Dravyaguna Vijnana: Knowledge on Vedic Herbs, Controversial Herbs & Ignored Medicinal Plants (Volume 5)

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This is the final fifth volume of dravyagunavijnana series written by the author.

This volume covers vedic herbs. controversial herbs and ignored medicinal plants.

The subject matter in each chapter is arranged in English alphabetical order for herbs.

About 700 vedic herbs, 60 controversial herbs and 200 ignored herbs are dealt in this volume.

A glossary of Sanskrit terms and their meanings is provided at the end of the text.

Index on Sanskrit terms and Botanical terms is provided seperately to give facilitate the requirements of the readers.

The book will help the policy makers and teachers to understand the current requirements of dravyaguna.

This volume will enable the PG and Ph.D. scholars for selecting herbs for their dissertation/thesis topics.

This work will change the conventional thinking on the number of herbs used in the ancient ayurvedic texts.

The illustrations and botanical descriptions presented in this volume provides identification of the herbs.

Dr. J.L.N. Sastry hails from a traditional Ayurvedic family. He is born at Narasapuram (W.G. Dist., Andhra Pradesh) on 06-07-1965).

He had School studies at Kakinada (E.G Dist., A.P.) and passed B.A.M.S. in 1989 from Dr. N.R.S. Govt. Ayu. College, Vijayawada (A.P.) in first class. He completed M.D. (Ay.) in Dravya Guna Speciality from Dr. B.R.K.R. Govt. Ayur. College, Hyderabad in 1998 October.

He stood first in A.P.P.S.C. selection (January 1990) and worked as Med. Officer (Ayu.) for Govt. of A.P. in the Indian Medicine & Homoeopathy Dept., (1992-99). Between 1998-99 he acted as Research Projects Coordinator at the Govt. Research Dept. of Ayurveda, Hyderabad. He stood first at the UPSC (1998) and joined as Medical Officer (Ay.) in CGHS, Chennai in June 1999.

The author is the recipient of two gold medals from Nagarjuna Univ. (A.P.) for the merit shown during B.A.M.S. (1988),

The author presented several clinical and scientific papers at Regional, National and International seminars.

He had more than 15 publications in standard journals and also published several articles in newspapers.

Author also had given Radio-talks and given guest lectures at various prestigious institutes (both Ayurvedic & Modern Medicine).

He published a book 40 Years of research in Ayurveda in A.P. (on behalf of grda, Hyderabad).

Dravyagunavijnanam (DG) is the most important among all the subjects of B.A.M.S. syllabus irrespective of the fact whether it is related to Kayacikitsa (internal medicine) or Salyacikitsa (surgery). For an ayurvedic student, DG is akin to pharmacology and pharmacotherapeutics to an modern medical graduate. Often students of Ayurveda feel that they are not imparted with the pharmacology-like knowledge while studying DG during the second professional year of BAMS. My P.G. classmate Dr. J. L. N. Sastry was expressing the similar views during college days (1996-99). Undrstanding the needs of both BAMS and MD (Ayurveda) students he brought an elaborate series of five volumes on DG subject. The first volume covered fundamental principles of DG; the second volume consisted of essential medicinal plants; the third volume covered animal drugs, mineral drugs and foods while the fourth volume provided inputs on DG practicals.

Earlier four volumes of this series covered the dravyaguņa syllabus as per the CCIM curriculum. In fact, this is the first time where a complete work is made available in English for the learners of ayurveda. During the process, it is identified that there are few sensitive/important issues which are not taken up by the CCIM while preparing the syllabus. For example, knowledge on vedic herbs, discussion on controversial herbs, important herbs in vogue (but not in syllabus) need special mentioning.