of the texture attribute ‘fracturability’, I rated it ‘medium,’ that is, 8 on a scale of 1 to 15, where 1=low fracturability (a goal that reflects the freshness of biscuits) and 15=high fracturability (not desired). I struggled in my head, however, with the question ‘medium in comparison to what’? If it was in comparison to A (which it had to be, it seemed to me, for the ‘high’ and the ‘medium’ and the ‘low’ to have a context within which they were high or medium or low), then it only made sense to sample them back to back, or together. The juice and biscuit test was not part of the ayurvedic experiment per se, but an initial exercise in understanding our own senses, as well as each others’, as a panel. I revised (erased and re-circled) many of my scores on the grading scale when I sampled two biscuit samples A and B together, back to back. But since Dr B’s preliminary instructions to the panel on the first day of the tests were to sample one, rate that one on all attributes, neutralise tastes (by rinsing mouth with water), and then ‘move on’ to the other, I interrupted the experiment to clarify. Dr B con- firmed that that was precisely the purpose of the training and part of what the training would accomplish for us as a panel that was going to generate standard sensory protocols for ayurvedic formulations in the future. 67 Latour and Woolgar 2004.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 124 Ganguly one could learn to have a tongue that allows one to inhabit a rich, differenti- ated gustatory world. This learning was forged most energetically in the discussion sessions immediately following a sensory experiment. It is at these sessions that we articulated, learned,68 and learned to standardise our responses as a single body. When we profiled the attributes of pippali (long pepper), we arrived con- sensually at a list of standard attributes that every raw mature fruit of pippali must possess.

Scientist B: Shall we go to odour? [Reads from our result sheets] ‘Pungent, spicy on breaking, causes sneezing on snuffing, pungent smell, hot . . . ’. Panel member R [interrupts]: But that is not related to smell, sneezing and all is not related to smell. Scientist G: That will be irritation. Sneezing is irritation. Scientist B: Yes, that is personal. [reads on] ‘Strong and spicy, pungent, resembles shikakai’ [Small bouts of laughter in the lab since shikakai— itself a product—was an odd choice of descriptive language for a raw drug]69 ‘Smells like hingwāshtak churna. Agreeable, smell of pepper, felt like sneezing. See? Two people who find that it may cause sneezing. Smells like old fruit, not fresh one, causes tingling.’ G: But everybody accepts spicy and strong? D: The smell is ayurvedic pharmacy smell, when you enter. B: Pleasant and non-agreeable, nauseating. A: It’s not nauseating! In fact it subsides nausea. K: Sir, I found it nauseating. B: I think we can say spicy and pungent. G: Okay, so here I think there is not much confusion. Pungent, spicy, and what? Irritation? Smell now and see? [we all inspect our own discussion reference pepper sample for its smell] Who all found it irritates? Rekha [name changed] you, and . . . [points to another panelist] . . . you. A: But Rekha you are a bit allergic in general, no?

68 Ibid. 69 Itself a medicinal plant, shikakai is both a traditional hair potion as well as a modern hair product made from drying and powdering the fruit pods, leaves, and bark of the Acacia concinna and making a paste thereof. This is an excellent example of cross-referencing in the qualitative description of a drug or drug part, where the smell of a crude drug is described and understood as the smell of a finished formulation.

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G: How close are you holding it? Are you pressing it also? Only when you put some pressure will the smell be more and that might be irritating you. B: Spicy ar-o-matic [speaks the word as he writes]. Okay. Nobody has spelt out aromatic in their observations. But I believe it is aromatic. Once again here, science opines aroma, what is aroma? Aroma is smell. The true meaning of aroma. But generally how we use it in the sensory analysis dictionary, aroma is agreeable (that is, modern sensory science uses aroma in a positive way, to always mean ‘agreeable’). Okay, anything else? Now about tactile . . . hmm . . . hard, granular . . . A: It’s not granular! G: What is your opinion, what is granular? [asks R]. A: Granular means it should not be powder, it should not be hard. Granules. Should be separable. R: But this is separable, here! [applies pressure on the fruit until it separates]. A: Now this is granular, but when you roll it, is not (the technique for evaluating granular is not by crushing, but by gently rolling between fingers). B: See I think it looks granular— A: . . . (interrupts) looks granular, we are doing tactile now. B: See when we make halva [sweet confection made from flour, clarified butter, and butter] and you let it cool, after a few hours, a top layer forms— K: Ravey ravey (a word in Kannada, and a cultural sensory descriptor that I could not understand until A explained). G: Exactly! Like ravey ravey. B: Ya, everybody has written like that only. With slight pressure, not easily breakable or separable. We have to see how much pressure is to be applied to break it into granules. Let us do that with another sample next time. I will bring a fresher sample. A: Okay now, attributes of taste. Burning sensation, after two or three minutes, burns very much. So primarily kaṭu, secondary tikta. Salivation in mouth, hot sensation. Yes, that is a good finding that she has written. Causes ‘salivation’. Is it true? Tingling is okay, but salivation? [he asks the room]. R: I think it coats the tongue. A: It is a kind of burning sensation only, but not exactly burning. G: Tingling. I think it is tingling. R: Ya, tingling. Or burning. No?

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A: Burning, see when you eat red chilli you get burning. That is burning. Unbearable. This is bearable. You have how much ever, it will not burn. See take a real chilli you have to drink water. That is burning. B: Yes yes yes. See the difference is here . . . even I am only now able to differentiate between the pungent sensation and tingling of pippali.70

In learning to profile attributes of pippali (long pepper) later that year, depen- dences on specifically local referents and vocabularies (shikakai, aakarakara),71 local metaphorical usages ( jum jum jum jum72 and ravey ravey)73 and ayurvedic correspondences (smells like Hingwāshtak churna)74 ensured that ‘responses to stimuli’ were impossible to standardise. Such diverse descriptive termi- nology used to explain the sub-attributes of a material characteristic of the different palates and experiences of linguistic groups. It also pointed to how belonging to a certain cultural group shaped the kind of things that our bodies are used to and therefore can or cannot perceive. As anthropologist Manpreet Janeja has shown in her brilliant study of the centrality of taste and textures to the construction of socio-linguistic identity among groups, the constant cultural negotiations that go into the making of ‘everyday’, ‘normal’ food75 adapts us lopsidedly to tastes, aromas, savours, and flavours, sensitising us to certain tastes more than to other tastes. Scientists A and B however, despite divergences over the goal with which these experiments are carried out, are convinced by the homogenising impulse of the concept of standardisation in ayurvedic literary and drug research. They are currently in the process of moving the sensory studies to the next phase, with the belief that with more and elaborate discussion sessions after experiments, the panel would understand each other’s vocabularies so that agreeing on a

70 This is a transcript of a discussion that followed a sensory experiment conducted in 2009. Verbatims have been retained, except in a few sentences that have been paraphrased that convey the essence of the conversation. 71 A local plant in use as an anaesthetic. It causes a type of acidic feeling in the mouth, and it is used as an anaesthetic because it causes numbness. 72 A highly specific sense metaphor in Kannada referring to a tingling sensation in the mouth. 73 A specific cultural sensory descriptor in the Kannada language that a fellow participant had to interpret for me. It refers to the top layer that forms upon cooling a sweet confection made from flour, clarified butter, and butter. 74 An example of a linguistic descriptor used in the experiment that would be understood only by a select panel—those trained in ayurvedic medicine. This is an ayurvedic drug in powder form, with pippali as one of its nine ingredients. 75 Janeja 2009.

asian medicineDownloaded from 9 Brill.com10/02/2021(2014) 102–140 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 127 set of attributes would come ‘naturally’, and would represent sensory stimuli in a more homogenised way. In their words, we need to learn to think like a panel—a single panel—that recognises attributes of materials and records intensities to sensory stimuli as a single body.

Analysing Rasa:76 The Emergence of a Laboratory Vision

A careful examination of the ayurvedic understanding of the body and pharmacology will show us that not only are there the five sense organs of the eyes, ears, nostrils, tongue, and the skin, but also five sense faculties, five objects of sense faculties, five sense perceptions, and five underlying material constituents of these sense organs. The five objects of sense faculties—sabda ‘audi- tion’, sparsa ‘touch’, rūpa ‘vision’, rasa ‘taste’, gandha ‘smell’—are inferred, rather than directly perceived.77 Further, these sense objects exist in a subtle and inseparable relationship with one or more of the pañcamahābhūta the ‘five physical elements’, and are sequentially ordered in this way according to their decreasing degree of subtlety. Each of the five elements are present in each of the five sense faculties of the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile, but individually dominate only one of these, and produce a sense perception only as the result of the combination of the sense faculty, its object, the mind, and the soul.78 The material constituent or the physical element that is predominantly responsible for the creation of a sense faculty is known as the indriya dravya (indriya ‘sense’; dravya ‘material’), and human sense perception is a result of the relationship between this ‘material’ (dravya) and its associated ‘quality/property’ (guṇa). The very idea of ‘sense’ in the ayurvedic sensory experiment is an outcome of a Euro-American history and experience of sensing, within a particular tradition of understanding the body, consciousness, the mind, and individu- ality. Astringent and pungent are not considered ‘tastes’ by modern sensory science, where the list is limited to sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. ‘But in our protocols, six tastes are considered’, Dr B explained to me, referring to madhura for ‘sweet’, āmla for ‘sour’, lavana for ‘salty’, and tikta for ‘bitter’, plus the two additional tastes of kaṭu for ‘pungent’ and kaṣāya for ‘astringent’. The last two are considered smells, at best sensations, by modern sensory science but are properly rasa (the object of the gustatory sense faculty), and not gandha

76 This is the CPPP study title of the sensory experiment series on rasa. 77 Sharma and Dash 2008, p. 168. 78 Sharma and Dash 2008, p. 167.

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(the object of the olfactory sense faculty) in ayurvedic pharmacology. In Dr B’s exposition of tastes one can find the beginnings of a discourse that presents rasa as ‘taste’ by critiquing the ostensible exclusion of the two rasas—kaṭu and kaṣāya—from the list of tastes in modern sensory science, and by arguing for their inclusion as an ayurvedic ‘contribution’. The sensory panel sheets that are derived from this kind of an interpretive framework look like the ones in Table 1, where the ‘six basic tastes’ are listed as madhura, amla, lavana, kaṭu, tikta, kaṣāya, with their accompanying translations as sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, astringent, in parenthesis. The part played by parenthesis on such test sheets needs to be taken seriously. Often they create conditions and desires for translations that are not simply inter-lingual79 but cultural, involving trans- lative practices and challenges. While the specific inclusion of kaṭu and kaṣāya by the experimentalists are meant to read against prevalent—and allegedly for many ayurvedic scientists also ‘limited’—modern science understandings of taste with only four tastes as opposed to the possible ayurvedic six, their (re)translations as tastes allow for rasa to be discursively engaged in ways of seeing, techniques of translation, and modes of representation that seek to simplify complex knowledge.80 By this I do not mean to argue whether and how rasa is the stable original that is somehow more ‘holistic’ than taste. I am rather interested in noting first that re-presenting the concept of rasa in and through lab experiments involving training human volunteers allows for its re-articulation as something that belongs to the anatomical body, and that can be investigated by observing the effects of certain (food or drug) stimuli on the body. Second, that even within the self-reflexive, élite ayurvedic community that is determining to a large degree the course and discourse of contemporary ayurvedic research, the impetuses of scientists to translate and re-present rasa are not homogenous. The annexe and sensory experiment sheets given to us (see, in particular, table 1) demonstrate how the crystallisation of rasa-as-taste is premised on the anatomical assumption of taste as being a ‘transduction that is initiated when a stimulus interacts with a specific receptor entity of a taste receptor cell of the tongue’.81 Zimmerman has argued that even ‘savours’—the word commonly used to translate the doctrine of the six rasa—is inadequate and mis- leading because savours are qualities that are perceptible through the senses. But these rasa are not ‘sensible’ qualities. They can rather be seen as essences that circulate in the depths of the landscape and are diffused through the

79 Niranjana 1992. 80 Scott 1998; Mitchell 2002. 81 Brand 1997, p. 1.

asian medicineDownloaded from 9 Brill.com10/02/2021(2014) 102–140 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 129 table 1 Panel training on tastes. CPPP, FRLHT, Bangalore.

TRAINING OF PANEL IN IDENTIFICATION OF RASAS (TASTES)

NAME: DATE:

OBJECTIVE: Identification of six basic tastes

PROCEDURE: 1. Rinse your mouth with water 2. Taste any sample given to you and hold the solution in mouth for about 15–20 seconds 3. Write the name of taste if identified 4. Six basic tastes are: 1) Madhura (sweet) 2) Amla (sour) 3) Lavana (salty) 4) Katu (pungent) 5) Tikta (bitter) 6) Kashaya (astringent)

5. Rinse mouth with water, test the next sample 6. Note down the correct names of tastes, confirm by tasting again 7. Now test the samples of series-II

SAMPLE SERIES- I SAMPLE SERIES-II

SAMPLE TASTE CORRECT TASTE SAMPLE TASTE CORRECT TASTE NO. (REVEALED BY NO. (REVEALED BY THE CONDUCTOR) THE CONDUCTOR)

RESULT

CORRECT IDENTIFICATION SAMPLE SERIES-I SAMPLE SERIES-II

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 130 Ganguly chain of being, individually taking the form of powders and broths, remedies and poison.82 The difficulty in capturing rasa in the laboratory through sensory experiments on and by human bodies is that in the ayurvedic framework, rasa is not a purely anatomical entity. A sense faculty such as the gustatory is capable of perceiving rasa only when it is motivated by the mind. This ‘mind’ (manas) is itself ‘imperceptible’ (atīndriya, controller of all sense faculties). In this context, a sense perception may be produced only as a result of a combination of sense faculties, their objects, the mind, and the soul.83 The inseparability of the mind and sense faculties in the ayurvedic sensory ecology introduces deep limits to how rasa may be tested in a sensory lab. This sensory lab is configured around stimuli and bodily response, where the mind figures only as ‘good mental condition’—a pre-requisite for a healthy volunteer. The sensory experiments give us unprecedented insights into the emergence of a laboratory vision. The layout of the experiment sheets (as well as the experiments themselves), including the spaces provided for the panelist’s observations and descriptions, mold a particular way of recording, and therefore ‘seeing’ rasa.84 What is understood to be a detailed, practical, ‘exact’ protocol that is aimed at making information about the rasa of a material ‘readily available’ can only be derived from a specific way of viewing or seeing the body as something that responds to a stimulus, rather than apprehending the body as something that co-constitutes the material and non-material universe. In the latter way of viewing the body, within which rasa exists as an object and a process, there is no room for controlling the (sensory) environment85—one of the most important preparatory steps in lab-led sensory studies. The environment is vital according to the classical medical teachings of Ayurveda, but then the body is itself a sign of it, shaped by it, experiencing rasa of objects that are themselves shaped by the special qualities pertaining to each of the seasons.86

Capturing Rasa in the Laboratory In this final sub-chapter, let us turn to the arguments that ‘see’87 rasa as a ‘claim’ that is awaiting validation with the help of the tools of modern science. In a report submitted to the National Geographic Society in 2003 on

82 Zimmerman 1992. 83 Sharma and Dash 2008. 84 Kuriyama 2002. 85 Resureccion 1998. 86 Farquhar 2002. 87 Kuriyama 2002.

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The Documentation of Indian Traditional Methods of Collection and Processing of Medicinal Plants, the scientists involved with the sensory study write:

practical knowledge regarding processing and purification of toxic plants exists even today . . . but it was realized that even though the “how” of medicinal plant preparation was alive today, the “why” was not clear to the people [traditional physicians, collectors of medicinal plants, store managers of ayurvedic drug manufacturing companies].88

The Director of the CPPP reiterated that ‘they [contemporary ayurvedic researchers] should not stop until they have asked all the questions . . . this is the only way that we can stop approaching a living body of knowledge (dravyaguṇa vijñāna) as if it were dead’. What, in particular, is meant by ‘all the questions’? Are ‘why’ questions ‘all’ the questions? Judith Farquhar and Jun Wang have recently presented a fas- cinating reverse articulation of a related dilemma in contemporary Chinese medicine. They explore the associated meanings and connotations of commonly used proverbs in the Chinese medical field. In particular, they look at the inversion by Chinese medical experts of the commonly spoken Chinese proverb—‘knowing the how but not the why’—a proverb that is invoked in everyday Chinese speech to refer to knowledge that is superficial, knowledge that denotes mere technique without insight.89 The Chinese medicine doctors they interviewed seem to invert the terms of this proverb to critique the privileged global-scientific way of evaluating, modernising, and developing Chinese medicine, so that ‘knowing the why but not the how’ becomes their way of critiquing the dilemma in Chinese medicine brought about by decades of modern scientific interpretations and scientific assessment of Chinese medicine. The proverb, in its contemporary Chinese medical professional articulation, is prominently reversed to articulate the decline in the ‘quality’ of Chinese medical skills with regard to their clinical practice and ‘in-depth knowledge of traditional medicine’.90 The Indian example is a remarkable case of its opposite precisely to participate in a global scientific conversation. In a 2007 paper titled Traditional Phytochemistry: Identification of Drug by Taste,91 the authors propose a ‘possible scientific approach’ to the study

88 Interim Report 2003, p. 7. 89 Wang and Farquhar 2009. 90 Ibid. 91 Joshi, Hankey, and Patwardhan 2007, pp. 145–8.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 132 Ganguly of rasa—a concept, they admit, roughly corresponding to taste.92 They cite recent studies in modern phytochemistry to talk about the links between the pharmacological properties of materials and their tastes. Premised on an article published in the science journal Nature that relates the pharmacological activities of ibuprofen and oleocanthal to a similarity in their tastes, the paper urges for new and scientific investigations into the ayurvedic means of drug identification outlined in dravyaguṇa vijñāna. It introduces the paper thus:

This paper discusses a possible scientific approach to understanding the ayurvedic (hypo)thesis in terms of the stereochemical basis of both pharmaco-activity and taste, and the numbers of possible pharmaco-active compounds that ‘Rasa’ may be able to distinguish.93

The insertion of ‘hypo’ in parenthesis may be read in any of the following ways. One, that rasa as a concept is at best a (hypo)thesis until explained in phytochemical terms; or two, that the thesis of the stereochemical basis of the link between pharmaco-activity and taste is an ayurvedic one, but is a hypothesis that remains to be proven right or wrong; or three, that the ayurvedic thesis of rasa can be understood in terms of the (hypothetical) relationship of the stereochemistry of a material to its pharmaco-activity and taste. Although the authors note that the Sanskrit word rasa is usually rendered into English as ‘taste’ for want of a better word, they relapse into treating rasa-as-taste via a special authority of a western anatomical science, by claiming that:

rasa refers to the total subjective experience arising from putting the substance in the mouth, including not only the six primary tastes recognized by Ayurveda (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent), but also the ‘flavours’ experienced by means of retronasal olfaction (nasal smell receptor stimulation by food warmed in the mouth), the more acrid, chemesthesis irritation sense referred to above, and even more subtle

92 In their study of integrative practice at Lhasa’s traditional Tibetan Medical Hospital, the Mentsikhang, authors Vincanne Adams and Fei Fei Li demonstrate that integrative medicine requires not mere translation, but an establishing of correspondences between two sets of categories. A conceptual misalignment between the two sets of categories and thereby diagnosis, resulted in deep erosions of confidence among Tibetan doctors in their ability to ‘treat’ Hepatitis even though patients reported 83–100% relief from all of the eight clinical symptoms under evaluation. Cf. Adams and Li 2008. 93 Joshi et al. 2007, p. 145.

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associations available to rare individuals such as the ancient rishis of the Vedic civilization.94

The proposition contained in the paper quoted above is carefully situated in such a way that it speaks to a global pharmacological and pharmaceutical audience to whom Ayurveda’s claim about rasa must be communicated and explained. This ‘ayurvedic claim’, they argue, ‘provides an effective means of identification, though seemingly simplistic, and merits deeper scientific analysis to see what substance there may be to it. It is ‘supported by the comparison of Oleocanthal and Ibuprofen’, they add.95 They then follow it up with an observation about the overarching theoretical, philosophical, and methodological tenet of the pancamahābhutas—the theory of matter, the five physical elements explained earlier in their paper—as a mere deflection. They write, ‘at a simple level, the six Rasas are said to respond in a precise way to particular qualities, or “panchamahabhuttas” [sp], of plant material tasted’. The real challenge, however, they continue, is one that requires ‘a far greater sensitivity’—that of the identification of pharmacoactivity. Over the past five millennia or more, they write, oriental traditions of medicine such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine have identified and prepared many effective therapeutic preparations, as modern scientific evaluations of their efficacy amply demonstrate. ‘But how they were able to do so is not at all understood’. It is important to understand these ayurvedic claims as they ‘might well assist in future identification of potential sources of drugs’.96 This is a classic example of how the rationalising forces of science and eco- nomics simplify and homogenise complex knowledge.97 The classification of the six main types of rasa (madhura, amla, lavana, kaṭu, tikta, kaṣāya) and the 63 combinations of derived rasa in ayurvedic theory, the five types of flavours in Chinese medical theory, and the classificatory rubrics of drugs derived from their flavours, warmth, directionality, and speed,98 are translated in the language of a ‘claim’. The edifice of the ayurvedic theory of drugs that stands on the foundation of mahābhuta, the five types of matter (space, air, fire, water, and earth), and tridoṣa are re-presented in the scientific language of something that has not yet been ‘shown to work’. In dravyaguṇa vijñāna, drugs have an effect on the body because there is an inseparable relationship (samāvaya)

94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Rich 1995; Scott 1998. 98 Farquhar and Lock 2007.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 134 Ganguly between, and similarity in, the constitution of the body and the constitution of matter. Rasa, as an object of a jñānendriya—i.e., an organ of cognition, translated commonly as ‘sense organ’—is a quality of one of the five types of ‘matter’ or dravya. This means that while there are five types of sentient matter and four kinds of insentient matter/dravya (the soul, mind, time, and space) that sustain the universe by their combination, for rasa to be manifest, there needs to be a medium, a substratum as it were, in and through which it will be experienced. That medium is primarily water and secondarily earth, experienced by us through a particular organ of cognition—the tongue. The composition of the rasas has been described by observing and inferring the effect of the five constituents of matter on the body.99 However, dissect- ing this ayurvedic doctrine of savours and qualities with research methodologies specific to western science, in the technical vocabulary that is particular to western science, reorganises the relationship between the sense organ and a material’s properties. The urge to show-how-it-works, to demonstrate and validate through modern research methodologies, realigns the epistemological basis of ayurvedic pharmacological methods, shifting focus to the effect of drugs/substances at the expense of their other characteristics. Jean Langford, in her study of modern ayurvedic institutions, has noted that of the five recognised properties of medicinal substances in classical Ayurveda—rasa (flavour), guṇa (quality), vīrya (strength), vipāka (flavour after digestion), and prabhāva (specific effect)—only the last would be understood, in biomedical terms, as a pharmacological effect.100 The location of new re-search on dravyaguṇa inside the laboratory rearranges the relationship between the constitution of the body and the constitution of matter, in order to establish ‘facts’ in the Latourian sense101 about traditional medicine. Through association with the laboratory and the experimental method, the doctrine of savours and qualities is re-presented scientifically by partaking of the global language of pharmacological expertise. These new pharmacological endeavours establish a cause and effect and one-to-one association between qualities of drugs, bodies that experience them, and the interactions of these. The protocol of ‘attributes’ of drugs in the experiment discussed in this paper excerpts a part of a single story anchored in a single system of the classification of matter. Further, to understand that any change in the ‘location’

99 The composition of rasas are madhura (earth and water), āmla (earth and fire), lavana (water and fire), kaṭu (air and fire), tikta (air and space), and kaṣāya (air and earth). Cf. Sharma 1995. 100 Langford 2002. 101 Latour and Woolgar 1979.

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FIGURE 4 Advertisement for the Vaidya Scientist Fellow Program of the Institute of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine (I-AIM).

(dīk) and the ‘time’ (kāla) and the ‘specific quality’ of a drug (prabhāva) can bring about a change in the body, is to talk about a specific type of human body and its interaction with tastes of drugs—a body that is not captured within the standardising impulse of the experimental body-as-instrument. For example, in his commentary on the medical treatise Carakasamhitā, Chakrapānidatta elaborates on ‘location’ in the chapter on tastes and diet, and states that grapes and pomegranates growing in the Himalayas are sweet in taste, whereas those growing elsewhere are sour. Similarly, an unripe mango fruit that starts out being astringent in taste, goes on to become sour, and eventually turns sweet when ripe, will have wholly different effects and interactions with the body depending on its age, and by virtue of its three distinct tastes. In this logic that connects rasa to the powers of medicines, ‘there is room for the sensed responses of the lived body’, as Farquhar has aptly phrased it.102 The body

102 Farquhar and Lock 2007, p. 294.

asian medicine 9 (2014) 102–140 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access 136 Ganguly experiences a changed rasa differently by observing a bodily change at the level of the drug’s potency, digestive, and post-metabolic effects.

Conclusions

Ultimately, ayurvedic experiments with human senses in the laboratory sit right at the heart of debates in science studies over what it means to speak scientifically about the body. In How to Talk about the Body, Latour meditates on what it is to ‘acquire’ body parts such as the nose, so that it may be ‘trained to be affected’, meaning effectuated, moved, put into motion by other entities.103 In being trained to discriminate more and more subtle differences in drugs and materials, and in learning to tell them apart from one another, indus- trial research has had a long history of human body parts as being central to the production of the scientific knowledge of materials. Science studies and critical ethnographies of science and technology have attended to this long history in the modern sciences of the scientist’s bodily experience as being crucial to the development of knowledge. In these sensory experiments, where a human panel is being developed and trained as a ‘prototype’ for the kinds of human instruments that might be cultivated in order to articulate the relationship between taste and other aspects of medicines, it is not so much the recording of individual responses to stimuli that emerges as the tool in the production of knowledge, but the standardised articulation of those responses across all bodies in the panel. This is the delightful irony in the development of ‘human instruments’ as a collective body. The irony is that while standardisation of experience has been in long use within ayurvedic textual and medical practice, its implementation within the laboratory as a ‘single body’ tool changes its relationship to ayurvedic pharmacology. Where do these experiments leave the ayurvedic sensing body that must be understood in conjunction with a sensing mind? Ayurvedic pharmacological principles are largely based on organoleptic perceptions, including what the mind perceives. The laboratory vision in practice that I have outlined in this paper trains multiple bodies and minds belonging to multiple socio-linguistic groups—with their particular sensibilities, sensitivities, palates, and desires— to align with each other in order to establish a standard response to a taste. As articulate subjects of sensory experiments, the bodies of human volunteers

103 Latour and Woolgar 2004, pp. 205, 207.

asian medicineDownloaded from 9 Brill.com10/02/2021(2014) 102–140 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 137 as ‘one single body’ unlearn to be affected by itself and learn to be affected by others, rationalising with others (see transcript). ‘Standardisation’ in this ayurvedic laboratory refers not only to the standardisation of forms of matter, but to a cultivation of human senses in order to standardise body parts. As my paper has emphasised, this is a new development within ayurvedic pharmacology and within the larger production of pharmacological knowledge, where bodies are not being used as objects to evaluate drug efficacy; rather, where bodies are used as standardised tools that standardise certain aspects of drugs and materials. As an instance of what these ayurvedic scientists have named ‘open-minded science’, this experiment in dravyaguṇa vijñāna is meant to expand both modern and ayurvedic science. But the rearticulation of rasa in the modern science language of a ‘claim’ radically alters the experience of a lived body, circumscribing the possibilities of the growth of both sciences to what the laboratory vision can allow. These insights are critical to how science studies engages with bodies as tools, and ultimately crucial to how bodies, materials, and matter, are understood in contemporary Asian medicine.

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Reports

Annual Report 2006–2007, Bangalore: FRLHT (Foundation for the Revitalization of Local Health Traditions). CCRAS (Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences) 2005, Parameters for Quality Assessment of Ayurveda and Siddha Drugs, Part A, New Delhi: CCRAS, GOI. CFTRI (Central Food Technological Research Institute) (n.d.), Sensory Analysis and Consumer Science Approach towards Consumer Preference, Mysore. FRLHT (Foundation for the Revitalization of Local Health Traditions) ——— 2006a, Application of Sensory Evaluation Techniques in Quality Control of Trikatu Choorna—A Report 2005–2006, Bangalore: FRLHT. ——— 2006b, Application of Sensory Evaluation Techniques in Quality Control of Trikatu Choorna—A Booklet 2005–2006, Bangalore: FRLHT. ——— 2007, Standardization of Animal Products Used for Plant Health, CPPD (Center for Pharmacognosy and Product Development), Bangalore: FRLHT. ——— 2008, Report on Brainstorming Workshop on ‘Traditional Pharmaceutics and Nutraceutics’, 27–28 May, Department of Science and Technology, GOI. Bangalore: FRLHT. Interim Report 2003, Interim Report on NGS Grant for the Period between January 2003– December 2003, December, Bangalore: FRLHT. Tata Report 2008–09, Unpublished Lab Report, FRLHT: Bangalore. Project Report, June 2009, ‘Traditional Knowledge Guided Quality Standardization of Traditional Medicine’, April 2008–March 2009, Bangalore: FRLHT.

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