Adaptations of contemporary Ayurvedic medical practice in urban India

In this dissertation I have explored different types of Ayurvedic medical practices in urban India the concepts of health and disease expressed by the consumers of these services. This dissertation stems from the observation that there is an increasing demand for "pure" Ayurveda in the past ten years. The doctors and clinics I observed for this project were those that sought to meet this demand, and the patients I interviewed were those that fed into it. In doing the research for this dissertation I found that those who used Ayurveda in urban Indian cities experienced a sense of cultural loss and that utilizing Ayurveda represented a remembering of their cultural heritage in some ways.; In this project I first mapped and documented different forms of Ayurveda-based health care practices in Pune, India. From the existing literature, I conceived of these practices on a continuum that begins at "traditional" and reflected a progressive modernization of the medical system. I found four categories of Ayurvedic practice that I broadly labeled "traditional," "modern," "commercial," and "self-help" that over-lapped rather than sitting neatly on a continuum.; The second task of this project was to explore how the different adaptations of Ayurveda functioned as a part of the health care regimens of patients and consumers in India by examining how they talked about the relative effects, advantages, or disadvantages of Ayurveda vis-a-vis allopathic medicines, and any other healing methods they may have used. I found that Ayurveda is used for different purposes in its adapted forms today than it was in its original traditional form. Today it is used more for rejuvenation and palliative care rather than as a preventive measure.; It is important to know how people conceive of health and illness in different Ayurvedic practices because these conceptions have implications for where people locate their illness in the body-mind-spirit triad. This project will contribute to the increasing body of medical anthropology literature that is concerned with the appropriation and transformation of medical systems. It will also be useful for health services researchers to understand the variations and utilization of alternative medical systems.