The history
About 3,000 years from healing hymns and palm-leaf texts to a ministry, a WHO centre and fair trials.
Ayurveda grew out of healing hymns, wandering physicians and Buddhist monasteries, and was written down in great Sanskrit compilations about 2,000 years ago. Physicians copied, argued over and added to those texts for centuries, and carried them to Baghdad, Central Asia and Europe. Colonial rule pushed it to the margins; Indian vaidyas, colleges and later the government revived it. In the 20th century one of its plants gave the world a blood-pressure drug, and scientists began asking the same question of the rest: what works, and is it safe?
c. early 1st millennium CE
First written account of a cheek-flap nose repair
Sushruta Samhita
late 5th–early 6th century CE
Oldest surviving physical Ayurvedic manuscript (among the oldest)
Bower Manuscript, Kucha
c. 13th–14th century
Earliest clear account of pulse diagnosis
Sharangadhara Samhita
1949
Often called the first clinical trial from India
R. J. Vakil, Mumbai
9 November 2014
First ministry for traditional medicine in India
Ministry of AYUSH
2022
First WHO global centre for traditional medicine
Jamnagar, Gujarat
1500 BCE – 200 BCE
Healing hymns in the Atharvaveda, and physicians around the early Buddhist monasteries. Dates are uncertain and debated.
1100 BCE
c. 1200–900 BCE (dates debated)
The Atharvaveda holds charms and hymns against fever, cough, wounds and snakebite, and names healing plants. Ayurveda calls itself an upaveda, an offshoot, of the Vedas. Its dates are uncertain, and historians see Ayurveda’s later, systematic ideas as coming from many sources.
Why it mattered. It is the oldest Indian text with a large body of healing lore.
450 BCE
c. 5th century BCE (from later Buddhist texts)
Buddhist texts tell of Jivaka, who studied medicine for seven years at Takshashila and became physician to the Buddha and King Bimbisara. The stories were written down centuries later, so they are legend as much as history.
Why it mattered. They show that physicians trained with teachers and cared for monks in the Buddha’s time.
257 BCE
c. 257 BCE
Ashoka’s second rock edict says he arranged medical care for people and for animals, and had medicinal herbs, roots and fruit planted and brought in where they did not grow.
Why it mattered. It is one of the earliest records of a state providing medical care.
200 BCE – 700
The Charaka and Sushruta Samhitas grow in layers, Vagbhata sums them up, and monastery universities teach medicine.
100 BCE
compiled c. 100 BCE–200 CE; revised by Dridhabala c. 5th–6th century CE
The great text of internal medicine: 120 chapters on the three doshas, diet, diagnosis, medicines and the qualities of a good physician. It was compiled in layers, and the version we read today includes a later revision.
Why it mattered. It set out the ideas that Ayurveda still teaches, from tridosha to prakriti.
0
layers from the last centuries BCE, completed c. 300–500 CE
A surgical text of 186 chapters. It describes over a hundred instruments, has students practise cuts on gourds and dead animals, and gives the first written account of rebuilding a nose with a flap of skin from the cheek.
Why it mattered. Its rhinoplasty method is still recognised in the history of plastic surgery.
427
c. 5th century CE onwards
Nalanda grew into a great Buddhist centre of learning from about the 5th century. Visiting Chinese monks, among them Yijing in the 7th century, wrote about the medicine they saw practised in India; medicine was one of the subjects studied, though the details are uncertain.
Why it mattered. Monasteries helped carry Indian medicine along the Silk Road to Central Asia, Tibet and China.
500
late 5th–early 6th century CE; found 1890
Birch-bark pages buried in a Buddhist stupa on the Silk Road hold Sanskrit medical texts, including a manual called the Navanitaka and a treatise on garlic. Hoernle, working in Calcutta, deciphered them between 1893 and 1912.
Why it mattered. It is among the oldest surviving physical manuscripts of Indian medicine.
600
c. 7th century CE
Vagbhata combined the teachings of Charaka and Sushruta into one clear text in verse, organised around the eight branches. It became the main textbook in Kerala and was translated into Tibetan.
Why it mattered. It is still one of the most studied Ayurvedic texts today.
700 – 1800
Translations in Baghdad, new texts on diagnosis, pulse and pharmacy, and Kerala physicians behind a famous European botany book.
780
8th century CE
At the Abbasid court, the Sushruta Samhita was translated into Arabic as the Kitab Shah Shun al-Hindi, and Charaka’s text was translated too. Indian physicians worked in Baghdad’s hospitals.
Why it mattered. Indian medicine fed into the Greek-Arabic tradition that became Unani medicine (see UnaniClear).
1300
c. 13th–14th century
The Sharangadhara Samhita standardised recipes for powders, decoctions and pills, and gave the earliest clear account of nadi pariksha, reading the pulse. Charaka and Sushruta do not describe pulse diagnosis as a method.
Why it mattered. Pulse reading, now seen as typical of Ayurveda, is a later addition.
1678
1678–1693 (12 volumes)
The Ezhava physician Itty Achuden dictated in Malayalam what his family’s palm-leaf manuscripts said about the plants of Malabar, checked by the Konkani physicians Ranga Bhat, Vinayaka Pandit and Appu Bhat. The Dutch governor van Rheede had it published with 794 copper engravings.
Why it mattered. Indian healers’ plant knowledge became a founding book of tropical botany.
1800 – 1947
Colonial rule favours Western medicine; vaidyas found pharmacies and colleges; a Kolkata kaviraj studies sarpagandha.
1835
28 January 1835
The Native Medical Institution (1822) had taught Ayurveda at the Sanskrit College and Unani at the Madrasa alongside Western medicine. A government order ended these classes, and the new Medical College taught only Western medicine.
Why it mattered. For the next century Ayurveda survived outside official support, in families, pathshalas and pharmacies.
1902
P. S. Varier opened a small clinic and pharmacy that grew into one of India’s largest Ayurvedic hospitals and medicine makers. Across India, vaidyas founded colleges and associations to revive the system.
Why it mattered. Standard, factory-made medicines and colleges shaped modern Ayurveda.
1931
The Ayurvedic physician Gananath Sen and the doctor Kartick Chandra Bose reported that powdered Rauvolfia serpentina root calmed disturbed patients and lowered blood pressure. The same year the chemist Salimuzzaman Siddiqui isolated its first alkaloids.
Why it mattered. It started the path from a traditional herb to a modern drug.
1947 – today
Reserpine, laws and regulators, the Ministry of AYUSH, safety studies, and a WHO centre in Jamnagar.
1949
The cardiologist R. J. Vakil published a study of 50 patients with high blood pressure given Rauwolfia tablets for four weeks in the British Heart Journal. Most had a clear fall in blood pressure.
Why it mattered. Often called the first clinical trial from India, it caught the world’s attention.
1952
Chemists isolated the pure alkaloid reserpine from the root. It became one of the first modern drugs for high blood pressure and for severe mental illness. Its side effects, including depression, later made it rare.
Why it mattered. Reserpine research helped Arvid Carlsson show dopamine’s role in the brain, work that won the 2000 Nobel Prize.
1970
1970 (council set up 1971)
The Act created the Central Council of Indian Medicine to set standards for Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani education and to keep a central register of qualified practitioners.
Why it mattered. It made BAMS a regulated degree with national standards.
1978
1978 (from a joint council of 1969)
The Central Council for Research in Indian Medicine and Homoeopathy (1969) split into separate councils. The Ayurveda one became today’s CCRAS, which runs clinical studies, drug standards and plant surveys.
Why it mattered. It gave Ayurveda a national research body.
1995
March 1995; renamed AYUSH in November 2003
India created a Department of Indian Systems of Medicine and Homoeopathy in 1995. In 2003 it was renamed AYUSH, for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy.
Why it mattered. Traditional systems got a dedicated place in national health policy.
2004
15 December 2004 and 27 August 2008
Tests found potentially harmful lead, mercury or arsenic in 14 of 70 Ayurvedic products from Boston shops. A 2008 study of 193 products sold online found metals in about 1 in 5, and in about 4 in 10 metal-based rasa shastra products.
Why it mattered. It made product safety a global concern.
2005
October 2005 (from 1 January 2006)
India ordered that every batch of Ayurvedic, Siddha and Unani medicine made for export be tested for heavy metals, with results within set limits.
Why it mattered. It was one of the first safety rules aimed at metal contamination.
2014
9 November 2014
The AYUSH department became a full ministry, with research councils for Ayurveda (CCRAS), Unani, Siddha, Homoeopathy and Yoga and Naturopathy.
Why it mattered. Ayurveda gained a full ministry, a rare status for a traditional system.
2016
28 October 2016
Ayurveda Day is held on Dhanvantari Jayanti. The first one focused on diabetes, and in 2017 the All India Institute of Ayurveda in New Delhi was dedicated to the nation on the same day.
Why it mattered. It gave Ayurveda a yearly national spotlight and a flagship institute.
2018
2017–18
A national pharmacovigilance programme began collecting reports of side effects from AYUSH medicines and watching for misleading advertisements.
Why it mattered. Safety monitoring is how rare harms are found.
2020
20 September 2020 (in force 11 June 2021)
The National Commission for Indian System of Medicine Act replaced the Central Council of Indian Medicine with a new regulator for education and practice, including a national exit test for new graduates.
Why it mattered. It modernised how Ayurvedic doctors are trained and registered.
2022
25 March 2022 (agreement); 19 April 2022 (ground-breaking)
The World Health Organization and India agreed to set up the WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine, backed by US$250 million from India, to study traditional medicine from around the world with modern science.
Why it mattered. The first global WHO centre for traditional medicine puts evidence and safety at its heart.
2024
13 June 2024 (survey July 2022–June 2023)
The first all-India survey on AYUSH, of over 1.8 lakh households, found that about 46% of rural and 53% of urban people had used AYUSH to prevent or treat illness in the past year. Ayurveda was the most used.
Why it mattered. It shows how many Indian families rely on these systems, which is why fair tests and safety matter.
Did you know?
Ayurveda means “knowledge of life”, from ayus (life) and veda (knowledge).
The Sushruta Samhita has surgery students practise on gourds, melons and dead animals before touching a patient.
Pulse reading, now seen as typical of Ayurveda, first appears clearly around the 13th century, over a thousand years after Charaka.
Reserpine from sarpagandha helped reveal how dopamine works in the brain, research that won the 2000 Nobel Prize.
In a 2022–23 national survey, about half of Indians said they had used an AYUSH system in the past year.
The people
dates unknown (c. 1st–2nd century CE?) · Physician, compiler · North-west India
The name attached to Ayurveda’s great text of internal medicine.
dates unknown · Surgeon (by tradition) · Varanasi (by tradition)
The name attached to the classical surgery text.
c. 7th century CE · Physician and author · Sindh (by tradition)
Wrote the Ashtanga Hridaya, still a core textbook.
17th century · Ezhava physician · Kerala
His family’s plant knowledge became Hortus Malabaricus.
1869 – 1944 · Vaidya and founder · Kottakkal, Kerala
Founded the Arya Vaidya Sala in 1902.
1877 – c. 1945 · Kaviraj (Ayurvedic physician) · Kolkata
Studied sarpagandha for blood pressure and madness with K. C. Bose.
1897 – 1994 · Chemist · Delhi, later Karachi
Isolated the first Rauvolfia alkaloids in 1931.
1911 – 1974 · Cardiologist · Mumbai
His 1949 trial made the world notice Rauwolfia.
Where it happened
Sources
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and historians sometimes disagree about who was first. If you spot a mistake, tell us.
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