Plants of Bhava Prakash (An Old and Rare Book)

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The present book is based on the work of Bhavamishra, called Bhavaprakasha, which is one of the three famous books on Ayurveda together known as Laghutrayee. Bhavamishra wrote this treatise in 1550 A.D. This was one of the best compilations of medical knowledge prevalent in me-dieval period on the use of medicinal plants and treatment of various diseases. Although the origi-nal Ayurveda was very comprehensive in a couple of lakhs of Shlokas on eight specialities of medicine, yet it is evident from the literature that significant portion of Ayurveda was omitted in the later period and quite a few concepts, practices, techniques, and materia medica were added from the contemporary medical resources. The description of Nadipareeksha (pulse diagnosis) in Bhavaprakasha is one example, which is quite elaborate to help the diagnosis about the status of Dosha and type of disease. Similarly, quite a few exotic plant species were included in the clinical practice of Ayurveda. Some of them were - Chandrasura, Dvipantara vacha (Chopchini), Parasika Yavani, Ahiphena (opium), Lata kasturi (Abelmoschus moschatus), Kulinjana, Gandha kokila, Chouhara etc. Besides, the compilation of work of previously known books like Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita etc. Bhavamishra added quite a few new formulations as well as treatment methods. In addition to the above special features, a lot of information on medicinal plants and their uses in diseases was well described in the first part of the book called as Bhavaprakasha Nighantu or Bhavaprakasha Poorvardha.

The drugs of plant origin were described in various formulations in different chapters of Bhavaprakasha. It was felt necessary to conduct a critical study of these drugs in terms of nomenclature, botanical identification, morphology, habitat and systematic tabulation of various formulations mentioned in different therapeutic references of the book.

The present book has described very systematically all these issues in English and tabulated all the references on each drug at one place. This has shown wide uses of each drug mentioned in Bhavaprakasha for a variety of clinical uses in different forms/formulations. In this way this book has become useful for the physicians as well as drug manufacturers. Researchers can get the ideas of usefulness of a drug in various diseases at one place and plan their R&D work. For health policy planner this book may be useful to estimate the usefulness of specific plant drug and its availability, cultivation and sustainable utilisation.

This book is the result of hard work and scholarly efforts of Guru Prof. K.C. Chunekar and Shishya Dr. N.P. Hota under 'GURU-SHISHYA programme' of Rashtriya Ayurveda Vidyapeeth and they, therefore, deserve special appreciation.

I hope that the efforts of Rashtriya Ayurveda Vidyapeeth to publish this work will be very useful to the teachers, students, drug manufacturers, researchers and health managers working in the field of Ayurveda.

**Contents and Sample Pages**