The reformulation of a holy science: Siddha medicine and tradition in South India

In this dissertation, I seek to address the following questions: how do practitioners of traditional knowledge legitimate their authority in the contemporary world? And what, in turn, defines a practice as "traditional"? In particular, I look at the ways that practitioners of siddha medicine, a Tamil South Indian medical system, defend their practice in a landscape marked by a variety of medical choices. The practices of doctors, and the decisions of patients, are forged out of a myriad of concerns that are much more complex than straightforward belief that a particular practice "works." In the context of competing medical systems, the politics of culture and identity are important factors in the bid for medical authority. I explore the character of some of these concerns through an examination of the "traditional" aspects of traditional medicine.; For siddha practitioners, the legitimation of authority has become a primary concern, especially with the institutional and practical successes enjoyed by biomedicine throughout India in the twentieth century. Drawing on a rhetoric of Tamil ethnic pride, siddha healers situate their system in a nationalist history of Tamil community and tradition. They characterize their practice as a "holy science," emphasizing the scientific features in asserting its difference from Ayurveda, another Indian medical system, while celebrating the extraordinary abilities of the ascetic founders of siddha medicine in claiming its superiority to biomedicine.; In examining a traditional medical system in the modern world, the dissertation foregrounds the role of ethnic identity in the bid for religious and scientific authority. As a site for imagining the world, traditional space becomes particularly important for communities who have been disempowered in their material, economic, or political relationships vis-a-vis other communities. By asserting the character of their medical practice as a tradition , siddha practitioners not only attempt to shield their practices from external scrutiny, but they also affirm and shape a diachronic, Tamil community.