Legacy of Caraka

Caraka, the master physician, is believed to have lived in the first century A.D. The Samhita composed by him forms the bedrock of ayurvedic practice today. His contribution to India's cultural inheritance was profound. Caraka Samhita was, in fact, a revision of an older text Agnivesa Tantra, which was written several centuries before Caraka's time. This book retells the Samhita in a new format. Instead of adhering to the sequence of the Sthanas in the original, the author has retold the Samhita through thematically structured chapters, in contemporary idiom. The retelling has involved some degree of restructuring and condensation but has ensured that whatever is stated can be traced back to the original.