Approach of Ayurveda
The approach of ayurveda is bound in seven synonyms called sakha, vidya, sutra, jnana, sastra, laksana and tantra. The treatises of ayurveda, numbering ten, deal with body and its function, disease process, causation of diseases, course of illness, objective of treatment, treatment , treatment procedures, therapeutic instruments and the role of physician.
According to Charaka, an ideal physician should have thorough knowledge about the eight vital spheres of ayurveda, which are text and scope of the text, topic and scope of the topic, section and scope of the section, topic and scope of the topic.
Ayurveda deals with everything existed in nature and all the objects of the matter. The matter is categorized into substance, quality, activity, generality, particularity and inherence. Substance, quality and activity are objective existence whereas generality, particularity and inherence are the outcome of intellectual efforts.
Substance: The substances - ether, air, fire, water, earth – are independent entities.
Quality: Quality falls into four category – sensation, physical, mental and intellectual. Sound, touch, vision, taste and smell account for sensation qualities. There are twenty physical qualities, each having positive and negative qualities, such as heavy and light, hot and cold, moist and dry, slow and quick, smooth and rough, solid and liquid, soft and hard, fixed and mobile, subtle and gross, clear and turbid. Mental qualities number five – joy, sorrow, desire, aversion and effort. Qualities of intellectual are ten in total. They are superiority and inferiority, conjunction and disjunction, reason, number, individuality, processing, size and practice.
Activity: Activity means movement and the movement characterizes substances. Activity in the form of quality is inherent in substances. Ayurveda has given a twist to the activity and it views it as union and disunion of substances.
Generality: Quality of generality is indicative of substances with same characteristics. Generality causes hike in substances all the while and unifies similar substances.
Particularity: Quality of particularity does the work of distinguishing the things. While generality helps increase the substances with similar contents, particularity reduces the substances having dissimilar properties. The function of particularity plays a cardinal role in ayurvedic treatments.
Inherence: Quality of inherence helps unite a substance and its divergent qualities. The united substance and qualities are ever inseparable.
