field list
A course in Ayurveda
The people who built ayurveda as we practise it, in the order they arrived.
P. S. Varier
1869 – 1944Founded Arya Vaidya Sala at Kottakkal and industrialised classical Ayurvedic pharmacy.
Shiv Sharma
1906 – 1980Led the campaign that won Ayurveda statutory recognition in independent India.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
1918 – 2008Exported Transcendental Meditation and revived classical Ayurveda as a global health programme.
Brihaspati Dev Triguna
1920 – 2013The century's most celebrated pulse diagnostician; chaired India's central Ayurvedic council.
Ashok Vaidya
1940 – 2023Pioneer of reverse pharmacology, translating classical formulas into clinical trials.
Vasant Lad
b. 1943Founded the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico and trained the first Western practitioners.
Deepak Chopra
b. 1946Endocrinologist turned global voice of mind-body medicine; contested by clinical researchers.
David Frawley
b. 1950Vedic scholar whose texts linked Ayurveda, yoga and jyotish for Western students.
Robert Svoboda
b. 1953First Westerner to earn India's BAMS degree and license; interpreter of Ayurveda for the West.
Baba Ramdev
b. 1965Made yoga and Ayurveda a mass movement and a corporate empire; repeatedly censured over health claims.