K. V. KRISHNAMURTHY1 and T. PULLAIAH2
1Consultant, R&D, Sami Labs, Peenya Industrial Area, Bangalore–560058, Karnataka, India
2Department of Botany, Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Anantapur–515003, India
CONTENTS
This chapter summarizes the information available on the European contributions to the ethnobotany of Western Peninsular India after the 16th century. Works of Garcia da Orta, Acosta, Gerard, EcCluse and Van Rheede are summarized. These works essentially emphasized the traditional way of classification of plants and drugs obtained from them as well as of using them for therapeutic purposes instead of emphasizing the Hippocratic approach. They also indicate how valuable are the drug sources recognized by the ethnic communities, particularly by the Ezhava community, of the Western peninsular India for human utilization.
Starting from the 15th century the Europeans began to show much interest on the extra-European plants and ventured actively to collect useful taxa, including medicinal, compile information relating to them and to exploit them. They started to systematize and rationalize assessments of the plants of non-western world to streamline this process of exploitation during their voyages to different parts of the world and there was scarcely a part of the world unrepresented in their maritime travels. Considering the plant collection made by them as a whole, it appears that India, and South East Asia were the most active areas followed by West Indies, Central and South America, Africa and South Pacific and Australasia. Among these, India was more easily accessible to European exploitation (Mackay, 1996). This interest of Europeans on knowledge of non-Western plants, particularly of Indian plants, was driven dominantly by the Hippocratic agendas (Grove, 1996). The scholarly interests shown by these European authors who wrote about Indian ethnomedico-botanical plants were also tended to emphasize the Hippocratic approach. These works, barring two contributions that contain information drawn from ancient and classical ethno-botanical traditions of India are not widely known (Spudich, 2008). These works seriously attempted to present traditional Indian botanical knowledge classified as per western knowledge systems and are, therefore, complementary to that available from contemporary Indian sources. As an example for the latter, we may cite the work of Krishnamurthy (2006), who has brought out the traditional ethno-botanical knowledge of ancient Tamils of South India. These European writings recorded regional folk botanical knowledge often unavailable in their original localities (Spudich, 2012). This chapter deals with works of those European authors that concern with the ethnobotany of western peninsular India during 16th to 18th centuries.
Long before Dutch became dominant in western Peninsular India and shown interest in its ethnobotany, the Portuguese were involved in a complex, but not highly organized, act of collecting plants of economic value and transferred them to Lisbon (Kapil and Bhatnagar, 1976); they also introduced some economically important plants into India (Mehra, 1965). In this process, the Portuguese extended the much older patterns of distribution and trade in ethnobotanicals that had long existed in the Arabian Sea region (King, 1899; see also Krishnamurthy’s article in this volume). Portuguese travelers to West Coast of India (and other parts of the world) were soon advised to observe indigenous practices and collect and supplement data on ethnobotanicals to extend European Materia Medica and this type of advice elicited the preparation of the first major European book on Indian ethnobotany (Grove, 1996). The preparation of a book of this type was undertaken by Garcia da Orta. Garcia, born in 1490, arrived at Goa, on the west coast of peninsular India, from Portugal on September 1534 after leaving on 12th March 1534. He came to Goa with “a great desire to know about the medical drugs… as well as all the fruits and pepper… their names in all the different languages, as also the countries where they grow, and the trees or plants which bear them and likewise how the Indian physicians use them” (Gaitonde, 1993). His intention was also to compile a description of plants from which medicines sold in Europe and the Portuguese colonial possessions were extracted (Grove, 1996). Garcia wrote his famous book in 1563 in Goa in Portuguese, which was quickly translated into a Latin edition in 1567 and into English with an introduction and index in 1913 by Markham (Garcia, 1913). The first Portuguese edition was the third book printed by the Portuguese in India.
Garcia compiled his book, whose structure is in the form a dialog between him and an imaginary interrogator called Ruano, not only from information collected from local physicians and folk healers, but also after critical experimentation and substantiation for his own prescription as well as for physicians in Europe. His book served as the first source of information on the description of medicinal plants and the drugs obtained from them. The therapeutic effects of these drugs were carefully recorded by him. A number of these plants were also illustrated through line drawings. His book also contained very valuable information on the source locations from where the plant drugs were obtained, and included those available on the West coast of India and those that came from abroad before being grown in India. Garcia’s book can be “said to lie at the core of the relationship between European colonial expansion and the diffusion of botanical knowledge,” particularly the ethnobotanical/ethnomedical knowledge. In this book, the contemporary Hippocratic emphasis on accuracy and efficacy tended to privilege strongly the folk ethnomedical knowledge of India and, thus, led to “effective discrimination” against the older Arabic, Aryan and classical European texts and cognition systems (Grove, 1996). Orta’s work is profoundly an indigenous text reflecting traditional knowledge of local ethnic people, although written by an outsider. It is organized essentially on non-European precepts. These aspects, although first recognized by Clusius (see Section 4.5), have been later emphasized by Boxer (1963) who draws attention to the book’s wider historical value.
According to Garcia the privileging of European traditions and preconceptions would lead to medical failure and hence Indian ethnic concepts on medicine should be given importance while practicing Indian drugs and procedures of taking them. However, as Grove (1996) has rightly pointed out, his text had also been affected by the “delicate balance in power relations between the European physician, (his) Moslem patron and the local Arab or Persian doctor” (parenthesis by the authors of this article), although his own medical knowledge was better as it was more pluralistic. He was an European physician (although he shifted his basic allegiance away from Portuguese government), his patron was the Moslem king of Deccan (Burham Nizam Shah) and his friends were Arab or Persian doctors practicing under this king. Garcia’s personal intimacy and love with local ethnic physicians of West Coast of India is abundantly evident in the approbation he grants specifically to Malayali and Canarese doctors and their medicines, although it was often difficult to get information from them (Grove, 1996). The most important aspects of Garcia’s role as a doctor using contemporary traditional ethnobotanical and medical knowledge of West Coast of India “prefigured the pioneering role played by other lone European doctors employed by Indian potentates in promoting and utilizing indigenous technical knowledge, Honigsberger and Johann Konig being the two outstanding examples of this in the first decades of East India Company rule” (Grove, 1996; see also Grove, 1995).
Christoval Acosta (some refer to him as Cristobel Acosta), another Portuguese physician came to Goa of West Coast of Peninsular India in 1568 with “a desire to see the diversity of plants God has created for the human health” (Gaitonde, 1993). His Spanish work followed that of Garcia da Orta (Acosta, 1578). This book describes 69 plants and other sources of drugs and medicines. The text runs to 448 pages along with illustrations of 46 plants. Most of the descriptions are believed to have been copied from Garcia’s book mentioned above. Acosta also collected information on plants and drugs from local physicians and folk healers of West Coast of peninsular India, experimented with them, and used them in writing his book.
Johan Gerard, an apothecary and horticulturalist working in London, reported on medicinal uses of plants of India, including those from Western Peninsular India, used in Europe at the end of the 16th century (Gerard, 1597). The very accurate wood-cut illustrations of Gerard’s book suggest that knowledge on medicinal plants and other plants of ethnobotanical interest (particularly of India) was highly sought after and collected by Europeans.
EcCluse (also called Clusius), professor and director of the Leiden Botanic Garden at Netherlands, combined and annotated earlier texts (Clusii, 1605). He extended particularly the works of Garcia da Orta (1563) and of Gerard (1597) through additions of commentaries and illustrations and created a two-volume book. These were widely used in the 17th century Europe as definitive texts on Indian Ethnobotanical medicines. Like all the earlier works, EcCluse’s work also botanical empiricism, helped by commercial pressures. Orta’s book work was immediately translated of the medicinal history of the New World with knowledge into a Latin edition in 1567 by EcCluse. Clusius also included with Orta’s text a translation gained from Orta’s book, Clusius went on to establish both the Hortus Medicus of Emperor Maxmilian in Vienna and, in 1593, the Leiden Botanic Garden (Grove, 1996). The close association between Clusius and Garcia da Orta ensured the diffusion of botanical knowledge between S.W. India and Leiden botanic garden. Clusius’ early adoption of Orta’s work “reinforced the primacy of the Leiden garden in tropical botany, particularly Indian botany.”
Hendrik Adriaan Van Rheede tot Draakenstean (hereafter Van Rheede), the then Dutch governor of Malabar at Cochin and Commander of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) compiled Hortus Malabaricus in 12 volumes between 1678 and 1693 and published it in Netherlands (Van Rheede, 1678–1693). This book, written largely in response to the medical needs of VOC, covered 1595 pages of double folio size and detailed 742 useful plants. Van Rheede was collaborated in this work by Collatt Vaidyan Itty Achuden of Carrapuram near Cherthala in Kerala, a famous traditional physician of that time, as well as by three Konkan Brahmin-Priest physicians Ranga Bhat, Vinayaka Pandit and Appu Bhat, who were residing at Cochin then. This book of thirty years of work also involved a team of experts that included European physicians, Professors of medicine and botany, Indian scholars and vaidyas, technicians, illustrators, engravers and VOC officials. The material of the book drafted in Malayalam was translated into Portuguese after thorough verification, then rendered into Dutch and finally into Latin. The English translation, with annotations, was made by professor Manilal (Manilal, 2003). There are many research publications on Hortus Malabaricus detailing on many aspects of this stupendous work (Grove, 1998; Heniger, 1986; Manilal et al., 1977; Manilal, 1989, 1996, 2005, 2012; Mohan Ram, 2005, 2012; Nicolson et al., 1998) and the interested readers are advised to refer to these works for getting more details. In this article, the importance of Hortus Malabaricus in reference to aspects related to ethnobotany of South Western Peninsular India and their relevance to European botany alone will be discussed.
The writing of Hortus Malabaricus was first facilitated by the establishment of Dutch power in Cochin on the decline of Portuguese power in Malabar coast and subsequently by the connections between Van Rheede and the Dutch botanical establishment (Grove, 1996). This text also seemed to lie at the core of the relationship between European colonial expansion and the diffusion of botanical knowledge as stated earlier for Garcia’s book. In Van Rheede’s text also the contemporary Hippocratic emphasis on accuracy and efficacy tended to privilege strongly traditional ethnobotanical knowledge,” particularly Ezhava community knowledge, and “to lead to effective discrimination against older Arabic, Brahminical and European Classical texts and systems of cognition in natural history” (Grove, 1996). Hortus Malabaricus is profoundly indigenous in its content and mode of construction, is far from being inherently European and is organized on “essentially non-European percepts.” The works of Heniger (1986) and Manilal (1989), according to Grove (1996), have not really been concerned to identify the wider historical significance of the power of the Ezhava community’s affinities within the text of the Hortus Malabaricus “with all that it implies for the assertion of the Ezhava classificatory superiority” (Grove, 1996). Grove also emphasized that Van Rheede was largely responsible for elevating Ezhava ethnobotanical knowledge, with the main aim of acquiring the highest quality of traditional knowledge and expertise. Van Rheede followed a very rigorous adherence to Ezhava systems of plant /drug classification (Heniger, 1986). Van Rheede, in fact, rejected the methodologies of plant description followed by Father Mathew of St. Joseph, an European Botanist. For useful and critical field identification of Plants Van Rheede and his team heavily depended on the knowledge of Ezhavas, the best of whom was Itty Achuden. According to Grove (1996) the contents of Hortus Malabaricus was far more influenced by the Ezhava collaborators of Van Rheede than his own accounts suggest. Grove also stated that, for the subsequent history of tropical botany, “the insight of the Ezhavas into the affinities between a large number of plants in the Hortus Malabaricus is revealed by the names they gave to those species which have the same stem and to which one or more prefixes are added.” The names of plants also provide us a considerable amount of cultural and social material about the Ezhavas as well as of other ethnic communities of Malabar coast.
The Ezhava traditional nomenclatural and classificatory knowledge, as contained in Hortus Malabaricus, had direct influence on many botanically important texts that followed it: Linnaeus, Adanson, Jussieu, Dennstedt, Haskarl, Roxburgh, Hooker, Gamble and many more texts. Hence, Hortus Malabaricus apparently remains as the only record of the accumulated traditional/ethnobotanical knowledge of the Ezhava community. This book mentions medicinal plants which form the sources of 2789 prescriptions for more than 210 diseases which was rampant in Malabar in the 15th to 17th century (Manilal, 2012). If Van Rheede had not compiled this information and published it as Hortus Malabaricus, the hereditary ethnobotanical knowledge of Ezhava community would have been totally lost. Since Van Rheede, Manilal and others have stated that the Ezhava ethnomedical knowledge (as exemplified by Itty Achuden) is pre-Ayurvedic knowledge (this is evident from a perusal of the various uses of plants listed in this book indicate that they are quite different from those listed in Ayurveda) and since Ezhavas were traditionally not native to Kerala and migrated there during historic times from Tamil Nadu (see Chapter 2 of this book), their ethnic knowledge may belong to the Siddha system of Medicine so dear and traditional to the ancient Dravidians or was the outcome of local folk empirical knowledge.
Hortus Malabaricus is also important in another respect. Information on the medical uses of plants described in this book is of immense importance and current relevance in the context of the growing global demand for natural drugs as well as the intellectual Property Rights regime and Biological Patent Laws. The publication of medicinal uses of Malabar plants will help in the fight for protection of traditional botanical knowledge of India, particularly of Western Peninsular India. This book can be used as an effective legal weapon in our efforts to prevent patenting of the over 650 important medicinal plants of Malabar by anybody with vested interest, and preserve and protect our traditional knowledge on plants for use by our people (Manilal, 2012).
The basic theme of European colonialism which started by the late 14th century has been the subject of debate for a very long time. This theme has been continuously debated from the points of view of discovery, exploration, curiosity, commerce, scientific exchanges, indigenous cultures, imperial expansion, brutal exploitation of resources of the colonized countries, and study of biodiversity. Many believed that imperial and commercial purposes pre-dominated, while others believed that scientific curiosity was more important. India is one country which was frequently visited by different colonial powers of Europe, particularly after the 16th century under the guise of trade. These included the Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French and English. They all tried to assess the natural resources of India and the traditional knowledge of various ethnic communities on the useful plants (and animal). They also made all efforts to systematically study them and to document them so that they can be used by them. This chapter summarizes the European contributions to the ethnobotany of Western peninsular India during the 16th and 17th centuries. The works of Garcia da Orta, Christoval Agusta, John Gerard, EcCluse (Clusius) and Van Rheede are discussed. Almost all these workers have been impressed by the traditional way of handling the ethnobotanical resources, particularly the systematic manner in which they were named, classified, protected and sustainably used, in contrast to the way in which these resources were earlier used by European and Arabic scholars.
•Acosta
•Christoval
•Ezhava Traditional Knowledge
•John Gerard
•Gerard EcCluse
•Hortus Malabaricus
•Van Rheede
•L’Esduse
•Clusius
Acosta, C. (1578). Trato de las drogas, y Medicinas de las India’s Orientalis. Burgos, Spain.
Boxer, C.R. (1963). Two pioneers of tropical medicine: Garcia d’Orta and Nicolas Monardes. Diamente 14, 1–33.
Clusii, C. [L’Esduse]. (1605). Exoticorum libre decem: quibus animalium, Plantarum, aromatum, aliorumque peregrinorum fructum historiae describuntur: Item Petri Bellonis observationibus. Plantin. Antwerp.
Gaitonde, P.D. (1993). The Portuguese Pioneers in India. Bombay.
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Gerard, J. (1597). The Great Herbal or General History of Plants. John Norton, London.
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Van Rheede, H.A. (1678–1693). Hortus indicus Malabaricus, Continens Regioni Malabarici opud Indos Celeberrimi omnis generis Plantas rariores. 12 Vols. Amsterdam.