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

asian medicine 9 (�0�4) �0�–�40 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 under- stand 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 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi �0.��63/�5734��8-��Downloaded34�3�8 from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:20:51AM via free access Sense and Evidence 103 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 Dravyaguṇa 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 Dravyaguṇa Śāstra has moti- vated 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 under- standing 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

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