On Hygiene Practices in Ancient India and its Relation to Ritual Purity

Abstract

The practice of medicine was quite advanced in ancient India as exemplified by texts such as S̀us̀ruta and Caraka Saḿhitas. In addition to such specialized texts, we see evidence of medical practice in the corpus of Itihāsa-Purāṇa literature also, often cloaked in metaphors and stories. With the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, public-health concerns such as social distancing, masking and enhanced hygiene to prevent spreading of the virus is widely practiced. Lesser known is that ancient Indians were well aware of public health and had systems in place for the same. In this paper, we make the following contributions:

1. We examine Western claims on Indian indebtedness to Greek medicine, and show otherwise.

2. We examine Itihāsa-Purāṇa literature for evidence of knowledge of disease transmissions.

3. We examine evidence for public health practices prior to colonial rule.

4. We advance the notion that overarching concerns about immunity and public health manifested in society via ritual purity rules, rather than the so-called ‘caste’ chauvinism.