Historicizing “Indian Systems of Knowledge”

Some recent authors have argued that “Indian Systems of Knowledge,” such as Ayurvedic medicine, cannot be historicized. They argue that Ayurvedic medicine must be understood as a “system” and with reference to its “metaphysical foundations.” Food has often played an important part in these antihistoricist arguments about traditional South Asian medicines. In this article, I first describe and historicize these antihistoricisms by delineating both their colonial origins and their recent nationalist appropriations. I also argue that history of science needs to distinguish between different types of antihistoricisms emerging from different academic and political contexts. I then move on to show how food history actually can be deployed to subvert these antihistoricist claims. I pursue three interrelated inquiries to support my case. First, I demonstrate that the category of “food” is inappropriate for the textual heritage of Ayurveda, and that we need to be more sensitive to specific technical categories, such as anupana, pathya, and dravya, within which foodstuffs were accommodated. Second, I demonstrate that new foods, especially exotic New World foods, were absorbed into each of these technical categories recognized in Ayurveda. Finally, I show that these new foods did not simply leave the categories themselves untouched. The embodied experiences of the scholar-physicians’ palates substantially transformed the allegedly disembodied, ahistorical categories they wrote about. I argue, then, that far from being an ahistorical fossil as the proponents of antihistorical arguments would have us believe, Ayurvedic medicine was a rich, heterogeneous, and historically dynamic tradition, and food history is singularly well placed to testify to that dynamism.