Persian Treatises on Āyurveda: The Shaping of a Genre

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the translation of foreign materials into post-Abbasid Muslim medical culture by looking at the production of Persian works dealing with Ayurvedic medicine. From the 14th century onwards, the composition of Persian texts on Āyurveda emerged in South Asia as a new genre of writing, which was actually a composite genre including various kinds of texts. The Muslim physicians incorporate the other’s learning not by rejecting the principles of their receiving culture but rather by empirically applying the logic of their principles in understanding the foreign environment and the receiving culture. The composition of new texts on Āyurveda in Persian constitutes a prominent aspect of this engagement as well as a central element of the creation of a Persianised version of Ayurvedic treatment more likely to be circulated among Indian Muslim physicians. The Persian treatises apply new linguistic and cognitive categories to the analysis of the translated material; the interpretation based on the criteria of the receiving culture is added to, and sometimes replaces, the criteria of the source culture.