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Ayurveda

Ayurveda is among the oldest documented medical systems still practised at scale. This page covers the classical compendia and their authors alongside the modern figures who institutionalised Ayurvedic training, pharmacology and clinical research.

10 indexed lives · 0 Nobel laureates · 2 countries

Where to start

P. S. Varier

1869 – 1944

Founded Arya Vaidya Sala at Kottakkal and industrialised classical Ayurvedic pharmacy.

India·Ayurveda · Education

Shiv Sharma

1906 – 1980

Led the campaign that won Ayurveda statutory recognition in independent India.

India·Ayurveda · Education

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

1918 – 2008

Exported Transcendental Meditation and revived classical Ayurveda as a global health programme.

India·Ayurveda · Integrative Medicine

Ayurveda across the centuries

19th century · 1

  • P. S. Varier1869 – 1944

20th century · 9

  • Shiv Sharma1906 – 1980
  • Maharishi Mahesh Yogi1918 – 2008
  • Brihaspati Dev Triguna1920 – 2013
  • Ashok Vaidya1940 – 2023
  • Vasant Ladb. 1943
  • Deepak Choprab. 1946
  • David Frawleyb. 1950
  • Robert Svobodab. 1953
  • Baba Ramdevb. 1965
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Related disciplines

MedicinePublic HealthNutritionPsychologyIntegrative MedicineFunctional MedicineTraditional Chinese Medicine

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Curated entries are hand-researched; the research desk drafts new profiles on demand and flags what is uncertain rather than inventing it.

Method

Dates and lineages follow mainstream scholarship. Where a family line is undocumented, we say so — and cite what stands behind every claim.