Easter Term 2025: Tuesdays, 1–2pm in Seminar Room 2 (8 one-hour seminars)
Convenor: Sonia Wigh
This seminar invites participants to read, learn, and discuss the major methodological concerns in the field of the history of science and medicine in Early Modern South Asia. Each session combines classic and recent secondary readings with a range of primary material to engender discussions around issues driving historical research in the field. These interactive sessions would be of interest to everyone, but a basic understanding of pre-modern South Asia and its socio-cultural and linguistic concerns would be welcome. Participants are encouraged to read the suggested secondary readings for each session for a more targeted, productive discussion.
6 May: Who creates knowledge
Secondary readings:
- Sheldon Pollock, 'The Languages of Science in Early Modern India', in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500–1800 (London: Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 19–48.
- Dhruv Raina, 'The Vocation of Indigenous Knowledge and Sciences as Metaconcept', in Engaging Transculturality: Concepts, Key Terms, Case Studies, Laila Abu-Er-Rub, Christiane Brosius, Sebastian Meurer, Diamantis Panagiotopoulos, Susan Richter (eds), (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 277–290.
- Eric M. Gurevitch, 'When is Medicine: Contesting the Temporality of Healing in Pre-colonial South Asia', Journal for the History of Knowledge, 4 (2023), pp. 145–164.
We will also discuss the creation of two digital archives of pre-modern medicine:
Further readings:
- Marwa S. Elshakry, 'Knowledge in Motion: The Cultural Politics of Modern Science Translations in Arabic', Isis, Vol. 99, No. 4 (2008), pp. 701–730.
13 May: Humouralism
Secondary readings:
- Dominic Wujastyk, 'Models of Disease in Ayurvedic Medicine', Mark Jackson (ed.), The Routledge History of Disease (Routledge, 2016), pp. 38–53.
- Federico Divino, 'Humours and their Legacy in Early Buddhist Medicine: Revisiting the Indo-European Foundation of Medical Conceptions in the Pāli Canon', History of Science in South Asia, 13 (2025), pp. 1–49.
- Fabrizio Speziale, 'A 14th Century Revision of the Avicennian and Ayurvedic Humoral Pathology: The Hybrid Model by Šihāb al-Dīn Nāgawrī', Oriens 42, 3–4 (2014), pp. 514–532.
20 May: Scholarly persona and epistemic virtues
Primary reading:
- 'Seventh Tale: The Fowler, The Parrot, and her Young Ones', in Francis Gladwin (ed. and trans.) The Tooti Nameh or Tales of a Parrot (London: Debrett, 1801), pp. 58–61.
I will also share images of physicians from early modern south Asia to facilitate a discussion about making of a visual archetype of a physician.
Secondary readings:
- Dagmar Wujastyk, 'On Becoming a Physician', Well-Mannered Medicine: Medical Ethics and Etiquette in Classical Ayurveda (New York: Oxford University Press New York, 2012), pp. 68–106, 168–176.
- Deborah Schlein, 'In the Ḥakīm's Own Hand', Journal of Islamic Manuscripts, 9 (2–3) (2018), pp. 264–71.
Further readings:
- Shireen Hamza, 'A Hakim's Tale: A Physician's Reflections from Medieval India', Asian Medicine, Vol. 15 (1) (2020), pp. 63–82.
27 May: Generating plants
Primary material:
- Selections from Garcia de Orta, Colloquies on the Simples & Drugs of India, Francisco Manuel de Melo Ficalho (ed.), (trans.) Sir Clements Markham (London: H. Sotheran and co., 1913).
Secondary readings:
- Nicolas Roth, 'Poppies and Peacocks, Jasmine and Jackfruit: Garden Images and Horticultural Knowledge in the Literatures of Mughal India, 1600–1800', Journal of South Asian Intellectual History, 7: 1 (2019), pp. 48–78.
- Ines G. Zupanov, and Ângela Barreto Xavier, 'Quest for Permanence in the Tropics: Portuguese Bioprospecting in Asia (16th–18th Centuries)', Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57, 4 (2014), pp. 511–548.
- Tom Hoogervorst, 'If only plants could talk ... reconstructing pre-modern biological translocations in the Indian Ocean', in Satish Chandra and H.P. Ray (eds), The Sea, Identity and History: From the Bay of Bengal to the South China Sea (New Delhi: Manohar, 2013), pp. 67–92.
Further readings:
- Ines Zupanov, 'Garcia de Orta's Colóquios: Context and Afterlife of a Dialogue', in Medicine, Trade and Empire; Garcia de Orta's Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563) in Context, ed. Palmira Fontes Costa (Ashgate Press, 2015), pp. 49–66.
- Anna Winterbottom, 'Of the China Root: A Case Study of the Early Modern Circulation of Materia Medica', Social History of Medicine, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 22–44.
3 June: Generating humans
Primary material:
- Participants are invited to see selected South Asian primary material at the CUL. This will include a rare copy of the Taṣrīḥ-i Manṣūrī (Mansur's Anatomy), one of the first full-length coloured anatomical illustration in a Persian text. We will view the material and have a discussion in line with the suggested readings.
Secondary readings:
- Kanchana Natrajan, 'Virgin Creatrix / Bountiful Womb: Tamil Siddha Equivocation toward Women', Asian Medicine, Vol 17 (1) (2022), pp. 37–59.
- Martha Selby, 'Narratives of Conception, Gestation and Labour in Sanskrit Ayurvedic Texts', Asian Medicine, Volume 1 (2) (2005), pp. 254–275.
- Sonia Wigh, 'Overcoming Childlessness: Narratives of Conception in Early Modern North India', Medical History 68, no. 4 (2024), pp. 359–75.
Further readings:
- Anna Andreeva, 'Explaining Conception to Women?: Buddhist Embryological Knowledge in the Sanshō ruijūshō 産生類聚抄 (Encyclopedia of Childbirth, ca. 1318)', Asian Medicine 12, 1–2 (2017): 170–202.
10 June: Communicable diseases
Primary text:
- Excerpts from: Cyril Elgood (trans.) as 'A Persian Monograph on Syphilis', Annals of Medical History, 3, (1931), pp. 465–86.
Secondary readings:
- Dagmar Wujastyk, 'Mercury as an Antisyphilitic in Ayurvedic Medicine', Asia, 69:4 (2015), pp. 1043–67.
- Anna Winterbottom, 'The "Frankish Disease" and Its Treatments in the Indian Ocean World', in Gwyn Campbell and Eva-Marie Knoll (eds), Disease, Dispersion and Impact in the Indian Ocean World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), pp. 59–84.
Further readings:
- Kevin Siena, 'The Venereal Disease 1500–1800', in Sarah Toulalan and Kate Fisher (eds), The Routledge History of Sex and the Body, 1500 to the Present (Oxon: Routledge, 2013), pp. 463–478.
17 June: Courtly astronomy
- Ali Anooshahr, 'Science at the court of the cosmocrat: Mughal India, 1531–56', The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 54, 3 (2017): 295–316
- Jean Arzoumanov, 'Persian garlands of stars: Islamicate and Indic astral sciences in seventeenth-century North India', Journal of South Asian Intellectual History, 5(2), 183–216.
24 June: BYOB: Bring your own book/article
This session invites participants to suggest an article, a book chapter, a small section from a book, an encyclopedia or blog entry pertaining to the history of science and medicine in early modern South Asia. These will be pre-circulated so that all participants can read and prepare for the discussion in time.