History of Science in Early South Asia

This group focuses on the kinds of research published in journals such as the Indian Journal of History of Science, the e-Journal of Indian Medicine: EJIM, Asian Medicine, and History of Science in South Asia. The working group brings together scholars who study the history of science in South Asia before about 1800 and as discoverable from literatures in Sanskrit and other indigenous Indian languages. We take “South Asia” as an inclusive, non-political, socio-geographic term referring to the area from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, from Pakistan to Bangladesh, and of course India. Discussions on the influences of South Asian cultures beyond these borders is also welcome, for example Nepalese or Tibetan influences on China, Sri Lankan influences on the Maldives, or Indian influences in South-East Asia. We broadly conceive of “science” to include all forms of systematic intellectual activity, as in the German “die Wissenschaft,” that covers most forms of academic scholarship. Theoretical discussions of the meaning of “science” in the South Asian context are welcome. The group meets monthly during the academic year. We welcome the presentation of individual and group work-in-progress, facilitated discussions of published articles and books, and focused reading sessions in Indic languages.
 
 

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Respectful Behavior Policy

Participants at Consortium activities will treat each other with respect and consideration to create a collegial, inclusive, and professional environment that is free from any form of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.

Participants will avoid any inappropriate actions or statements based on individual characteristics such as age, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, nationality, political affiliation, ability status, educational background, or any other characteristic protected by law. Disruptive or harassing behavior of any kind will not be tolerated. Harassment includes but is not limited to inappropriate or intimidating behavior and language, unwelcome jokes or comments, unwanted touching or attention, offensive images, photography without permission, and stalking.

Participants may send reports or concerns about violations of this policy to conduct@chstm.org.

 

Upcoming Meetings

  • Monday, December 16, 2024 10:30 am to 12:00 pm EST

     
    Knowledge, Translation, and Commentary: Perso-Islamic Scholars’ Engagement with Sanskritic Tradition
     
    Lingli Li (EHESS - University of Göttingen)
     
    One of the Persian translations of the Bṛhatsaṃhitā by Varāhmihira (c. 505 - c. 587), known as Tarjuma-yi Kitāb-i Bārāhī, is a rare complete translation from Sanskrit preceding the Mughal era. Commissioned during Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq’s reign (r. 1351–1388) and executed by ʿAzīz Shams-i Bahā Nūrī with assistance from Sanskrit scholars, it reflects the Delhi Sultanate’s interest in celestial and astrological knowledge and sheds light on intellectual exchange in early Persianate South Asia. This study, based on Persian manuscripts in comparison with their Sanskrit sources, reveals that the translator intervened in crafting the translation in a unique manner. These interventions include structural adjustments, the selection and augmentation of content, and the incorporation of commentaries, providing insights into how Perso-Islamic scholars engaged with the Sanskritic tradition of jyotiḥśāstra and the unique characteristics of knowledge transmission across cultures during the Delhi Sultanate period.
     


  • Monday, January 13, 2025 10:30 am to 12:00 pm EST

    *Note Special Date*
     
    The Suśruta Project Group Presentation
    https://sushrutaproject.org/
     
    Dominik Wujastyk (University of Alberta), Deepro Chakraborty (University of Alberta), Harshal Bhatt (The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda), Vandana Lele, and other Suśruta Project Group Members TBD
     
    The Turco-Afghan invasions of northern India in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries destroyed several monastic libraries in North India and ended a long tradition of Buddhist learning in Bihar and Bengal. However, for geographical reasons, Nepal was spared these depredations and many manuscripts were preserved in temples, monasteries, royal libraries and private homes. The Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project (1970-2002) and Cataloguing Project (2002-2014) revealed an extraordinary wealth of previously-unknown early Sanskrit manuscript material preserved in Nepal and made it available to modern scholarship through microfilms and digitization in collaboration with the National Archives in Kathmandu. This has led to a renaissance of historical and cultural scholarship in numerous fields such as Buddhism, puranic studies, Śaiva and tantric studies and now the history of medicine.
     

    Manuscript Kathmandu KL 699, discovered by the Nepal-German projects, presents a version of The Compendium of Suśruta (Suśrutasaṃhitā) that is physically dated to 878 CE, just a few hundred years after the work was completed. This work is world-famous for the insights it offers into the practice of medicine in ancient Asia, including detailed chapters on diet, lifestyle and surgery. All the printed editions of this famous work are from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and are based on a tiny number of nineteenth-century manuscripts. So KL 699 offers a time-machine that allows us to see what The Compendium of Suśruta looked like a thousand years ago. A Canadian government grant from 2020-2024 enabled a team to study this manuscript and the text it transmits to us today. We are now able to see that the text has changed in major and minor ways over the centuries. This CHSTM session will present a discussion led by project participants exploring our discoveries.
     


  • Monday, February 10, 2025 10:30 am to 12:00 pm EST

    *Note Special Date*
     
    Ritual and Medicine in Indian Alchemy
     
    Patricia Sauthoff (Hong Kong Baptist University)
     
    The primary function of works within the alchemical (rasaśāstra) corpus is to provide written technical instructions for iatrochemical processes. These medical interventions require the user to be skilled in botany, metallurgy, and mineral- and gemologies. The specifications themselves are often incomplete, demonstrating that the user must have the practical experience and technical training to complete operations successfully. Though largely focused on the purification of mercury for use in medicinal elixirs to rejuvenate the body and cure disease, rasaśāstra works contain detailed descriptions of plants, substances, and the apparatuses used in alchemical production. The practicalities of rasaśāstra make the works more akin to āyurvedic manuals than religious ones. Alchemy includes the chemical arts of pharmacy and metallurgy, the transmutation of imperfect metals (dhātuvāda), and the search for a universal medicine that is both panacea (sarvārha) and elixir of longevity (rasāyana).
     
    However, unlike their āyurvedic counterparts, rasaśāstra works contain specific medico-religious technologies required for the efficacy of their medicines. Where āyurveda points back to the sages, rasaśāstra looks directly toward god. While early works, such as the Rasahṛdayatantra discusses an immortal body, it is longevity, not immortality proper, that is the goal of the alchemist. The perfected body (dehasiddhi) of the alchemical patient is one with long life and free of disease. Once this perfect body is achieved, one can then work toward the attainment of superhuman powers and enter into the transcendent states familiar to tantric and yoga practitioners.
     


  • Monday, March 17, 2025 10:30 am to 12:00 pm EDT

     
    Some reflections on the practices of proofs in Sanskrit mathematical texts, with a special emphasis on Śaṅkara Vāriyar’s work on Mādhava’s procedure to approximate the circumference of a circle.
     
    Agathe Keller (Sphere, CNRS / Université Paris Cité)
     
    In his commentary on the Līlāvatī—Bhāksara (b.1114) ’s very popular arithmetical text—Śaṅkara Vāriyar (fl. ca. 1540) launches into a spectacular presentation of the values that Mādhava (14th century) can provide to approximate the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. He then offers an elaborate proof of one of the highlights of the “Kerala School of Mathematics” attributed to the same Mādhava: a rule to approximate the circumference of a circle which is seen as an equivalent of formulas given later by Gotfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and James Gregory (1638-1675) prefigurating the birth of calculus. In this presentation, I will show how Śaṅkara Vāriyar commentary testifies to new ways of thinking about reasonings and proofs in mathematics, offering many contrasts with the practices of earlier authors writing in Sanskrit. More largely I will describe how authors of mathematical texts in Sanskrit had a great variety of practices of mathematical reasonings. Not all of these practices were about “proving” mathematical truths; reasonings could have many different aims— such as showing that a procedure could be used in different mathematical disciplines, or that a formal computation could be explained by providing each step with a meaning. My aim will be to look at how authors carried out “explanations” (vāsanā) or sought to “establish” a procedure (sadh-, upapad-), and how this questions standard historiographies of proof in Sanskrit mathematical literature on the one hand and of the “Kerala school of mathematics” on the other.


  • Monday, April 21, 2025 10:30 am to 12:00 pm EDT

     
    The Sumhuram Yakṣī, an index of metal reuse?
     
    Divya Kumar-Dumas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW))
     
    Although certain objects from South Arabia exhibit hybridity, a fragmentary bronze female figurine currently in the collection of the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian (accession # S2013.2.378) excavated from Khor Rori (aka. ancient Sumhuram), which is in modern-day Oman, is of Indian manufacture and was brought to its findspot via maritime networks in the early centuries CE. Discussion of this figurine has considered its iconographic similarity to larger scale salabhanjika (also śālabhañjikā) sculptural motifs and its corroboration of the Western Indian Ocean trade linking South Asia with the Mediterranean via ports on the Arabian Peninsula. In this talk, I will review the art historical and archaeological arguments, before suggesting a more robust understanding of the Sumhuram yaḳsī requiring greater future engagement with texts and material science. My discussion emerges from a 2021-2022 collaboration with scholars specializing in South Asian art history, literature, and Ancient Near East art and archaeology.


  • Monday, May 19, 2025 10:30 am to 12:00 pm EDT

     
    Methods in the Material Histories of South Asia: Snapshot-presentations and Discussion
     
    Join us for a special meeting! We invite you to use an object or an image to introduce your work in the material history of South Asia in a snapshot presentation. These presentations will be a springboard into a discussion on methods in the Material Histories of South Asia. Pre-circulated readings TBD.
     



Past Meetings

  • November 18, 2024

     
    Exploring an Anti-Epidemic Protective Pill Recipe in the 15th Century Tibetan Medical Work, Relics of Countless Oral Instructions by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé (1439-1475)
     
    Barbara Gerke (University of Vienna)
     
     
    During the plague outbreak in Gujarat (1994), the SARS outbreak (2003), and the recent
    COVID-19 pandemic, Tibetan physicians in India produced and distributed protective anti-
    epidemic pill amulets. One of these is the “9-compound black pill” or Nakpo Gujor (nag po dgu
    sbyor). Worn around the neck as a pendant, Nakpo Gujor is deemed to be effective through the
    odors and anti-epidemic properties of its nine ingredients, which are ritually consecrated. The
    potency of these ingredients is enhanced through their alignment with nine different deities and
    their respective mantras. The formula for this pill is found in many Tibetan medical works dating
    back to the thirteenth century.

    This presentation explores one version of this formula in the work of the Tibetan physician
    scholar Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé (Zur mkhar mnyam nyid rdo rje; 1439-1475) from Central
    Tibet. I found that some privately practicing amchi in India employed this formula during the
    recent pandemic. In his Relics of Countless Oral Instructions (Man ngag bye ba ring bsrel pod
    chung rab 'byams gsal ba'i sgron me), Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé introduces the nine ingredients of
    this protective pill in relation to nine deities, and nine mantras. While attributing the formula to
    Nagarjuna—he phoneticizes the formula’s Sanskrit name as kala naba yoga— he also links the
    nine ingredients to some of the “wide-spread diseases” (rims nad) discussed in the third section
    of the Four Tantras (Rgyud bzhi), the foundational Tibetan treatise dating back to the 13/14 th
    centuries.

    In analysing Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé’s recipe and interrelated connections to earlier conceptions
    of infectious disease categories in the Four Tantras, I argue that in the way he presents and
    writes about Nakpo Gujor he establishes a broad therapeutic spectrum for this formula. This not
    only includes the three types of potency recognized in Vajrayana Buddhist medical texts (the
    potency of substances, mantras, and meditative accomplishments), but also integrates some of
    the established “wide-spread disease” categories of the Four Tantras. Thus, Zurkhar Nyamnyi
    Dorjé presents Nakpo Gujor as a medico-religious protective formula for all kinds of epidemic
    disease. My analysis highlights how a 15 th century anti-epidemic formula weaves together Indian
    origins, Tibetan foundational texts, and aromatic substances as carriers of spiritual potencies in
    such accessible ways that it was used by amchi practitioners in the 21 st century as a protective
    olfactory amulet for COVID-19.
     
    Further reading: https://www.medanthrotheory.org/article/view/4996
    "Thinking through complex webs of potency: Early Tibetan medical responses to the emerging coronavirus epidemic: Notes from a field visit to Dharamsala, India" by Barbara Gerke


  • October 21, 2024

     
    Group Discussion: What do we mean by "science" when we study the history of science in early South Asia?
     
    Co-facilitated by Eric Gurevitch (Vanderbilt University), Lisa Brooks (University of Alberta), and Dagmar Wujastyk (University of Alberta):
     
     Over the past 30 years, historians and philosophers of science have argued – over and again – that Science is too big of a category to talk of in a singular, coherent manner. Instead of focusing on “the scientific method” or on what makes a scientist, they have instead drawn attention to “the disunities of the sciences.” Talking of sciences in the plural has, perhaps inadvertently, opened up a space to think more broadly about the hierarchies of knowledge in the premodern and non-European world. So what are sciences for this group? Bring a definition of sciences (or of a particular science) from a narrative account (e.g. a tarikh, prabandha) or a scholastic source (e.g. the introduction to a particular śāstra) for group discussion, or simply come prepared to discuss how you have understood/defined this category in your work.


  • September 16, 2024

     
    Surgical Instruments of Indian “oculists”

    Leo Weiß (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
     
    The Karl Sudhoff Institute for the History of Medicine in Leipzig houses a collection of Indian surgical Instruments that were donated between 1907 and 1913 by the Indologist A.F. Rudolf Hoernle. This presentation deals with a part of this collection that supposedly belonged to “two practicing Indian oculists from Benares” and its provenance.
     
    According to the Indian Medical Service doctors writing about these practitioners, they were commonly called suttiah or vaidya and were hereditary practitioners who almost exclusively practiced the couching of cataract. Unfortunately, there seem to be no texts by these practitioners themselves. How the practices and instruments of these oculists relate to classical works of Indian Medicine like the Suśrutasaṃhitā is still an open question that requires further discussion. Some preliminary aspects of the topic will be explored during the presentation and I would greatly welcome further discussion on this subject afterwards.
     
    While there are no written sources by these oculists their instruments have been collected both at the KSI as well as in various UK collections. I will therefore try to develop a closer understanding of these so called ‘oculists’ by examining their instruments. It is noteworthy that the instruments contain not only ones that were used for couching, but also for other medical procedures unrelated to ophthalmics. Furthermore, a significant number of Instruments are quite evidently from western manufacture, hinting at a complex entanglement between colonial and indigenous practices of healing.
     
    Unfortunately, there are no textual sources written by these oculists, who, according to the colonial discourse about them, were largely illiterate. The primary textual source on these subaltern health practitioners are publications by Indian Medical Service doctors, who viewed them as both unwanted competition as well as a public health hazard.


  • May 20, 2024

     
    Are the Elements and the Pañcabhūta the Same (Thing)? Epistemic Objects between
    Science, Religion, and Philosophy in Colonial North India, c.1920

    Dr. Charu Singh (University of Cambridge)

    What are things made from? If elements are the foundational matters of fact in global
    chemopolitics, what happens to elementary conceptions of life and world when new concepts
    challenge existing ontologies? This chapter examines an early twentieth century debate
    about the status of the pañcabhūta, also called the pañcatattva, a concept foundational to
    Hindu ontology and authority. In British India, these “five Hindu elements” were described
    by European orientalists, Sanskrit scholars, emerging Indian scientists and philosophers, and
    lay readers. The tattva presented significant difficulties in linguistic, conceptual, and material
    translation. While pṛthivī, jal, and vāyu were easily rendered as earth, water, and air, the two
    other tattva – tejas and ākāśa – proved less pliable. Is tejas fire or energy? Is ākāśa ether? As
    the Sanskrit scholar Chandrashekhar Shastri asked in the Hindi-language popular science
    monthly Vigyan in 1920, “are the elements and the pañcabhūta the same (thing)?” In the
    subsequent debate, Vigyan’s authors drew on ancient Sanskrit knowledge alongside the
    history of European chemistry. They evaluated the tattva in light of phlogiston and caloric,
    new theories of chemical structure, and also cited traditional theories on the nature of things
    associated with the Vaisheshika, one of the six ‘schools’ of Hindu philosophy. The views of
    the legendary seer Kanada, Antoine Lavoisier, and John Dalton were all cannily deployed.
    Thinking about elements and tattva as epistemic objects, this chapter brings into view the
    complex mediations by which early twentieth century vernacular readers identified these
    objects with reference to and through the intercalation of two distinct standards: Vaisheshika
    philosophy and European chemical writings.


  • April 15, 2024

     
    "Show and Tell" 
    Presentations and Group Discussion
     
    Join us for a special meeting on April 15! We are excited to welcome six scholars who will use an object or an image to introduce themselves and their work. Each mini-presentation of approximately 3 minutes will be followed by an opportunity for discussion. 

    One of the primary aims of our working group is to cultivate inclusive community, collaboration, and conversation among people who study science in South Asia (pre-1800) from a range of disciplinary perspectives, so we hope many folks will attend this meeting.
     
    Presenters:
     

    Leo Weiß (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
     
    Lingli Li (EHESS (Paris) and University of Goetingen)
     
    Dhammaloka Jambugahapitiye (Department of Classical Languages, University of Peradeniya)
     
    Madhusudan Rimal (University of Alberta)
     
    Bradley Lewis Scott (Queen Mary University of London)
     
    Divya Kumar-Dumas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU)
     
     

     

    After the presentations we will open up some broader questions for discussion. What is our shared object/field of study? What do me mean when we say “science” in this context of “early South Asia”? What are some of the methodological problems that we face across the group? How can we better share resources and collaborate?
     
    We would also like to know what kinds of conversations and formats would be most helpful for you in our group for next year.
     
    We look forward to seeing you on April 15!

     

     


  • March 18, 2024

     
    Material aspects of some early modern Sri Lankan medical manuscripts
     
    Dr. Anna Elizabeth Winterbottom (McGill University)
     
    At McGill University, there is a collection of around 125 olas (palm leaf manuscripts), several of which are concerned with medicine, astrology, or veterinary medicine. These manuscripts were collected in the 1920s and 1930s by Casey Wood, an ophthalmological surgeon and keen collector of historical manuscripts. Most date from the Kandyan period (1595-1815). While several of the manuscripts are copies of well-known texts, like the Sinhalese Yogāratnākara, others are compilations of excerpts, prescriptions, and recipes made by physicians for personal use. In this talk, I will consider the material aspects of the texts, including the length of the leaves used for the text, the decoration of their covers, the buttons used to secure the cords, and the illustrations and decorations that many of these texts contain. I will argue that rather than acting solely as vehicles for medical knowledge, the texts were also considered to play an active role in healing through these material elements.

     
     


  • February 26, 2024

    *NOTE SPECIAL DATE AND SCHEDULE CHANGE*
     
    Hues of faces and phases: insights on crafting high-tin bronzes in southern India
     
    Dr Sharada Srinivasan (National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore, India)
     
     
    Generally speaking, as-cast binary copper-tin alloys with over 15% do not seem to have been widely used in antiquity as they get embrittled at higher tin contents due to the increasing presence of the intermetallic delta phase compound. Nevertheless, the use of the unusual and skilled binary bronze alloys of a higher tin content and skillfully manipulating the high temperature intermetallic compounds properties of bronzes are reported from various contexts in Indian antiquity. In particular the specialized use of the hot forged and quenched high tin beta (23%) bronze was used to skillfully make vessels with finds reported by the author from archaeometallurgical studies from numerous peninsular and south Indian megalithic contexts ranking amongst the early such finds known; with continuing traditions particularly in Kerala. Sadly, these days it is largely cymbal making that survives.
     
    Another exotic high tin-bronze craft tradition that thrived in Kerala is the making of mirrors exploiting the silvery delta compound of bronze of around 33% to get a good reflective surface. Further insights on more recently excavated finds from sites such as the Iron Age site of Adichanallur are also touched upon in terms of background. Thus, an attempt is made to trace the trajectory of the usage of bronze in the Indian and south Indian context in this illustrated talk, tracing the numerous ‘faces’, ranging from celebrated lost wax statuary bronzes such as of the Chola period to the mirrors, and the ‘phases’, the unique properties of which were skillfully exploited to fashion the intriguing artifacts, not to mention the related historic ‘phases’…

     

     
     
     

     
     


  • January 22, 2024

    *NOTE SPECIAL DATE AND SCHEDULE CHANGE*
     
    Noah’s Grandsons and the Elephant: Functions of Pseudepigraphic Writing in Persianate South Asia
     
    Dr. Fabrizio Speziale (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris-Marseille)
     
    This lecture examines Muslim elephant keepers, and the function of Persian forged texts in South Asian society. It will inquire into forgery as a tool to domesticate technological knowledge translated from Indic sources and to legitimate the status of a guild that has emerged from Muslims’ interaction with the South Asian natural environment and society. It investigates the function of apocryphal writing in the translation context as a stratagem to produce semantic shifts concerning features of both the translated and the translating cultures. In the Kursī-nāma-yi mahāvat-girī (Genealogy of the mahout), a text of uncertain period about the elephant and the elephant keeper, apocryphal writing functions as a device that allows to Islamize professional and technical skills assimilated from the Indian environment. This is accomplished by making them congruent with Muslims’ conception of the origin of technical and scientific professions as practices connected to the early Islamic prophets. Thus, the Kursī-nāma-yi mahāwat-girī creates a legend about the mahout as a profession practiced by Noah’s grandsons. This fictional account also entailed a reflexive meaning in that it operated a significant shift from earlier Muslim negative views on the elephant and provided a new framework for emerging Muslim professional groups involved in the care of this animal. 

     
     


  • December 18, 2023

     
    Incurability as ‘disability’ in classical Āyurveda: The case of vision disorders
     
    Tulika Singh (University of Alberta)
     
    In classical Āyurveda, disorders become disabilities, marked by inauspiciousness and social stigma, only when they are entirely incurable. The medical literature considers all treatable conditions as ‘normal,’ and it is primarily the incurability of a condition that renders it ‘disabling’ for the body. This perspective stands in contrast to prevailing legal and normative discourses, which often perceive disorders as socially and legally disabling simply due to their existence. However, the early Indian medical perception of normality and disability is not centered on disorders or the body that possess them but rather on the potential for curability or incurability of the condition in the body.
     
    To illustrate this point, this paper will discuss curable and incurable vision disorders and their connection to the perception of blindness in the literature. The first section will examine the causes and treatments of curable vision disorders, ranging from partial blindness (timira) to mature cataract (liṅganāśa), to demonstrate that even severe vision loss that can be cured is regarded similarly to any other eye ailment, and therefore is not considered a ‘disability.’ The second section will place importance on incurable vision disorders, highlighting that the physician is advised to neglect curing these conditions primarily because they are deemed incurable. Attempting to treat an inherently incurable condition may incur a bad reputation to the physician. Thus the incurability of a condition contributes to the stigma associated with it. This perspective provides us context for understanding occasional references to the inauspiciousness of blindness, viewing it as a disability in Āyurveda. It is not the disorder itself or the body possessing it but rather the intrinsic incurability of the condition that makes it a disability in medical thought.
     
     


  • November 20, 2023

     
    A Contagion Theory in the Hārītasaṃhitā? The Chapter on upasarga
     
    Dr. Vitus Angermeier (University of Vienna)
     
    In studies concerning notions of contagion in pre-modern South Asia, the term upasarga has repeatedly attracted attention because it evidently refers to the transmission of diseases through bodily contact. Although these contacts are not always person-to-person, upasarga is increasingly used, especially in the commentary literature from Cakrapāṇidatta onwards, to describe processes that are today understood as contagion. Sources consulted to understand the development of the term generally include the compilations attributed to Caraka, Suśruta and Vāgbhaṭa (between 150 and 700 CE), as well as later commentaries on these texts (from the 11th century onwards). The less noted Hārītasaṃhitā, usually thought to have been composed in its surviving form between 700 and 1000 CE, is generally overlooked in this context. In this talk, I will examine the use of upasarga in the Hārītasaṃhitā, as the text promises to fill a major gap by means of two particularities: Due to its date, this compilation can shed light on the developments that took place in the period between the writing of the earlier compilations and the later commentaries. And secondly, the Hārītasaṃhitā is the first medical compilation to contain an entire chapter (3.34 on upasargacikitsā, "treatment of infectious diseases") dedicated to the concerned concept.


Group Conveners

  • labrooks's picture

    Lisa Brooks

    Lisa Allette Brooks is a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta and the recipient of the Dorothy Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Prize, as well as a 2022-2023 AAS Pipeline Fellowship. Lisa’s current project, Leech TroubleTherapeutic Entanglements in More-Than-Human Medicines, is a historical and textual study of human-leech medicine in South Asia and a comparative ethnographic study of leech therapy in contemporary ayurvedic medicine and biomedicine. Lisa’s work has been published in the Asian Review of World HistoriesMedical Anthropology QuarterlyAsian Medicine and in the edited volume Fluid Matter(s) by ANU press (eds. Kuriyama and Koehle). Lisa co-edited a special issue of Asian Medicine, “Medicines and Memories in South Asia” 15.1 (2020) and is the South Asia book review editor for the journal Asian Medicine and reviews editor for History of Science in South Asia. In 2021 Lisa completed a PhD in South and Southeast Asian Studies with Designated Emphases in Science and Technology Studies, and in Women, Gender, and Sexuality at UC Berkeley. Lisa'a interests include multispecies medicine, histories of health, healing, and embodiment, queer and feminist science studies, and sensory studies.

     
     

     

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