Ashtavaidya Aryanarayanan Moos

Traditional medicine in India has undergone many changes since the colonial period. With official support, education of traditional medicine has been formalized and is widely available across India. Besides practitioners trained in Government certified institutions, medical practitioners trained in the traditional apprentice way, specializing in regional specific therapies, can still be found all over India. One such group of traditional physicians were the Ashtavaidya Ayurvedic physicians of Kerala, specialists in text-based scholarly medical traditions. Trained in Gurukulam learning - of apprenticeship with masters - these scholar physicians considered healing their sacred mandate. Ashtavaidyas who had patronage of the regional rulers provided their consultations for free and patients only payed for the medicines they provided, and that too when it was convenient to the patient and according to the patient's means. The scholar pictured here, Aryanarayanan Moos of the Vayaskara family of physicians, was a scholar physician of early 20th century, whose legendary healing ability and knowledge had patients refer to him as 'Dhanvantari,' the healer incarnation of Lord Vishnu.