Scriptures and Textbooks

It is a challenge and an opportunity to go through ancient scriptures. The challenge is to build up a mental picture, without the help of modern concepts like infection, inflammation etc. The opportunity is to understand an equally important and relevant logic, which was once practiced elaborately. Understanding words and going beyond them is very important. Whenever a modern student of ayurveda starts reading susrutha samhitha he might be unknowingly wearing a pair of glasses with the power adjusted to read modern surgery textbooks. Ayurvedic texts are more of “concepts” than “ideas”.” Snigdhatha” is more a ‘concept ‘, while oil is its practical ‘idea’. Differentiating a concept from an idea is very important while reading ayurvedic texts. On earlier days an expert teacher was always training the disciple. So the question of self-study seldom comes. “Ancient scriptures” are different from “Text books” .A scripture is an idea to preserve some valuable wisdom learned, memorized and practiced by a certain school of thinkers. It might have not been accessible to disciples at that era. But modern books are accessible to all. Textbooks seldom need a commentary. The Textbook itself is an explanation to something. But scriptures demand clarifications from experts. So Scriptures should not be read as the way we read modern textbooks. More and more textbooks should come out explaining different concepts in the ancient scriptures and such books can be made textbooks. Scriptures should be preserved as references and should only be read after studying all the textbooks and understanding all the all the concepts