These doctors are practitioners of ayurveda, unani and siddha, ancient Indian medical systems that date back thousands of years.

One of them is Jaya Saklani Kala, a young ayurveda doctor, who is wading through a dog-eared 500-year-old text book for information on a medicine derived from the mango fruit.

“Soon the world will know the medicine, and the fact that it originated from India,” she says.

With help from software engineers and patent examiners, Ms Kala and her colleagues are putting together a 30-million-page electronic encyclopaedia of India’s traditional medical knowledge, the first of its kind in the world.

‘Bio-piracy’

The ambitious $2m project, christened Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, will roll out an encyclopaedia of the country’s traditional medicine in five languages – English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish – in an effort to stop people from claiming them as their own and patenting them.

The electronic encyclopaedia, which will be made available next year, will contain information on the traditional medicines, including exhaustive references, photographs of the plants and scans from the original texts.

Indian scientists say the country has been a victim of what they describe as “bio-piracy” for a long time.

“When we put out this encyclopaedia in the public domain, no one will be able to claim that these medicines or therapies are their inventions. Till now, we have not done the needful to protect our traditional wealth,” says Ajay Dua, a senior bureaucrat in the federal commerce ministry.

Putting together the encyclopaedia is a daunting task.

For one, ayurvedic texts are in Sanskrit and Hindi, unani texts are in Arabic and Persian and siddha material is in Tamil language. Material from these texts is being translated into five international languages, using sophisticated software coding.

The sheer wealth of material that has to be read through for information is enormous – there are some 54 authoritative ‘text books’ on ayurveda alone, some thousands of years old.

Then there are nearly 150,000 recorded ayurvedic, unani and siddha medicines; and some 1,500 asanas (physical exercises and postures) in yoga, which originated in India more than 5,000 years ago.

Under normal circumstances, a patent application should always be rejected if there is prior existing knowledge about the product.

But in most of the developed nations like United States, “prior existing knowledge” is only recognised if it is published in a journal or is available on a database – not if it has been passed down through generations of oral and folk traditions.

The irony here is that India has suffered even though its traditional knowledge, as in China, has been documented extensively.

But information about traditional medicine has never been culled from their texts, translated and put out in the public domain.

No wonder then that India has been embroiled in some high-profile patent litigation in the past decade – the government spent some $6m alone in fighting legal battles against the patenting of turmeric and neem-based medicines.

In 1995, the US Patent Office granted a patent on the wound-healing properties of turmeric.

Indian scientists protested and fought a two-year-long legal battle to get the patent revoked.

India got a patent on turmeric, used in curries, revoked

Last year, India won a 10-year-long battle at the European Patent Office against a patent granted on an anti-fungal product, derived from neem, by successfully arguing that the medicinal neem tree is part of traditional Indian knowledge.

In 1998 the US Patent Office granted patent to a local company for new strains of rice similar to basmati, which has been grown for centuries in the Himalayan foothills of north-west India and Pakistan and has become popular internationally. After a prolonged legal battle, the patent was revoked four years ago.

And, in the US, an expatriate Indian yoga teacher has claimed copyright on a sequence of 36 yoga asanas, or postures.

Dr Vinod Kumar Gupta, who is leading the traditional wealth encyclopaedia project and heads India’s National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (Niscair), reckons that of the nearly 5,000 patents given out by the US Patent Office on various medical plants by the year 2000, some 80% were plants of Indian origin.

Practitioners of traditional medicines say their importance cannot be denied – according to the WHO, 70% of the people living in India use traditional medicine for primary health care.

Also, some 42% of the people living in the US and 70% of the people living in Canada have used traditional medicines at least once for treatment.

By one estimate, a quarter of the new drugs produced in the US are plant-based, giving the sometimes much-criticised practitioners of alternative traditional medicine something to cheer about.

The mammoth Indian encyclopaedia may finally give alternative medicine the shot in the arm it sorely needs.

By Soutik Biswas  BBC News, Delhi

Naadi Shashtra or Palm leaf Astrology is an ancient Indian method of recording data. It is believed that by reading through the writings on these leaves one can learn about one’s past, identify the present and predict the future.
It is said that thousands of years ago, the great sages of India had the power to look into the past and future of the entire universe. It is believed that they done this and recorded the life of each human being who has lived, is living and of some one who is yet to be born. These predictions were written on palm leaves in an ancient Tamil script, which can now only be deciphered by expert Nadi astrologers.

Naadi in Tamil means in search of. It is believed that an individual goes in search of his details of his past and seeks to know more of the unknown future. Hence it is a search. These palm leaf inscriptions are scattered throughout India. Some of these inscriptions can be found in Tamil Nadu. These ancient scripts were standardized, ordered and classified in Tamil Nadu nearly 1000 years ago during the reign of the Cholas in South India. There are a number of Nadis who are named after the rishis. They are the Agasthiya Naadi, Suka Naadi, Brahma Naadi, Kaushika Naadi and others. There are only a few Naadi readers available who can interpret the inscriptions that are written in in poetic Tamil.

Each Naadi or set of leaves is made up of ola or palm leaf, written in Vatta ezhuthu, a Tamil script, with a sharp, nail-like instrument called ezhuthani. Rubbing peacock oil on auspicious occasions preserves the palm leaves. These palm leaves are still preserved in the Saraswati Mahal Library in Thanjavur. The primary centre for Naadi Shastra is in Vaitheeswaran Koil.

The palm leaf inscription of an individual can be identified as being meant for the person by lifting a copy of one’s thumb impression. It is well known that the whirls and loops of the fingers of people on the earth are unique and they cannot be replicated. It is believed that these prints are classified into 108 types. The Naadi palm leaves are arranged according to these types. The Nadi readers identify the particular types of lines on the thumb and finding the corresponding set of palm leaves are taken. The time duration to pick up your leaf depends upon the identification of the thumb impression. Some impressions are identified easily and the corresponding leaves are found soon, there are others that may take months or even years to locate.

The leaves are not just records for Indian nationals but also for people of other nationalities, religions and creeds. It is also stated that about 40% of the people in the world are likely to get these results. The other leaves might have been damaged or may have been lost in the course of time.

History

The origin of the Naadi inscriptions can be traced back to approximately 2000 years ago. It is said that the ancient Indian rishis or sages had written the life patterns of each person on palm leaves using their yogic and intuitive powers.

During the British Rule, the British sold these leaves to the locals who were interested in getting them. People belonging to the Valluvar community in Tamil Nadu and were specialized in astrology bought most of these leaves. The astrology families in Vaitheeswaran Koil also acquired some of these. The leaves were found in Vaitheeswaran Koil around the 13th century. Those interested in Astrology realised their values and copied the contents on palm leaves and made exact replicas. These leaves have been handed down over generations to make predictions about the future. They earned their livelihood through Naadi Shashtra. They got trained by their elders to do the reading.

The then Mahratta king Sarabhoji and Chola Kings patronized this form of astrology and translations. It is said that the Naadis had originally written on animal skins and it was later copied on palm leaves. 

The primary centre for Naadi Shastra is in Vaitheeswarankoil, near Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, a state in South India. Here Lord Shiva is said to have assumed the role of a vaidhya or doctor, who alleviated the miseries of his devotees.

Vaitheeswaran Koil: 24 km from Chidambaram, the place is famous for the Siva temple dedicated to Vaidyanatheeswarar, the healer of all diseases and his consort Thaiyalnayaki. It is believed that a bath in the holy waters of the Siddhamirtham tank within the temple complex will cure all diseases. Nadi Jothidam is a traditional skill popular here.

The Portuguese imported African slaves into Goa,Daman & Diu, from Mozambique & some east african coastal settlements.
Many of the slaves managed to escape the inhuman treatment & settled in the deep forests of the Karnataka/Goa border. Living a nomadic life in the forests, and hunting,fishing,foraging for sustenance.
The community was discovered in the early sixties by christian missionaries.
Though very elusive, gradual approaches to befriend them were made. Recently some effort has been made to integrate them with the mainstream of India.
They are known as ‘Siddis’. Historically very different from the siddis of Gujarat, the boat-workers.

They still live in the around the forests & currently there are 6000 of them in the remote hills of Karnataka.
They do not know Africa, but their music & dance is african in nature.