Some Medicinal Plants of Indian Puranas in Today's EthnomedicinalPerspective

摘要

Several hundred plants are mentioned in Indian Puranas for their use as human and animal food, medicine, general healthcare, house-building, other material uses, faith, warfare and conservation. Many of those plants are not only presently used in urban and rural societies, but their several new uses have also been discovered. The present article deals with sixteen indigenous and cultivated plants indicating their uses as given in the PurdGas and also the ethnomedicinal uses as now documented in lastfew decades. The purpose of this article is to show that over several centuries economic utilization of PuraGic plants has largely expanded. It is discussed that intensive ethnobatanical research can tap and document elements of unique intuition, keen observation, vast ingenuity, unmatched creativity and infinite patience for trial and error methods of the so called illiterate and uneducated rural and particularly tribal folk.