Rasavaiseshika by Bhadanta Nagarjuna's

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About the Book Born in 1920 at Chalakudy, Trissur District, Kerala.

Raghavan Thirumulpad had his formal education at the native school in Chalakudy Later he learnt Jyothisha, Nyaya and Vyakarano in the traditional way. Thirumulpod learnt Ayurveda under Sri P. Vasudevan Nambeesan, the renowned Ayurvedic physician in the Gurukula method.

In 1949, Thirumulpad attended a formal course in Naturopathy at Bombay. He passed the Vaidyabhushanam Examination in 1950.

He has been practising Ayurveda for the past sixty years in Chelekkady. He tought Sanskrit and Ayurveda at home inspiring generations of students and scholars in these fields.

For twelve consecutive years (1966-1978) Tirumulpad won the National Essay Competitions organized by the PS. Varier's Arya Vaidya Sala Kottakkal.

He has authored more than thirty books. As a Sanskrit scholar, Thirumulped wrote kavyas Ika Reghaveeyam', 'Kopi sandesheh etc. He rendered Bhagavad Geeta into Malayalam (1954) Dhammapada from Pali (1959) and Thirukkural from Tamil (1962). The book, 'Ism and Mahatma' is a polemical work on politics defending the Gandhian principles (1961).

Major Awards: Fellowship of National Academy of Ayurveda (1998), Kerala Sahitya Academi Award (2004), Brihattrayiratna (2005), Akshayapuraskaram. He is the first recipient of the Ashtangaratna Award (2007) instituted by the Govt. of Kerala

Preface It is with great pleasure that we bring out this commentary on the work Rasavaiseshika of the celebrated Buddhist scholar Nagarjuna, by Vaidyabhushanam Raghavan Thirumulpad, a great physician of our times. Sri. Thirumulpad with proficiency in several branches of native sciences is perhaps the most competent authority to take up a work like the Rasavaiseshika. The work had attracted scholarly attention when it was originally serialised in the Journal Aryavaidyan a few years ago. It is now published in the present form with a view to providing access to it for a wider audience including new generations of students, teachers and practitioners of Ayurveda.

Introduction This idea is explained in the first three aphorisms of the text. Food and medicine have to be properly applied to maintain health and to cure of diseases. Food and medicines (dravyas) have to be understood and judged according to their properties, in order to be used logically and beneficially. Illogical and improper uses cause diseases. The understanding and differentiation of dravyas which are beneficial and harmful to health, is the subject matter of 'Rasavaiseshika'. It deals with the third aspect of Arogyasastra. We do not know whether the other aspects have texts in the form of suthras, as 'Rasavaiseshika' has. Rasavaiseshika elaborately discusses dravyas of food and medicine not individually but in general. The individual description is contained in the nighantu.

**Contents and Sample Pages**