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Assembling cyavanaprsh, Ayurveda's

best-selling medicine
a
Maarten Bode
a
Institute for Ayurveda, University of Amsterdam, the
Netherlands, and Integrative Medicine, Bangalore, India
Published online: 02 Feb 2015.

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 Anthropology & Medicine, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2015.1005285

Assembling cyavanaprash, Ayurvedas best-selling medicine

Maarten Bode*

Institute for Ayurveda, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Integrative Medicine,
Bangalore, India

(Received 7 November 2014; accepted 5 January 2015)

The paper discusses the many forms and representations of cyavanaprash, Ayurvedas
best-selling medicine, already mentioned in Carakas Compendium (c. 200 CE). The
Downloaded by [Maarten Bode] at 05:00 16 February 2015

medicines compositions, applications, and meanings, change over time and from
locality to locality. Cyavanaprash is, for example, a patriotic formula, a booster of the
immune system, a modern geriatric drug, and one of the elements in canonical
Ayurvedic treatments. In the beginning of the 19th century cyavanaprash was a
patriotic formula for fortifying Indian bodies and the nascent Indian nation. Nowadays
the medicine is a Fast Moving Consumer Good (FMCG) and a money maker for
Dabur India Ltd., the world largest Ayurvedic manufacturer. Instead of vitalising the
nation its consumption now promises to make urban middle class consumers
effectively modern. Branding and modern science must make Dabur Chyawanprash
attractive in the eyes of these consumers. Ayurveda and cyavanaprash are also part of
a global counter culture marked by neo-Orientalism and Ayurvedic medicines as
facilitators of spirituality. The marketing of cyavanaprash by Indias largest
Ayurvedic manufacturer is used as a case study for discussing the proliferation of
Ayurvedic brands and its critics. The imaging of Ayurvedic brands such as Dabur
Chyawanprash threatens to obscure the fact that Ayurveda represents a unique way of
looking upon health, disease and the human body. The proliferation of brands also
makes Ayurvedic medicines more expensive and puts pressure on the natural
environment as the main supplier of Ayurvedic ingredients.
Keywords: Ayurvedic medicines; commodification; health products; direct-to-
consumer advertising; orientalism; counter-culture; India

Introduction
Marketing is all that you do around a product, one of my informants said when the
author started his research on the commoditisation of Ayurvedic medicines in 1996. This
paper discusses the practices, ideas and images connected with cyavanaprash, Indias
best-selling Ayurvedic medicine. This author built his analysis around the marketing of
the product by Dabur India Ltd, the worlds largest Ayurvedic manufacturer. From the
patriotic formula of the beginning of the 20th Century, Dabur Chyawanprash has been
converted into a daily necessity for middle class urbanites and a yielder of profits for its
manufacturer. In the 1980s and 1990s, Dabur restyled the product and added modern sci-
ence to culture, as a marketing manager of the firm phrased it. Until then Ayurvedic prac-
titioners had been important buyers of the medicine. However, from the 1980s onwards
Dabur Chyawanprash was distributed via large wholesalers and marketed straight to
North Indian middle-class urban consumers via popular mass media such as television,

*Email: m.bode@uva.nl

2015 Taylor & Francis

 2 M. Bode

CDs and the internet. Owing to lenient government legislation, manufactures can choose
if they want to market their goods straight to consumers as OTC-products or as ethical
Ayurvedic medicines carrying the label for the use by registered physicians only to
medical practitioners. To show the medicines fluidity in terms of meanings, usages, and
compositions, Daburs framing of the product will be contrasted with the marketing of
cyavanaprash to Ayurvedic practitioners by another large manufacturer. Next, the ques-
tion is posed regarding the consequences of Ayurvedas commodification for Ayurveda
as a unique way of looking at health, disease and the body, and as health security for vil-
lagers and the urban working class. The paper also discusses the representation of Ayur-
veda as a global counterculture.

Cyavanaprash and Dabur Chyawanprash

Cyavanaprash is Indias best-selling Ayurvedic medicine. Sales increased from approxi-
mately US$5 million in 1990 to US$80 million in 2010. Dabur is the largest producer of
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cyavanaprash and over the last two decades holds a market share of 60%.1 Until the
1980s, Dabur mainly marketed cyavanaprash to Ayurvedic practitioners through both
mailings and its magazine Ayurveda Vikas (Bode 2008, 88; Dabur 1967; research
notes Charles Leslie, Calcutta, April 1972). In the 1980s, under its new director,
Ashok Burman, Dabur changed its sales policy drastically and started to sell Dabur
Chyawanprash Daburs version of cyavanaprash through the route of large
wholesalers and their chain of retailers. This has resulted in Dabur Chyawanprash being
available in approximately one and a half million retail shops all over India although with
a concentration in the North Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Punjab.
But it was only in the 1990s after the global business consultancy firm McKinsey & Co.
had restructured Dabur and modernised the firms company structure, products portfolio,
marketing and sales strategies that Dabur became one of the biggest players in Indias
Fast Moving Consumer Market (see Bode 2008, 90 91). Daburs commercial success is
reflected in the rise of the firms turnover, which grew from approximately
US$200 million in 2000, US$450 million in 2007, up to US$900 million in 2012.2
Exports also went up drastically from 5% in 1990 to the current figure of 30%. Although
Dabur projects itself as an Ayurvedic firm, most of its products could better be put in
other product categories, such as Indian herbal-mineral medicines, herbal cosmetics, and
health foods (see Bode 2008, 57 59).
Dabur Chyawanprash is an exception in the sense that the name cyavanaprash fea-
tures in the canons of Ayurveda as well as in the officially-sanctioned Ayurvedic for-
mularies and pharmacopoeias of India. Although the number of ingredients varies
from 30 to 50 items, some of the constituents, such as the Indian gooseberry (Emblica
officinalis Linn.), can be found in all of the formulas.3 In Ayurvedic canons such as
Carakas Compendium (c. 200CE) and Sharngadharas Compendium (c. 1300CE) the
medicine is presented as a rejuvenator (rasayana). Rasayana, as one of the eight
branches of Ayurveda, wants to stimulate the growth of healthy tissues (dhatu). The
tonic is named after the sage Cyavana who is projected as its first user.4 Indian reli-
gious texts such as the Rig Veda and the Shatapatha Brahmana mention Cyavana as
the one whose youth was restored with the help of cyavanaprash given to him by the
Ashvins, the physicians of the gods (see Stutley and Stutley 1977, 63). Dabur has suc-
cessfully commodified cyavanaprash and until today Dabur Chyawanprash counts as
the firms flagship. For many North Indians, Dabur Chyawanprash probably poses
itself as a synonym for Ayurveda in the sense that they would come up with the name
 Anthropology & Medicine 3

Dabur Chyawanprash when asked what their associations are with the term
Ayurveda.
The names cyavanaprash and Dabur Chyawanprash suggest that one is dealing with a
medicine sanctioned by its use over centuries. But such a conclusion is misleading
because the substance is far from a stable entity. Ayurvedic canons mention different
compositions and preparation methods (Jan Meulenbeld, oral communication). The varia-
tion among the commodified forms of cyavanaprash that are available on the Indian mar-
ket today is also stunning. The product is sold as a paste, a capsule and even as a sweet.5
Manufactures also have different ways of composing and preparing the formula.
Although manufacturers mention the ingredients on their labels it is common knowledge
in India that such a list of ingredients cannot be taken for granted. In addition, the names
under which cyavanaprash is sold vary. At the moment there must be hundreds, maybe
even thousands, of Indian manufacturers making and selling cyavanaprash. Small manu-
facturers usually keep the medicines generic name, but large Ayurvedic manufacturers
want to protect their marketing investments and therefore invent brand names. For exam-
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ple, Himalaya the second largest manufacturer of Ayurvedic products sells the medi-
cine under the name Geriforte. Zandu, another large Ayurvedic manufacturer, markets
cyavanaprash under the brand name Jeevani (Life). The denotation Patent and Proprie-
tary Ayurvedic Medicine is given to branded forms of cyavanaprash. This indicates that
the manufacturer has diverted from the composition and preparation process mentioned
for cyavanaprash in the government-sanctioned Ayurvedic formularies and pharmaco-
poeias of India.
Dabur kept the original name of the medicine, although preceded by the name of the
company. From the 1980s onwards but increasingly in the marketing campaigns of the
1990s, the firm changed the formulas indications for use and projected this seasonal
product as a daily necessity for urban middle class consumers to fight the stress and strain
of modern city life.6 Since then Dabur Chyawanprash has been marketed as an immunity
booster for taking away the toxins of modernity (see Bode 1998, 2009). Large advertise-
ment campaigns on Indias national television, radio stations, newspapers, periodicals,
and the internet convey this message. Sales figures tell us that this worked out well for
the firm. The sales of Dabur Chyawanprash increased from US$5.2 million in 1991,
US$24 million in 1997, to US$50 million in 2010. As part of an interview with Suresh
Iyer then the head marketing of Dabur Health Products of which Dabur Chyawanprash
was the flagship the author was shown television commercials and glossy magazine
advertisements for Dabur Chyawanprash.7 One featured an urban middle-class housewife
who, according to Iyer, had to cope with demands of her in-laws, her job, her husband
and her children. The text reads:

Somewhere between breakfast, dinner and history books is a subject called Motherhood. The
story of a woman who wants to mean everything to everybody. Hundred questions. Million
demands. No time for herself. No time to fall sick. Will an ordinary health tonic do the job?
(Womans Era, January 1, 1998)

Other ads were concerned with [. . .] young male executives who after a stressful day at
the office need enough energy to help their children with school tests in the evening. He
also showed a television commercial that told parents to give their children Dabur Chya-
wanprash because they bought foodstuffs on the street, which are [. . .] infected with
germs, but children love their hotdogs from the road stall so we tell the parents that they
have to fortify their child against food and air pollution because the child has to be
 4 M. Bode

competitive in school. Ads for Dabur Chyawanprash claim that the product raises ones
immunity, toughens one up for the competition race and makes one effectively modern.
The marketing by Zandu, a large Ayurvedic manufacturer from Mumbai, of its product
Livotrit conveys a similar message. The product is recommended for protecting and treat-
ing the liver, which is said to be under pressure because of the consumption of alcohol,
environmental pollution, and the consumption of biomedical drugs. Westernisation is
blamed for these health hazards (see Bode 1998, 2008). A similar logic was encountered
by the anthropologist Jean Langford who around the same time analysed the practices of
Ayurvedic health care providers. She concluded that they treated people for postcolonial
disbalance (Langford 2002).
Before Dabur marketed cyavanaprash as an Over-the-Counter product to make urban
middle-class consumers effectively modern, the medicine was represented as a patriotic
formula. In the 1920s, Ayurvedic notions were important ingredients in the construction
of an Indian anti-colonial identity (Sivaramakrishnan 2006; Berger 2013). Ayurvedic
medicines were also seen as a way to decrease the dependency on Western drugs. The
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consumption of Dabur Chyawanprash not only made individual bodies stronger, but also
invigorated the projected nation. Buying Dabar Chyaban-Pras (as the product was named
then) was represented by the firm as a patriotic deed, be Indian, buy Indian. Dabar Chya-
ban-Pras was projected as a swadeshi product (lit. own country product). In this way,
Dabur lined up with Gandhis khadi (home spun cotton) movement. In a product brochure
from the firm dated from the late 1920s, successive presidents of the Indian National Con-
gress, such as Motilal Nehru, S. Srinivasa Ayengar, Sarojini Naidu and Jawaharlal Nehru,
all praised Dabar Chyaban-Pras and other medicines from the firm, such as plague pre-
vention pills, liver pills, emission pills (against involuntary semen loss), Bhaskara
Lavan (a salt against indigestion) for their indigeneity. At that time, Dabar Chyaban-Pras
was marketed as a seasonal product and as a panacea for a variety of disorders, as the
next quote shows:

Dabar Chyaban-Pras (semi-solid, registered, after Charak Sanhita). The famous vitalising
preparation, specially useful in weakness and lungs diseases. The renowned preparation
always benefits the young and the old and the healthy as well as the sick. It really cures weak-
ness of lungs, heart and respiratory troubles, coughs and colds. Dabar Chyaban-Pras
improves the memory, intelligence, appearance, the functions of the organs and digestive
powers; confers longevity by preventing a number of maladies such as emaciation, hoarse-
ness, weak heart, dropsy, abnormal thirst, neuralgia, urinary disease, spermatorrhoea, etc. As
a rejuvenator and the destroyer of germs that cause premature senility its properties are really
wonderful. A regular course of this medicine makes old age as enjoyable as youth. Dabar
Chyaban-Pras is palatable, gives more vigour to the healthy, and helps the system to with-
stand the attacks of diseases when taken during the change of seasons. (Dabar, Catalogue of
Dr. S.K. Burmans Renowned Patent Medicines, no date, probably late 1920s)

Nowadays, Dabur Chyawanprash is no longer marketed as a patriotic medicine. Its

consumption promises success in the capitalist market economy of contemporary India.
The product has absorbed modern scientific ideas about immunity and popular notions
about the health dangers caused by the stresses and strains of modern city life. Represen-
tations of Indian heritage, modern science and technology, and popular notions about the
health hazards of modern city life, frame Dabur Chyawanprash. Product advertisements
on television, the internet, and in glossy periodicals refer to tokens of Indian traditional
culture, such as the sage Cyavana, the biomedical discourse on immunity and free radical
scavengers, clinical trials that prove the efficacy of Dabur Chyawanprash, and Daburs
high-tech production and quality testing equipment.8 As in the campaigns of other large
 Anthropology & Medicine 5

manufacturers of cyavanaprash, such as Himalaya and Baidyanath, references to modern

science and technology are linked to allusions to a glorious Hindu past populated by seers,
gods, ancient monuments and exclusive artefacts.9 Both tradition and modernity are
evoked to convey the message that the consumption of Dabur Chyawanprash protects one
from the hazards of modern city life. The promise no longer is the building of a healthy
nation, but personal success in a competitive market economy. In the second decade of
the twenty-first century, Dabur Chyawanprash is still sold as an immunity booster. Now
promising 3 Times more Immunity.10

Global Ayurveda as counter culture

Following yogas globalisation in the 1960s, Ayurveda reached the West in the 1980s.
Terms such as New Age Ayurveda (Zimmermann 1992) and Global Ayurveda (Smith
and Wujastyk 2008) have been coined to denote this phenomenon.11 Like most Indian
middle-class consumers, Westerners see Ayurvedic medicines as complementary to bio-
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medical treatments or as a natural alternative to harsh biomedical drugs. One can call
them pragmatists. There are also believers. For them, Ayurveda represents a counter-cul-
ture marked by spirituality and deep healing (see Jeannotat 2008; Warrier 2014). The
representation of India as the cradle of spirituality and Ayurveda as the mother of all med-
ical sciences grounds this view. In this spiritual form of Global Ayurveda, Indian medi-
cine denotes an ancient wisdom that goes beyond modern science and biomedicine.
Ayurveda and its products are seen as amruth (the elixir of life). Ayurvedic treatments
represent and facilitate a deeper and more profound way of healing. This view draws on a
neo-Orientalist interpretation of Indias past as an unbroken tradition going back to the
Vedas (see Hardiman 2009, 283). The claim that Ayurveda represents an unbroken tradi-
tion from the Vedas onwards denies the fact that Ayurveda is a floating signifier. Both
textual and empirical research shows that Ayurveda has constantly adapted itself to differ-
ent time periods and localities (see for example Nordstrom 1988; Meulenbeld 1995). Nev-
ertheless, for at least a section of the users of Global Ayurveda, its medications, practices
and regimens prepare the path to spiritual liberation (moksha). The goal is not solely to
prevent, relieve, manage or remove physical and psychological afflictions, but to promote
health in a metaphysical sense (see Alter 1999). Here, health is not just the absence of ill-
ness, but a positive state sometimes referred to by the term svasthya, being established in
your real self, i.e. a self that goes beyond soma and psyche, is not bound to time and
place, and cannot die. This spiritual representation projects India and Ayurveda as carriers
of spirituality and offers an alternative to what is seen as the mechanistic worldview of
biomedicine and the West (see Islam 2012).
So far in this paper, the codes that organize three representations of Ayurveda and
cyavanaprash have been discussed. These are patriotism, the modern discourse on immu-
nity and free radical scavengers, and Indian spirituality. A fourth code that organizes the
representation and deployment of cyavanaprash is canonical Ayurveda. Here, the notions
absorbed by cyavanaprash are different.12 The next section looks at the marketing of cya-
vanaprash within the context of canonical Ayurveda.

Cyavanaprash in canonical Ayurvedic practice

Apart from the cyavanaprash produced locally by Ayurvedic physicians themselves and
small cottage industries, there are other large Ayurvedic manufacturers besides Dabur
that also make cyavanaprash. The author was repeatedly told by Daburs marketing staff
 6 M. Bode

and Ayurvedic practitioners that the mass marketing of Dabur Chyawanprash deterred
traditional physicians from buying from Dabur. They bought for instance from firms such
as Baidyanath, the Arya Vaidya Sala, and Zandu. This is what a product brochure of
Zandu from the 1990s says about cyavanaprash:

Cyavanaprash gives stamina, stimulates the brain, is a rasayan and a vajkaran . . . it is a

rasayan for people of which the dhatus are wasted, the skin is wrinkled like that of old
people, and which are confronted by weakness. For people with an emaciated body it will
surely stimulate the dhatus. People like children, old people and those who have become
emaciated because of their indulgence in sex, can eat it. Cyavanaprash is also useful for
people who suffer from voice loss and whose speech has declined. It is also beneficial in
cases of cough, especially dry cough, asthma, excessive thirst, rakta-vata [wind in blood],
and for those of which the breast has become stiff. It pacifies the three doshas. It destroys
semen-fault and urine-fault. It can be used to stimulate the growth of the brain, the intel-
lect and memory. It delights people. Through its usage the colour of the body will become
pure and acquires lustre. But those who have indigestion should not take it. Then you
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have to wait till this problem has gone. (Vaidya Vasudev Sastri Lata, swasth jvan
[Healthy Life]. Leopard Investments, Bombay, 1990, translated from the Hindi by
the author).

It will not come as a surprise that such a description of cyavanaprash does not appeal to
middle-class consumers who have a modern outlook on life and limited knowledge of
Ayurveda. This framing of cyavanaprash is aimed at Ayurvedic practitioners. It refers to
Ayurvedic canons, which offer a language (words and grammar) that interlinks the quali-
tative properties of patients, diseases and medicines (see Zimmermann 1995). In this per-
spective on the effects of material medica biological effects are latent. This explains the
many indications for use of cyavanaprash mentioned in the quote above. According to
the logic of canonical Ayurveda, biological effects become manifest within the specific
context of a singular patient, her or his illness, regimens, and medications prescribed
along with cyavanaprash. The Ayurvedic practitioner is expected to select remedies that
agree (satmya) with a patient, the illness, and other parameters such as age, domicile, dis-
ease stage, physical and mental strength, and habits. In canonical Ayurveda,
prajnaparadha (violation of good judgement) and asatmyendriyarthasamyoga (unwhole-
some association of sense organs and their objects) are vital causes for feeling unwell.
Disease comes from the violation of the rules for a wholesome life. Sick people are said
to be in a state of vikriti, which means distortion, defect, mutilation, impairment.
Canonical Ayurvedic treatment wants to guide the patient back to his or her natural
healthy state (prakriti). Not so much the elimination of a disease but facilitating a healthy,
harmonious and long life is the objective of canonical Ayurveda. Controlling ones mind
(manas) and lifestyle (pathya) are seen as crucial for prevention and treatment. Disease
eventually is a perversion or a sin (punya), i.e. a breach of wisdom against human nature
in general and the patients individual nature (prakriti) in particular. Practitioners of
canonical Ayurveda base their practice on Ayurvedas five sources of knowledge
(pramanas) sensory observation (pratyaksha), logical inference (anumana), inference
by analogy (upamana), testimony of a seer (aptopadesha shabda) and personal confirma-
tion through experience (anubhava) (see for example Larson 1993, Wujastyk 1998).

Critiquing the Ayurvedic industry

Industrially-produced Ayurvedic medicines meet with criticism. According to an author-
ity on Ayurveda, the proliferation of branded products directly marketed to consumers
 Anthropology & Medicine 7

threatens to deprive Ayurvedic practitioners of the medicines they need to conduct their
practices (Singh 1999). Indeed, the author estimates that canonical Ayurvedic products,
known in India as sastric medicines, only make up 5 to 10% of all Ayurvedic industrial
products now manufactured in India. Branded OTC products are responsible for the
growth of the Ayurvedic industry. The next quote from an interview with a scholarly
Ayurvedic practitioner illustrates this:

An industry that is healthy grows with ten percent each year. But over the last decade or so
the turnover of the Ayurvedic industry has grown with thirty to thirty-five per cent each year.
This is not the growth of a science but of a certain commodity industry. Those brands are not
designed accordingly to the tenets of Ayurvedic pharmacology. When you look at these
Ayurvedic brands ninety-nine percent probably are cosmetics and ninety percent is some sub-
stance to make your penis erect. All this nonsense. It is against the Ayurvedic principles. The
industry is growing in the name of Ayurveda, but is not Ayurvedic. (Ayurvedic practitioner,
interview Coimbatore, 2000)
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Another point of criticism against large Ayurvedic manufacturers such as Dabur and
Himalaya is that their success leads to a scarcity of natural ingredients, and therefore
makes Ayurvedic medicines unaffordable for a large section of the Indian population. It
might threaten the health security of Indias rural poor who increasingly find it difficult to
find the ingredients for their folk medicines due to overharvesting. In an interview, the
director of an NGO involved in the modernisation and promotion of Ayurveda and other
forms of Indian medicine, expressed this as follows:

I want Ayurveda to be with the masses. However I see many constraints. I always wonder
what we can do to prevent that Ayurveda is taken away from the masses. Last week my maid
who helps me at home told me that she gets pain in the knee because she stands a lot. She is
only forty and the only bread winner in her family. I said to her that Ayurveda is the best
treatment for this. However the costs for the medicines were 650 rupees. She cannot afford
this so I paid for them. At least in cities Ayurvedic treatment has become expensive. Ayur-
veda was always part of my life in the form of massages, purifications, oil baths, diets, which
my mother gave us when we were children. Now it is taken from us and it comes back in a
different and commodified form. We as middle class people are happy to have these neatly
products but it is definitely not for the masses. I am worried but I cannot stop this trend.
(Interview Bangalore, September 2010)

A similar voice is heard from researchers who looked at the status of Indian medicine
at the request of AYUSH, Indias department for traditional medicine, which in 2007
started the initiative to integrate Indian medicine into public health. This is what they
have to say on the matter:

However, commercialization of these systems as a part of the medical and health industry
that includes the providers is a loss in many ways. While it adds to health care costs, takes
away natural resources from out of reach of the local communities, it also destroys a non-
commercialized model of care that allowed people to think that it is possible to organize
health care as a community activity available to all. (Priya and Shweta 2010)

The commercialisation of Indian medical traditions reflects the fact that medicine and
health in India are highly commercial and commoditised (see for example Nichter 1989;
Kamat and Nichter 1997; Bode 1998; Cross and MacGregor 2010). This is true for bio-
medicine and state-sanctioned Indian medicine alike. The focus of AYUSH, the depart-
ment of Indian medicine, on the global market for Ayurvedic products and the desires of
 8 M. Bode

the well-off for luxurious Ayurvedic products and Ayurvedic Spa treatments including
body massages, beauty packets, slimming regimens, and yoga classes, has its critics. The
Indian medical anthropologist V. Sujatha (2011), for example, pleads for grounding
Ayurvedas modernisation in the concerns of public health serving the less-well-off in
Indian society.

Epilogue
Over the last three decades, Ayurvedic products from large manufacturers have been inte-
grated into the logic of the global market for health products.13 Large manufacturers
thrive on selling branded medical products classified as fast-moving consumer goods
(FMCG) to middle- and upper-middle-class consumers in urban areas. These products
are sold as solutions to the iatrogenic effects of environmental pollution and hectic life-
styles marked by fast food, alcohol consumption, and synthetic (Western) medicines. In
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this paper, the author has distinguished four ways of marketing and representing cyava-
naprash, Ayurvedas best-selling medicine. Although these assemblages share common
elements, four codes can clearly be distinguished that organise the ways in which cyava-
naprash and Ayurveda are represented: patriotism, modern science, Indian spirituality
and canonical Ayurvedic notions.
There is not a fixed Ayurveda that can function as a benchmark to judge other forms
of this 2000-year-old health tradition. To the contrary, nowadays the term Ayurveda
denotes a set of loosely related practices and notions. Nevertheless, there are good reasons
for challenging the qualification Ayurvedic when given to Fast Moving Consumer
Goods such as Dabur Chyawanprash. It makes sense to reserve the term Ayurvedic medi-
cine for substances that are: designed and deployed according to the logic of Ayurvedic
pharmacology;14 integrated in Ayurvedic reasoning based on key concepts such as dosha
(lit. fault; somatic-psychological entity), dhatu (tissue), mala (impurity) and agni
(digestive fire) (see Meulenbeld 2008); part of Ayurvedic treatment procedures such as
pancakarma (lit. five procedures); and consumed as an integral part of a lifestyle marked
by Ayurvedic notions about food and behaviour. Another setback due to the commercial
success of branded Ayurvedic products is that it leads to price hikes and a scarcity of
medical ingredients, and therefore threatens to deprive rural patients and the urban poor
of herbal medicines.

Acknowledgements
The author thanks Jan Meulenbeld, Sjaak van der Geest, the participants of the conference, The
Pharmaceutical life Cycle, and two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on earlier ver-
sions of this paper.
Ethics: This type of research does not require institutional ethical approval in the Netherlands.
Oral consent for interviews and observations was obtained from the interviewees and their organiza-
tions. The research followed the guidelines from the American Anthropological Association ethical
guidelines. The research was associated with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the
University of Amsterdam.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
 Anthropology & Medicine 9

Notes
1. Although there are almost 8000 Ayurvedic manufacturers, the large majority of these firms are
cottage industries (that is, with a yearly turnover of $250,000 or less). At the same time, a
small number of firms account for a large part of the business leading to a rather concentrated
industry ten Ayurvedic firms produce 60% of all Ayurvedic pharmaceutical products.
The author estimates the total sales of Ayurvedic products in 2010 to be between US$3 to 4
billion. However the large majority of these products are daily necessities such as shampoos,
soaps, toothpastes, hair oils, creams like skin whiteners, digestives, sweets, and aphrodisiacs.
These products are Ayurvedic in the sense that they carry the label Ayurvedic Patent & Pro-
prietary Medicine. Ninety percent of industrially manufactured Ayurvedic products on the
Indian market are branded commodities. The author estimates that since the booming of the
Ayurvedic industry in the 1990s, classical Ayurvedic medicines Ayurvedic medicines
that at least resemble the names, compositions, preparation methods, and indications of use
mentioned in the Ayurvedic canons make up between 5 and 10% of the sales of Ayurvedic
products. For an analysis of this state of affairs see Bode (2008, 56 59) and Bode (2009,
255 256).
2. For a brief history and the restructuring of Dabur into a producer of Fast Moving Consumer
Downloaded by [Maarten Bode] at 05:00 16 February 2015

Goods (FMCGs) see Bode (2008, 88 93). See also Banerjee (2009).
3. See Bode (2009, 259 260) for the Ayurvedic and modern pharmacological effects of the
Indian gooseberry.
4. For Cyavana see Meulenbeld (1999-2002, IA, pp. 51, 53, 145, 155 156, 170, 471, 488, 569;
IIA: 6, 84, 358, 572).
5. See Green and Kesselheim (2011) for similar biomedical drugs looking different.
6. See Watkins (2012) for making biomedical pharmaceuticals into daily necessities.
7. Interview with Daburs marketing director Health Care Products, New Delhi, November 1997.
8. See Gaudilliere and Thoms (2003) for the making of biomedical drug markets through brand-
ing and modern science. See also Watkins (2012).
9. See for example Dabur India (1997); Himalaya Drug Company (n.d.) (1930-1980): 50 Years
of Himalaya; Zandu, Natures Marvel. A Companion Guide to Ayurveda. See for more exam-
ples Bode (2008).
10. See for example www.dabur.com/Products-Health%20Care-Chyawanprash, accessed July 2013.
11. For a description and genealogy of Modern Ayurveda see Smith and Wujastyk (2008) and
Berger (2013).
12. The idea of individual codes holding together various assemblages the author took from
Mukharji (2012).
13. There is a lot of literature on the commoditisation of Indian medicine as well as the commerci-
alisation of traditional medicines of other countries. For India see, for example, Leslie (1989),
Van Hollen (2005), Banerjee (2002, 2009), Ecks (2014), and Madhavan (2013); Afdhal and
Welsch (1988) for Indonesia; Kim (2009) for South Korea; Janes (2002) for Tibetan medicine,
and Miles (1998) for Ecuador.
14. See Bode (2008, 167, Table 4.1), for a comparison of Ayurvedic anthropocentric pharmacol-
ogy and modern pharmacology.

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