Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:33:13.666Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Vishalyakarani as Eupatorium ayapana: Retro-botanizing, Embedded Traditions, and Multiple Historicities of Plants in Colonial Bengal, 1890–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2014

Projit Bihari Mukharji
Get access

Abstract

This article critically examines the assumptions and processes involved in identifying historically distinctive plant identities by their Latin botanical names. By following late-colonial efforts to identify a medicinal herb mentioned in some versions of the Ramayana, this paper argues for a historicist analysis of the process of “retro-botanizing.” In so doing, it also distinguishes between two different forms of “tradition,” the “factualized” and “embedded.” Finally, it blurs the allegedly watertight distinction between historical and mythic pasts. Instead of trying to distinguish these pasts ontologically, I argue that it is more productive to see specific pasts in relation to the sorts of futures they produce, that is, their respective historicities.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 65 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Abraham, Itty. 2006. “The Contradictory Spaces of Postcolonial Techno-Science.” Economic & Political Weekly 41(3):210–17.Google Scholar
Ali, Daud, ed. 1999. Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ali, Daud. 2012. “Botanical Technology and Garden Culture in Somersvara's Manasollasa.” In Garden and Landscape Practices from Pre-Colonial India: Histories from the Deccan, eds. Ali, Daud and Flatt, Emma, 39–53. New Delhi. Routledge.Google Scholar
Ali, Daud. 2013. “Temporality, Narration and the Problem of History: A View from Western India, c. 1100–1400.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 50(2):237–59.Google Scholar
Alter, Joseph S. 2008. “Rethinking the History of Medicine in Asia: Hakim Muhammad Said and the Society for the Promotion of Eastern Medicine.” Journal of Asian Studies 67(4):1165–86.Google Scholar
Anderson, Warwick. 2012. “Asia as Method in Science and Technology Studies.” East Asian Science & Technology Studies 6(4):445–51.Google Scholar
Arnold, David. 1999. “A Time for Science: Past and Present in the Reconstruction of Hindu Science, 1860–1920.” In Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, ed. Ali, Daud, 156–77. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Arnold, David. 2000. The New Cambridge History of India III.5: Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Arnold, David. 2008. “Plant Capitalism and Company Science: The Indian Career of Nathaniel Wallich.” Modern Asian Studies 42(5):899–928.Google Scholar
Attewell, Guy. 2003. “Islamic Medicines: Perspectives on the Greek Legacy in the History of Islamic Medical Traditions in West Asia.” In Medicine Across Cultures: History and Practice of Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, ed. Selin, Helaine, 325–50. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Attewell, Guy. 2007. Refiguring Unani Tibb: Plural Healing in Late Colonial India. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.Google Scholar
Attewell, Guy. 2010. “Interweaving Substance Trajectories: Tiryaq, Circulation and Therapeutic Transformation in the Nineteenth Century.” In Crossing Colonial Historiographies: Histories of Colonial and Indigenous Medicines in Transnational Perspective, eds. Ernst, Waltraud, Digby, Anne, and Mukharji, Projit, 1–20. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.Google Scholar
Banerjee, Prathama. 2006. Politics of Time: ‘Primitives’ and History-Writing in a Colonial Society. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Banerjee-Dube, Ishita. 2007. Religion, Law and Power: Tales of Time in Eastern India, 1860–2000. London: Anthem Press.Google Scholar
Basu, Jagadbandhu. 1893. “Bhaisajya Tattwa: Sulabh Raktarodhak” [Medicinal theory: Easily available hemostatic]. Chikitsa Sammilani 9(8):267–72.Google Scholar
Beckurts, Heinrich, and Weichelt, W. W., eds. 1896. Jahresbericht der pharmacie [Annual report of the pharmacy]. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Bhadra, Gautam. 1993. “Kathakathar Nana Katha” [The many tales of Kathakatha]. Yogasutra (October-December):167–298.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, Ashutosh, ed. n.d. Krittibasi Ramayana [The Ramayana of Krittibas]. Calcutta: Akhil Bharat Janashiksha Prachar Samiti.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, Neeladri. 2008. “Predicaments of Secular Histories.” Public Culture 20(1):57–73.Google Scholar
Bose, P. K., and Sarkar, B. B.. 1937. “Hemostatic Action of Ayapin and Ayapanin.” Nature 139:514–16.Google Scholar
Bose, P. K., and Sen, P. B.. 1941. “Haemostatic Agents. Part I. Experiments with Avapanin and Ayapin.” Annals of Biochemistry and Experimental Medicine 1(4):311–16.Google Scholar
Brockway, Lucile H. 1979. “Science and Colonialism: The Role of the British Botanic Gardens.” American Ethnologist 6(3):449–65.Google Scholar
Chakrabarti, Pratik. 2000. “Science, Nationalism and Colonial Contestations: PC Ray and His Hindu Chemistry.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 37(2):185–213.Google Scholar
Chakrabarti, Pratik. 2010. “Empire and Alternatives: Swietenia febrifuga and the Cinchona Substitutes.” Medical History 54(1):75–94.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha, and Ghosh, Anjan, eds. 2002. History and the Present. London: Anthem Press.Google Scholar
The Chemist and Druggist. 1895. “The Indian Medical Congress.” 46(2):44.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine, ed. 1999. Biographies of Scientific Objects. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Debi, Rasasundari. [1875] 1987. Amar Jiban [My life]. Calcutta: College Street Prakashani.Google Scholar
Desmond, Ray. 1992. The European Discovery of the Indian Flora. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dey, Kanailal. 1867. The Indigenous Drugs of India. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co.Google Scholar
Dey, Kanailal. 1896. The Indigenous Drugs of India. 2nd ed.Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co.Google Scholar
Drayton, Richard Harry. 2000. Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the ‘Improvement’ of the World. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Drury, Heber. 1873. Useful Plants of India. London: W. H.Allen & Co.Google Scholar
Dutt, R. C. 1902. The Economic History of British India. London: Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Dutt, Udoy Chunder. 1877. The Materia Medica of the Hindus. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co.Google Scholar
Dymock, William. 1885. The Vegetable Materia Medica of Western India. Bombay: Education Society Press.Google Scholar
Elmers, Peter. ed. 2004. The Healing Arts: Health, Disease and Society in Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Endersby, Jim. 2008. Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fleming, John. 1812. “A Catalogue of Indian Medicinal Plants and Drugs.” Asiatick Researches 11:153–96.Google Scholar
Gandhi, M. K. 1939. “Discussion with Dr Chesterman.” Harijan. February 25. http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL075.PDF (accessed September 25, 2011).Google Scholar
Ghosh, A. K., and Sen, S. N.. 1971. “[Botany] The Vedic and Post-Vedic Period.” In A Concise History of Science in India, eds. Bose, D. M., Sen, S. N., and Subbarayappa, B. V., 375–91. New Delhi. Indian National Science Academy.Google Scholar
Ghosh, J. C. 1918. Indigenous Drugs. Calcutta: n.p.Google Scholar
Goldman, Robert P. 2006. “How Fast Do Monkeys Fly? How Long Do Demons Sleep?” Revisita di Studi Sudasiatici 1:185–207.Google Scholar
Goswami, Manu. 2004. Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Grove, Richard H. 1995. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansions, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gupta, Birajacharan. 1908. Vanaushadhi Darpan [Mirror of forest medicines]. Calcutta: SC Auddy & Co.Google Scholar
Hamlin, Christopher. 2009. Cholera: The Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hardiman, David. 2009. “Indian Medical Indigeneity: From Nationalist Assertion to Global Market.” Social History 34(3):263–83.Google Scholar
Headrick, Daniel R. 1988. Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hooker, Joseph Dalton. 1882. The Flora of British India. Vol. 3. London: L. Reeve & Co.Google Scholar
Jardine, Nicholas, Secord, James A., and Spary, E. C., eds. 1996. Cultures of Natural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jay, Martin. 2005. Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Journal of the Asiatic Society. 1833. “The Birth of Uma—A Legend of the Himalaya by Calidasa.” 2(19):329–58.Google Scholar
Koehne, E., ed. 1897. Just's Botanischer Jahresbericht [Just's annual botanical report]. Berlin: Gebruder Borntraeger.Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart. 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Translated by Tribe, Keith. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
LaCapra, Dominick. 1998. History and Memory after Auschwitz. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Boston: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2000. “On the Partial Existence of Existing and Non-Existing Objects.” In Biographies of Scientific Objects, ed. Daston, Lorraine, 247–69. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Le Goff, Jacques. 1992. History and Memory. Translated by Rendall, Steven and Claman, Elizabeth. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lindemann, Mary. 2010. Medicine and Society in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lourdusamy, J. 2004. Science and National Consciousness in Bengal, 1870–1930. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.Google Scholar
Ludden, David. 1993. “Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge.” In Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, ed. Breckenridge, Carol Appadurai, 250–78. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Mandal, Panchanan. 1980. Punthi Parichaya [Introduction to manuscripts]. Santiniketan: Vishwa Bharati.Google Scholar
Mitter, P. C. 1939. “Researches on Organic Chemistry in India (1896–1923).” Proceedings of the National Institute of Sciences of India 5(2):211–16.Google Scholar
Muellner, Alexander N. 2006. “The Mahogany Family ‘Out-of-Africa’: Divergence Time Estimates, Global Biogeographic Patterns Inferred from Plastid rbcL DNA Sequences, Extant and Fossil Distribution of Diversity.” Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40(1):236–50.Google Scholar
Mukharji, Projit Bihari. 2005. “Bangali Ayurbed: Frames, Texts and Practices.” Calcutta Historical Journal 25(2):15–45.Google Scholar
Mukharji, Projit Bihari. 2009a. Nationalizing the Body: The Medical Market, Print and Daktari Medicine. London: Anthem Press.Google Scholar
Mukharji, Projit Bihari. 2009b. “Pharmacology, ‘Indigenous Knowledge’, Nationalism: Few Words on the Epitaph of Subaltern Science.” In The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India, eds. Pati, Biswamoy and Harrison, Mark, 195–212. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mukhopadhyay, Bholanath. [1293 BE] 1886. Dravyagun Darpan [Mirror of the qualities of substances]. Calcutta: Bishwambar Laha.Google Scholar
Mukhopadhyay, Nayanchandra, ed. [1339 BE] 1932. Sachitra Krittibasi Ramayana [Krittibas's Ramayana illustrated]. Allahabad: Indian Press Publication Limited.Google Scholar
Nadkarni, K. M. 1927. Indian Materia Medica. 2nd ed.Bombay: KM Nadkarni.Google Scholar
Nandy, Ashis. 1998. Return from Exile. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nappi, Carla. 2010. “Winter Worm, Summer Grass: Cordyceps, Colonial Chinese Medicine and Formation of Historical Objects.” In Crossing Colonial Historiographies: Histories of Colonial and Indigenous Medicines in Transnational Perspective, eds. Ernst, Waltraud, Digby, Anne, and Mukharji, Projit, 21–36. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.Google Scholar
Noltie, Henry J. 1999. Indian Botanical Drawings, 1793–1868: From the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Royal Botanic Garden.Google Scholar
Noltie, Henry J. 2002. The Dapuri Drawings: Alexander Gibson and the Bombay Botanic Gardens. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing.Google Scholar
Nora, Pierre. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux des Memoire.” Representations 26:7–24.Google Scholar
O'Shaughnessy, W. B. 1841. The Bengal Dispensatory and Pharmacopoeia. Calcutta: GOI.Google Scholar
Pandey, Gyanendra. 2006. The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Philip, Kavita. 2004. Civilizing Natures: Race, Resources, and Modernity in Colonial South India. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Pratyakshya Drasta (“Witness”). [1336 BE] 1929. “Vishalyakarani ba Ayapan” [Vishalyakarani or ayapana?]. Grihasthya Mangal 3(8):250–51.Google Scholar
Raina, Dhruv. 1998. “Historiographic Concerns Underlying the Indian Journal of the History of Science: A Bibliometric Inference.” Economic and Political Weekly 33(8):407–9 and 411–14.Google Scholar
Raj, Kapil. 2007. Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rao, Velcheru Narayan, Shulman, David, and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2003. Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600–1800. New York: Other Press.Google Scholar
Report of the Indigenous Drugs Committee of India. 1899. Vol. 1. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul/ 2006. Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Blamey, Kathleen and Pellauer, David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Roxburgh, William. 1814. Hortus Bengalensis. Serampore: Mission Press.Google Scholar
Saha, Purnachandra. 1894. The Illustrated Hindu Medicinal Plants. Calcutta: The Indian Drugs Supply Company.Google Scholar
Schiebinger, Londa. 2004. Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Binodlal. [1337 BE] 1887. Ayurved Vijnana [Science of Ayurveda]. 4th ed.Calcutta: Pulin Krishna Sen.Google Scholar
Sen, Sudhansubhushan. [1321 BE] 1914. “Banga Bhashaye Ayurvediya Granther Pranayan” [Publication of Ayurvedic books in the Bengali language]. Ayurved Bikash 2(1):1–12.Google Scholar
Sengupta, Debendranath, and Sengupta, Upendranath. [1333 BE] 1926. Dravyagun [Qualities of substances]. 8th ed.Calcutta: Dhanwantari Steem Mesin Jantra.Google Scholar
Sircar, Amritalal. 1908. “Ancient and Modern Hindu Medicine.” Calcutta Journal of Medicine 27(4):159–61.Google Scholar
Sivaramakrishnan, Kalyanakrishnan. 1995. “Colonialism and Forestry in India: Imagining the Past in Present Politics.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(1):3–40.Google Scholar
Sivaramakrishnan, Kavita. 1999. “The Uses of the Past in a Public Campaign: Ayurvedic Prachar in the Writings of Bhai Mohan Singh Vaid.” In Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia, ed. Ali, Daud, 178–91. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Skaria, Ajay. 1998. Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers and the Wildness in Western India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, William L. 2004. “Ramayana Textual Traditions in Eastern India.” In The Ramayana Revisited, ed. Bose, Mandakranta, 87–106. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stein, Claudia. 2009. Negotiating the French Pox in Early Modern Germany. Burlington, Vt,: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Talukdar, Kana. 2010. “The Quest for the Elixirs of Life.” Banbithi (August):20–23.Google Scholar
Turner, Gerard L'Estrange. 1998. Scientific Instruments 1500-1900: An Introduction. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Valmiki. [1282 BE] 1875. Ramayana: Lanka Kanda. Translated by Bhattacharya, Gangagovinda. Calcutta: Shibadaha Datta Yantra.Google Scholar
Vedavyasa, Krishnadwaipayan. [1295 BE] 1888. Adhyatma Ramayana. Translated by Tarkaratna, Panchanan. Calcutta: Bangabasi Steam Machine Press.Google Scholar
Waring, Edward John. 1868. Pharmacopoeia of India. London: W. H. Allen & Co.Google Scholar
Watson, Matthew C. 2011. “Cosmopolitics and the Subaltern: Problematizing Latour's Idea of the Commons.” Theory, Culture & Society 28(3):55–79.Google Scholar
Watt, George. 1890. A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India. Vol. 3. London: W. H. Allen & Co.Google Scholar
Winter, Jay. 1995. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar