The rare Ayurvedic at the Welcome museum in Britain

THE KATHMANDU POST
BySanyukta Shrestha

A rare Ayurvedic painting from Kathmandu has become a top attraction at a British Museum

Tracking down Nepali artefacts peppered around museums in Europe and beyond can be a treasure hunt of sorts. But what makes The Ayurvedic Man so special? To start with, illustrations of scientific study are quite rare in Sanskrit manuscripts. Besides a very few of them, like the 11th century Rasendramangala which merely has diagrams of alchemical apparatus, others have not been discovered till date. Secondly, most other human body representations in South Asian traditional paintings are either guided by the early Vedic philosophy of Vishwaroop (The Universal Form), or that of the Tantric chakras or kundalini. In contrast, this particular piece illustrates a purely Ayurvedic concept of human anatomy through pen and watercolour.  [More]