alavi islam healing mas

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Medical Culture in Transition: Mughal Gentleman Physician and the Native Doctor in Early Colonial India

SEEMA ALAVI

Modern Asian Studies / Volume 42 / Issue 05 / September 2008, pp 853 897DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X07002958, Published online: 31 July 2007

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0026749X07002958

How to cite this article:SEEMA ALAVI (2008). Medical Culture in Transition: Mughal Gentleman Physician and the Native Doctor in Early Colonial India. Modern Asian Studies, 42, pp 853897 doi:10.1017/S0026749X07002958

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Modern Asian Studies 42, 5 (2008) pp. 853–897. C© 2007 Cambridge University Pressdoi:10.1017/S0026749X07002958 First published online 31 July 2007

Medical Culture in Transition: MughalGentleman Physician and the Native Doctor

in Early Colonial IndiaSEEMA ALAVI

Jamia Millia Islamia (Central University), Jauhar Ali Marg,New Delhi 110025

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

The essay explores a Greco-Arabic healing tradition that arrived in India withthe Muslims and evolved with the expansion of the Mughal Empire. It came to beknown as unani in the sub-continent. It studies unani texts and its practitioners inthe critical period of transition to British rule, and questions the idea of ‘colonialmedicine’ being the predominant site of culture and power. It shows that in thedecades immediately preceding the early 19th century British expansion, unaniunderwent a critical transformation that was triggered by new influences fromthe Arab lands. These changes in local medical culture shaped the later colonialintrusions in matters related to health. The essay concludes that the pro-activerole of the English Company and the wide usage of the printing press only addednew contenders to the ongoing contest over medical authority. By the 1830sthis complex interplay moved health away from its previous focus on individualaristocratic virtue, to the new domain of societal well being. It also projected thehealer not merely as a gentleman physician concerned with individual health,but as a public servant responsible for the well being of society at large. Thesechanges were rapid and survived the reforms of 1830s. They ensured that ‘colonialmedicine’ remained entangled in local contestations over medical authority.

Introduction

This study makes a break from the narrowly defined medical historiesof south Asia that focus on medicine as science.1 It explores the ideasof healing in early colonial north India and views it as a cultural process

1 In relation to the history of Unani medicine in particular, see J. Christoph Burgel,‘Secular and religious features of medieval Arabic medicine’, in C. Leslie, ed., AsianMedical System: a Comparative Study, reprint, Motilal Banarsidass Publications, Delhi,India, 1998. pp. 44–62. He laments the decline of Unani from the twelfth century

853

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that shaped social change.2 It studies a specific tradition of healing,called Unani, to explore the medical culture of the period.3 The termculture is used here to denote the language, lifestyle, comportment,religious practice and markers of status and authority that defined ahealer.4 Unani healing encapsulates all these referents. It exemplifiesthe idea of individual well-being. This wider view of Unani enablesus to glean through it the social and cultural history of early colonialnorth India.

The essay discusses the Persian and Arabic Unani literature that wasproduced and read in Mughal and early colonial Indian society. It stud-ies this literature in conjunction with new kinds of Urdu medical tractsthat were introduced by the English East India Company. It arguesthat medical literatures created ‘communities of medical learning’.5

Physicians from such ‘communities’ upheld distinct notions of healthand well-being. They competed with each other and strove to controlmedical knowledge. This was critical to their prestige and status.

and attributes it to its not following the path of Western science. In the same volume,see F. L. Dunn, ‘Traditional Asian medicine and cosmopolitan medicine as adaptivesystems’. pp. 133–158. For Unani in India see also studies that view it as a medicalsystem: J. Ahmed and A. Qadeer, Unani the Science of Greco–Arabic Medicine, Delhi, India,n.d.; N. Qaisar, ‘Politics, culture and colonialism: Unani’s debate with doctory’, in B.Pati and M. Harrison, eds., Health, Medicine and Empire: perspectives on Colonial India,Orient Longman, Delhi, India, 2001, pp. 329–30.

2 G. Attewell, ‘Authority, Knowledge and Practice in Unani Tibb in India, c. 1890–1930’,School of Oriental & African Studies, London (SOAS), PhD thesis, 2004. He movesaway from the idea that Unani medicine was a scientistic medical system. He viewsUnani as a healing tradition that encompassed the moral and religious dimensionsof well-being. He focuses on early twentieth-century Unani reforms and their linkagewith notions of medical authority. See also for the same period, Claudia Liebeskind,‘Arguing science. Unani Tibb, hakims and biomedicine in India, 1900–50’, inW. Ernst, ed., Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, 1800–2000, Routledge London,2002, pp. 58–75. She looks at how practitioners of Unani made their tradition morecompatible with Western science even as they retained its healing core.

3 Unani was a Greco–Roman system of medicine that came to India with theMuslims in the twelfth century. It thrived under court patronage throughout theperiod of the Delhi sultanate and the Mughal Empire.

4 The idea of healing as representative of a cultural system rather than a scientificmedical system is best developed by medical anthropologists Arthur Kleinman, MaryGood and Byron Good. See their ‘Introduction’, in M. Good, P. E. Brodwin, B. Goodand A. Kleinman, eds., Pain as Human Experience: an Anthropological Perspective, Universityof California Press, Berkeley, 1994, pp. 1–20.

5 I use the concept of literature creating communities as elaborated by SheldonPollock. See S. Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History. Reconstructions From South Asia,University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003, pp. 1–36.

M E D I C A L C U L T U R E I N T R A N S I T I O N 855

The essay discusses the tensions between ‘medical communities’during the period 1750–1830. This was a time when the MughalPersian medical tradition gave way to new influences, both fromthe Arabic-speaking world and the colonial context. The competitionbetween men of medical communities and the English Companygenerated multiple ways of articulating medical authority andpopularised new ideas of well-being. These ranged from healthas aristocratic virtue to healing as scientistic medical wisdom. Bythe early nineteenth century, the spotlight on individual well-beingthrough comportment gave way to wider debates on the well-being ofsociety through a medical public service.

The essay concludes that the dialectics between these differentforms of medical knowledge and ideas of well-being are essential toour understanding of human culture. They are central to the socialand cultural history of early colonial India.6 And they constitute thebedrock that grounded Indian response to colonial medical drives inthe high period of nationalism.7

Persian Medical Texts in the Mughal Empire: Medicine asAristocratic Virtue

Unani was a Greco–Arab system of knowledge that came to Indiawith the Muslims. It saw the healthy body as one whose four humourswere in balance with the elements of nature. It thrived in the MughalEmpire under court patronage. Its association with the court meant

6 For a different argument that follows the Michael Foucault kind of knowledge–power coupling that gives the colonial state agency in manufacturing culture, see N. B.Dirks, ed., ‘Introduction: colonialism and culture’, in Colonialism and Culture, Universityof Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1992; pp. 1–25. For colonial science as power, seeD. Arnold, Colonizing the Body. State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth CenturyIndia, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993, pp. 1–11; For an argument onthe cultural authority of science in colonial India, see G. Prakash, Another Reason.Science and the Imagination of Modern India, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999,pp. 3–14, 156–8. And for an argument about the colonial state as a site of culture andpower, see E. Said, Orientalism, reprint, Penguin, London, 1995.

7 For a discussion that sees Western science and modernity as the definingframework of India’s response to colonial drives, see D. Chakrabarty, ProvincializingEurope. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton University Press,Princeton, 2000; P. Chatterji, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World—a DerivativeDiscourse?, Oxford University Press (OUP), Delhi, 1986; G. Prakash Another Reason;H. Bhaba, ‘Of mimicry and man: the ambivalence of colonial discourse’, in The Locationof Culture, London, 1994, pp. 85–92.


that it embodied medical knowledge in structures of high aristocracy,royal courts, high profile teachers and a textuality tied to the elitelanguage of the Empire Persian.

In Mughal India there was always a tension between Unani asaristocratic virtue, which was tightly controlled by scribes, noblemenand elite families, and knowledge as medical wisdom. The formerrepresented the ‘high knowledge’ and was shielded in ornate Persiantexts. The latter was available in relatively simpler Persian anduser-friendly Arabic manuals that were taught at the Madrasas. TheEmperor was the fountainhead of political power. But agents whocontrolled knowledge as it lay dispersed between these two ideal typesalso wielded immense power.

The high knowledge in Mughal India was produced and controlledby Iranian physician families (hakims). They constituted the medicalcommunity of Persian literature. The courts of virtually all the MughalEmperors attracted physicians from central Asia and Iran. Both Baburand Humayun had personal debts to repay to the Safavid court.8 Andthe Mughals were happy to extend shelter and patronage to Persianphysicians and litterateurs who fled to Delhi to avoid the distractionsand dangers due to internal strife in Safavid Iran. Among the morefamous of the physicians who migrated to Delhi were Hakim AbulFath Gilani in the sixteenth century and Nur-ul-Din Muhammad Abd-ullah bin Hakim Ayn-ul-Mulk of Shiraz in the seventeenth century.Another notable migrant from the same city was Muhammad AkbarShah Arzani.

These hakims leaned on the court for maintaining their monopolyover medical knowledge. The court saw immense benefit in extendingits support. Patronage to Unani physicians paralleled the high statusaccorded to intellectuals like Abul Fazl who wrote tracts on thetheories of Mughal governance, and there were political reasons forthis. Mughal ideas of political sovereignty corresponded to the Persian-driven medical ideas of health as aristocratic virtue. Indeed Fazl’spolitical theory that projected the King as the sole manager of thekingdom, which he maintained through the management of nature(irrigation, agricultural production, distribution, and maintenance ofharmonious relations between people), mirrored the medical theory

8 C. Elgood, A Medical History of Persia and Eastern Caliphate From Earliest Time Until theYear AD 1932, Cambridge University Press (CUP), Cambridge, 1951, pp. 372–3. ShahTahmasp of Iran had extended protection to Babar’s sister. Later Emperor Humayunhad sought refuge in the Safavid court after he was defeated by the Afghans in India.


of Unani. This too viewed the proper administration of nature andsocial conduct as intrinsic to the maintenance of a healthy body.

For instance, Abul Fazl likens the body politic to the animalconstitution. Drawing upon the medical theories of Greco–Romanorigin, he argues that the political constitution is made good temperedby a judicious division of ranks. Each rank contributes to the prosperityof the ‘ideal city’ with goods and virtues. This is similar to the way inwhich the equilibrium of the animal constitution is dependent uponthe balance of elements.9 Abul Fazl, in fact, identifies different ranks inthe body politic and their correspondence with the elements of nature.Thus, the warrior rank corresponds to the nature of fire, the merchantsand artificers to air, intellectuals (jurists, physicians, mathematicians,astronomers) to water and husbandmen to earth.10 Abul Fazl sawthe Emperor very much like the physician and described his role asthe preserver of the health of the Empire. In his introduction to thePersian translation of the Mahabharata, he writes:

The generous heart [of his Excellency] is temperamentally inclined towardsthe well being of all classes of people friend and foe, relations and strangersare all equal in his farsighted view. This [consideration for all] is the bestmethod for the physicians of bodies, and should be highly appropriate for thephysician of the soul [as well]. Why should this beneficence then not be the[distinctive] feature of [His Excellence], the chief physician of the chronicailments of the human soul? He has noticed the increasing conflict betweenthe different sects of Muslims on the one hand and the Jews and the Hinduson the other—the sagacious mind [of His Excellence] then decided to arrangethe translations of the sacred books of both the communities, so that withthe blessing of the most revered and perfect soul [the Emperor] of the age,they both refrain from indulging in hostility and disputes . . . . 11

The conflation of medical theory and political theory was notsurprising since Mughal medics and political theorists shared theGreco–Arabic intellectual legacy that was structured on a similarcorrespondence. Thus, both Abul Fazl and physicians like Shiraziowed an intellectual debt to the Greco–Arabic legacy of Islam. Shiraziborrowed directly from the Greek humoral theory of health. Fazlbuilt on the ideas of philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. Greek

9 S. A. A. Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of the Muslims in Akbar’s Reign, WithSpecial Reference to Abul Fazl (1556–1605), Munshiram Manoharlal Press, Delhi, India,1975, p. 366.

10 Ibid., pp. 367–8.11 M. Alam, ‘Sharia, akhlaaq & governance’, in M. Alam, ed., The Language of Political

Islam in India 1200–1800, Permanent Black, Delhi, 2004, pp. 65–6.


ideas filtered into Mughal political literature through the thirteenth-century Islamic political theorist Nasir al-Din Tusi, who was influencedby the philosophical traditions of Plato and Aristotle.12 Tusi, very muchlike the Greek philosophers, projected the King as the sole repositoryof intellect needed to maintain the social equilibrium essential for ajust and humane society. Fazl based his works on Tusi’s writings. Likethe Greek philosophers he too compared the King to a physician whokept the body healthy by maintaining its balance with nature.

This correspondence of the theories of health and politics madeUnani of special interest to the Mughal Emperors. They emerged aseager patrons of medical learning. Their enthusiasm was matched bya similar interest in the production of a political literature that upheldthe power of the King.13 Most Iranian hakims dedicated their medicalworks to the Emperor and extolled his power. And not surprisingly,they constituted the inner core of court society. Many, like HakimGilani, held important administrative and political positions at thecourt of Akbar and were envied by other courtiers.14

The larger political imperative that framed Mughal interest inUnani meant that the encyclopedic medical manuscripts producedin India upheld aristocratic virtue as the key to individual well-being. The texts sustained the social hierarchies of society. Theysaw health as part of individual well-being. Stylistically, they wereneither practical nor prescriptive since aristocratic virtue was not tobe available to everyone. They did not have a utilitarian value beyondthe professional community of Persian-knowing medical scholars andbibliophiles. But they bestowed authority and dignity on the scribebecause of the respect for the written word, particularly in Persian, inMughal society.15 They lent prestige to the family that stored or read

12 Ibid.13 Ibid. Thus it was as politically imperative for the Mughal Emperors to translate

Sanskrit medical manuscripts and incorporate them into Unani texts as it was totranslate Sanskritic Hindu scriptures and political tracts for an encompassing politicaldefinition of shariat. The Mughal definition of shariat connoted justice—adl.

14 It was said about Gilani that ‘he enjoyed much proximity to the King, and hadso much persuasive influence over the King’s temperament that even Jafer Barmakidid not have on [the Abbasid caliph] Harun Rashid’. He was appointed the sadr andthe amin of the province of Bengal in 1579 A.D. And in 1580 the sadarat of the capitalwas entrusted to him. The following year he was made amin and diwan. He was dulyhonoured with a rank of 800. See A. A. Azmi, History of Unani Medicine in India, JamiaHamdard University, Delhi, India, 2004, pp. 68, 202.

15 For an excellent account of the history of medieval European medical bookproduction and the power of the written word in tenth–thirteenth centuries Italy,


them. And they reinforced the power of the King as they legitimatedhis authority as the ruler. Written generally as commissioned texts forthe King, they glorified him and enhanced his power by projecting himas responsible for the health of society not just metaphorically (as didthe political treatises), but literally. The King was the welfare patron ofsociety and his subjects looked up to him for the maintenance of theirphysical health. These considerations outweighed mere considerationsfor the usefulness of the information they represented. Many Mughalmanuscripts were illustrated. Most of them were ornate. And allof them catered to the bibliophiles among the royalty and higharistocracy.16 Indeed reading them or possessing them was an essentialpart of gentlemanly accomplishment and signified status and nobleupbringing. Most Mughal Emperors and nobles maintained librarieswhere such texts were housed for the consultation of the learnedaristocrats in society.17

In Mughal India, being cultured and urbane in the Persianate stylewas to be in tune with the historical, literary and medical cultures ofthe world. Producing, storing and controlling such global knowledge,of which medicine was a critical component, was the key to aristocraticvirtue. Medics, litterateurs and historians strove to integrate thenarratives of selfhood with that of the larger world. Thus, Mughalhistorians wrote world histories into which they located their ownhistory of the empire.18 Likewise, physicians wrote global medicalencyclopedias to situate Unani medicine in the world context. It

see P. M. Jones, ‘Medical books before the invention of printing’, in A. Besson, ed.,Thornton’s Medical Books, Libraries and Collectors. A Study of Bibliography and the Book Tradein Relation to the Medical Sciences, Gower Publishing, 3rd edition, Hants, England, 1990,pp. 1–29.

16 Ibid. This was very similar to the illuminated ornate medical manuscripts ofmedieval Italy.

17 The famous Delhi poet Abdur Rahim Khan Khanan, the son of Emperor Akbar’sregent Bairam Khan, had a library in Delhi that housed many Persian manuscripts.Many learned men visited the library for study and self-improvement. N. N. Law,Promotion of Learning in India During Muhammadan Rule, by Mohammedans, Calcutta, India,1916, p. 170.

18 M. Alam, ‘Shariah, akhlaaq and governance’, p. 67. The tradition of writingmedical encyclopedias, which borrowed freely from across cultures to write a definitiveglobal medicine text, corresponded to a similar trend in the writing of world historiesby Mughal scholars. Alam has discussed one such important text of global history—Rauzat al-Tahirin. Tahir Muhammad Imad al-Din Hasan Sabzawari compiled thebook in 1603 and integrated the history of his master, Emperor Akbar, into thelarger history of the world. This spanned from the pre-Islamic Greek philosophersto the Pious Caliphs and into India’s pre-Islamic kingdoms. All the people Sabzawariincluded in his history were, as the title suggests, among the tahirin—the pure, clean


followed that a good hakim was also a litterateur and a culturedman who also claimed some knowledge of the world. He displayedthis knowledge in his encyclopedic writings. In addition, he laid outthe norms of proper conduct and correspondence so that peoplecould relate to the wider world of comportment and culture. Andnot surprisingly, he defined a healthy body as a cultured body—onethat had mastered the etiquettes and correspondence skills laid out inthe literary genre of Persian texts.

The Mughal physician scribes produced encyclopedic medical textsthat borrowed freely from a range of Greco–Arabic literature and alsofrom Indian medical practice. The Iranian physician in the court ofEmperor Akbar, Gilani, wrote a medical compendium Fattahi, whichis a commentary on Chaghmini’s Qanunchah. He dedicated this toEmperor Akbar. Stylistically, the texts followed the pattern of thePersianate medical literature of Galen, Avicenna and al Jurjani: widecanvassed and encyclopedic. It synthesised information freely froma variety of influences. It certified knowledge by using the nameof ancient authority without necessarily taking care of reverence toauthorship, title or internal consistency.19 The same range and stylecan be seen in Nur-ul-Din Muhammad Shirazi’s Alfaz-ul-Adviyah orthe vocabulary of drugs. Shirazi wrote this during 1628–1629 for hispatron, the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan.20 Such wide-ranging textswritten with court patronage endowed the scribe with aristocraticvirtue.

But Persian medical texts were unique also because theyunderscored the idea of health as individual well-being. Theyemphasised the salience of individual comportment, proper conductand correspondence as central to individual well-being. Tibb-i-DaraShikuhi authored by Shirazi in 1645–1646 A.D. and dedicated to ShahJahan’s son Dara Shikoh (1615–1659) is an important case in point.

and holy. Sabzawari’s book was a history of mankind. The author saw himself as aninheritor of the heritage of universal humankind.

19 A. A. Azmi, History of Unani Medicine in India, pp. 69–70.20 WMS. Per. 580, Wellcome Library, London. He based his text on the Sihah

al-adviyah of Husayn al-Ansari. The 1850 copy of the text compiled by the copyistGhulam Mahomed has 138 folios and is divided into one preface (muqaddimah), onebody (natijah) and one conclusion (khatimah). The text reveals that Shirazi collecteddrugs from the local Ayurveda pharmacopeias and combined them with those fromPersia. He listed some 1441 items, in Arabic, Persian and Hindevy languages. Shirazi’smedica caters to the humoral concept of health qualified by natures and elements thatwas central to both the Unani and Ayurveda system. But it nowhere acknowledges itsdebts to Ayurveda or any other texts or authors.


The original copy of the text no longer exists. We have no ideahow many copies of it existed in the Mughal Empire. Probably veryfew as not a single one has survived. But we do have a 1780s copy,prepared in Surat for a Parsi hakim called Bizhan. This is a hugeencyclopedic ornate text in three volumes that covers approximately3,000 pages. It follows the Islamic encyclopedic tradition of Avicenna’sCanon. And like the Canon, it is said to have borrowed extensivelyfrom a variety of healing traditions and pharmacopeias without alwaysacknowledging them.21 But it is unique because of its ornate Persianstyle, its obeisance to the court and the wide historical canvas that itsketches for Unani. It offers a definitive history of Unani that spansfrom the pre-Islamic Greco–Arab world to the period of the Caliphatesand narrows down to the pre-Mughal Indian medical tradition. Thescribe underlined his aristocratic virtue and those of his readersthrough this wide canvas. He upheld the King’s authority as themaintenance manager of the health of the people. He thus obtainedstate sanction for his exclusive control of medical knowledge. Andstate approval was forthcoming because he upheld the idea of healthbeing about individual well-being and aristocratic virtue. His medicalideas reinforced the social hierarchies of society. Shirazi, thus, delvesinto the philosophy of health even as he seeks to administer the bodythrough the external agencies of proper conduct, comportment anddiet. For him health is about individual well-being. An ideal state thatcan be achieved by a few through proper comportment.

The first volume of the Tibb-i-Darashikuhi copied by the scribe MohanRai Kayasth is on ilmi-tibb (theoretical medicine). It focuses on themaking of the individual (insaan) and explains the meaning of reality(haqeeqat). It uses the philosophical wisdom of Greco–Arab scholarssuch as Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen and Ibn Sinna. It does not alwaysshow any due reverence to authorship. It incorporates their idea of thehealthy individual being in harmony with nature. Thus it gives detailsof botany, minerals and zoological descriptions to emphasise theidea of well-being structured in the relations between the individualand his larger socio-cultural context The second volume copied in1193 Hijri concentrates on amli-tibb (practical medicine). It followsHippocrates dietetics as a guarantee of heath. It offers copious detailsof comportment, conduct, diet and deportment to maintain a goodharmony between the individual and the society. It argues that proper

21 C. Elgood, History of Persia, p. 374. A copy of the text is in Bibliotheque NationaleParis, No. 342, suppl. The Ms. contains 1711 folios.


individual comportment prevents disease and keeps the body healthy.Here health is very clearly about social well-being and gentlemanlyconduct in a Persianate style.22 And the third volume discusses surgery,blood letting and details of diseases related to women and children.23

These were the aspects of medical science that were to be resorted toin the case of ill health.

The tradition of writing medical encyclopedias continued in theperiod of Emperor Aurangzeb. He is said to have weathered the worstpolitical and economic crisis in the Empire and overseen its demise. Inthis period of imperial crisis (1700), Muhammad Akbar Shah Arzaniproduced several works. More famous ones are Tibb-i-Akbari or Akbar’smedicine, and the Mizan-i-Tibb or the scales of medicine. Both followthe tradition of Shirazi in borrowing freely from local influences intheir choice of drugs and treatments. The Tibb-i- Akbari is the Persiantranslation of the Arabic text Sharh al-Asbab wa al-Alamat of Nafis binAiwaz Kirmani (dated 1449 A.D.). But in 1700, Arzani made hisown commentary to it as well.24 The Tibb-i-Akbari tries to emulatethe Tibb-i-Darashikuhi both in its style and in its content. It coversits wide canvas in twenty-seven chapters, which deal with the historyof Unani, symptomatic treatments of local and general diseases andthe properties of medicines and comportment regimens for individualgood health.25

But the Mizan-al-Tibb is different from any average Mughal text.In its concise and user-friendly style it bends more towards providinguseful medical knowledge as a guarantee of individual well-being. Ittakes a break from the Mughal practice of offering doses of aristocraticvirtue to maintain health. The Mizan-al-Tibb claims to be a handbookof medicine for beginners.26 As compared to the other voluminous

22 Ilajat-i-Dara Shikuhi, 342A, vol. 2, Paris.23 Ilajat-i-Dara Shikuhi, 857–9. Suppl. Persan 342, 342A, 342B.24 A. A. Azmi, History of Unani Medicine in India, p. 227.25 For the British Library copy of the manuscript, see Add Ms. 17954. This has

114 folios. The different copies of the Tibb-i-Akbari at the Wellcome Institute libraryinclude those copied in the years 1790, 1813, 1818 and 1826. WMS. Per. 172, 374folios, 1790, copied in Peshawar; WMS. Per. 564, 185 folios, 1813 AD copyist hajiMuhammad; WMS. Per. 566, 171 folios, 1818; WMS. Per. 563, copied for SultanMahmud, 1826; WMS. Per. 165, 525 folios, copied in the eighteenth century byAbd Allah for Sikandar Ali and Chiragh Ali. F. Keshavarz, A Descriptive and AnalyticalCatalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the Library of the Wellcome Institute of Medicine, London,1986, p. 159.

26 The different copies of the Mizan-i-Tibb at the Wellcome Institute library includethose copied in the years 1811, 1818 and 1844. See WMS. Per. 179 (A), 112 folios


Persian medical texts of the period, it is a short forty-eight foliostext that is divided into three sections (maqalahs). The first on kaifiyats(temperaments), the second on the properties of simple and compounddrugs and the last on the symptoms and remedies for local diseases.27

The Mughal-style dictums on individual comportment are conspicuousby their absence.

Both these texts of Hakim Arzani come nowhere close to theencyclopedic intellectual range of Shirazi’s Tibb-i-Darashikuhi. Theydo not even compare to it stylistically or in their notions of health.They reflect the drift from health as aristocratic virtue to health asmedical wisdom—science. To some extent they reflect the turn-of-the-century changes in late Mughal society. Written in the beginningof the eighteenth century, the Mizan-al-Tibb’s easy-to-read styleand accessibility reflects the ‘vernacularisation’ of Persian and theloosening of the monopoly of scribes, families and court over themedical knowledge that it embodied.28 The simplicity of the textreflected also the austerity of Arzani’s patron, Emperor Aurangzeb,and his redefinition of gentlemanly conduct in the language ofdoctrinal Islam. Indeed the texts radiate the austerity associatedwith doctrinal languages like Arabic with its emphasis on the usefulknowledge of science and theology.29

Indeed the influence of Arabic religious literature was very muchevident in the reading patterns and writing styles of late Mughalsociety. We noticed above that Arzani translated the Tibb-i-Akbari

dated 1811; WMS. Per. 515 (C), 95 folios, 1818, copied by Mirza Awlad Ali; WMS.Per. 514, 111 folios, 1839; WMS. Per. 126, 1844. Keshavarz, A Descriptive and AnalyticalCatalogue of Persian Manuscripts, p. 84.

27 Add Mss. 17949, 48 folios. British Library, London. This is a 1742 copy.28 M. Alam, ‘ The pursuit of Persian: language in Mughal politics’, MAS, 32, 2,

May 1998, pp. 317–49. Alam shows the attention the Mughals were forced to giveto Hindavi/Braj in the early eighteenth century as a result of regional assertion. Heargues that this affected the dominance of Persian. The Mughal attempts to purgePersian of Hindavi influences followed. So did the move to Persianise the vernaculars.

29 It is not surprising that the use of the Mizan and the Tibb-i-Akbari outlived theMughal Empire. They were seen not just as library items in the collections of theelites, but used as teaching primers until the early nineteenth century. They wereused as texts, were recopied by different copyists throughout the late eighteenth andnineteenth centuries and used as texts in the syllabus of the Persian schools set up bythe zamindars and rajas in the Bengal province. They were also in use at the Calcuttamadrasa. See British Library catalogue, Egerton 1006 and 1007 being vols. 1 and 2of Tibb-i-Akbari. For the medical syllabus of the Calcutta madrasa, see G. W. Leitner,History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab Since Annexation and in 1882, Calcutta, India,1882, p. 74. See also IOC/v/24/942, pp. 6, 39.


directly from an Arabic text. He complemented this with thetranslation into Persian of Jalal-ul-Din al Suyuti’s Arabic text Tibb-i-Nabbi or the medicine of the Prophet.30 This text defined comportmentin the Arab tradition of the Prophet’s life. It stood in contrast to themore elaborate Persian forms of comportment popularised by theTibb-i-Darashikuhi. The translation of such Arabic texts was new toMughal medical collections. Their inclusion in Mughal compilationsalong with the circulation of easy-to-read Persian medical manualssignalled the weakening control of Persian-knowing families overmedical knowledge. It reflected the vernacularisation of Persian. Italso revealed the increased influence of new forms of knowledge thatwas streaming in from the Arabic-speaking world.

The tension between the Persian-derived Unani grounded inaristocratic virtue and the Arabic-oriented revealed sciences hadalways existed in Mughal society. Hakims of smaller stature whoserved in Mughal hospitals and interacted with the public wereconditioned in the more scientistic Arabic-style healing. This rungof practitioners acquired its rigorous professional training and thespecialised knowledge of medicine in the Mughal madrasas. Thesecombined Persian learning of polite conduct and literary flair withthe rigour of Arabic texts on theology. Medicine, science and naturalphilosophy continued to be taught in Persian. Medical texts weretaught in the madrasa curriculum as part of natural philosophyalong with theology, logic and rhetoric.31 However, Persian textsof ‘high knowledge’ like the Tibb-i-Darashikuhi rarely figured in themadrasa curriculum. Here texts like the Persian translations ofAvicenna’s Canon were prescribed. But their medical wisdom wasgiven a Persianate cultural polish in the family clinics of the leadinghakims of the city. Students from the madrasa trained as apprenticesto Iranian hakims of the court. Here some of them gained access tothe ideas of the ornate Persian medical manuscripts their masters hadauthored or collected. This crowned their scholastic training acquiredfrom works of Avicenna in the madrasa. Yet, their tension with thehakims of high Persian learning simmered. This only intensified in themid-eighteenth century when Persian-knowing families experienceda weakening of their hold over medical knowledge.

30 C. Elgood, Analecta Medico-Historica. Safavid Surgery, Pergamon Press, Oxford,1966, p. 8. See also his History of Persia, p. 63.

31 M. Alam, ‘The pursuit of Persian’, p. 326.


Arabic Medical Learning in the eighteenth Century:Medicine as Science

In the eighteenth century, the collapse of the Mughal Empire and thepopularisation of Persian made scribes and families recreate theirmonopoly over medical knowledge by hooking on to the doctrinallanguage—Arabic. The cloud of Arabic had loomed over medicalknowledge from the days of Emperor Aurangzeb. But in the eighteenthcentury, it became a language used by scribes and families to storemedical knowledge away from the reach of society at large. It was usedto restore the prestige of older families and scribes who were worriedabout the spilling over of their medical knowledge as Persian becamevernacularised.32

The increased use of Arabic ushered the arrival of a new kind ofmedical learning. Medical texts in Arabic were austere and scientisticrather than ornate and aristocratic. Like the religious knowledge of theperiod, they too were influenced by the austere doctrinal trends flowingin from the Arab world-–the wahabi-style return to the scripturesand the person of the Prophet.33 They trimmed medicine of itscomportment frills and projected it as science rather than aristocraticvirtue. But unlike religious knowledge, the austere medical literaturewas not popularised. It remained under the control of scribes andfamilies who taught select students. The control of such medicalwisdom gave them power. Away from the glare of the regional courts,they consolidated their hold over the new knowledge. Persian learningdid not die out either. The regional courts continued to patronise theproduction of Persian medical knowledge and maintain those who stillsought to preserve it. This kept alive the idea of health as individualaristocratic virtue. Simultaneously, new ideas of health as medicalwisdom took roots in society.

32 The shift to Arabic began to give medical knowledge an Islamic slant. And thismay have intersected with the other forms of Islamisation that were underway at theregional level in this period. See R. Eaton, ‘Sufi folk literature and the expansion ofIndian Islam’, in R. Eaton, ed., Essays on Islam and Indian History, OUP, Delhi, India,2001, pp. 189–202. Also see his The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760,University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993.

33 For a discussion on the new learning in religious knowledge, see F. Robinson,‘Islam and muslim society in South Asia’, in F. Robinson, ed., Islam and Muslim Historyin South Asia, OUP, Delhi, India, 2000, pp. 44–65.


The Arabic Reading Medical Community

The collapse of the Mughal Empire in the early half of the eighteenthcentury devolved the patronage of medicine in the hands of the newregional courts, local rajas and zamindars. In the regional states thedignity of medical science in the Persian language was preserved. Itscentrality in the making of an accomplished gentleman continued.Regional courts like those of Oudh in the north and Tipu Sultan inthe south maintained huge libraries. These were well-equipped bothwith copies of Mughal Persian medical texts and with fresh eighteenthcentury texts composed in Mughal style.

In the early nineteenth century, Alloy Sprenger, the assistantto the British Resident at Lucknow, surveyed the ‘Muhammadanlibraries’ of Lucknow. He reported that they had thousands of Persianmanuscripts. These ranged from history, philosophy and literatureto science, astronomy, medicine, archery, hunting and other sports.34

In the southern kingdom of Mysore, Tipu Sultan’s library too had ahuge collection of Persian medical manuscripts.35 His collection alsoincluded a few Arabic medical texts like Avicenna’s Qanun and thecommentary on the Sharh-i-Mujiz by Ala-ud-din Ali Bin Abu al hazimal Qureishi.36

However, beyond the courts and the capital cities, the rajas,influential families and notables dug their heels into local society andlooked for new means to legitimate their authority. Here, both theauthoriality and textuality of Persianate medical knowledge began

34 A. Sprenger, assistant to resident in Lucknow, to H. M. Elliott, foreign sec. toGovt. of India, 18 March 1849, Selections from the records of the Govt. of India,foreign deptt., No. CCCXXXIV, serial No. 82. Report of the researches into theMuhammadan libraries of Lucknow, by Alois Sprenger, Calcutta, India, 1896, pp.18–9. He catalogued only 1,1453 manuscripts in the Topkhana. A small collection ofArabic manuscripts also existed. In the Kings libraries alone—the Topkhana and theFarh Baksh-–there were at least 6000 Persian and 310 Arabic manuscripts. Besidesthese royal repositories, there also existed private libraries, like in the Moti Mahal,maintained by rich bibliophiles. These too were plush with Persian manuscripts.

35 For Persian medical manuscripts in Tipu Sultan’s collection, see C. Stewart, ADescriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the Late Tipu Sultan of Mysore, Cambridge,1809, pp. 108–3. These included a copy of the Zakhirah-i-Khwarzmshahi, the Dastur alilaj of the pre-Mughal period. And the Tibb-i-Akbari, the Qarabadeen-i-Qadiri and theTejurribati Akbari of the Mughal hakim Muhammad Arzani. Some home grown Persianmanuscripts, like the Bihr-al Munafi or the ‘Sea of Profit’ (a treatise on midwifery) ofMulud Muhammad, were dedicated to Tipu Sultan.

36 Ibid., pp. 114–6.


to be realigned. At one level this was critical to break out of theMughal norms of gentlemanly culture. But more importantly, thevernacularisation and popularisation of Persian weakened its efficacyas a tool through which such families could control medical knowledge.Individuals and families looked towards Arabic to re-configurate theirmonopoly over medicine. Therefore, outside the capital cities medicallearning in Persian lost its pivotal role in the making of a culturedman. In post-Mughal society the dignity of medical science shiftedfrom its Persian vehicle to Arabic, which was now projected as thecustodian of the Arabic sciences. As medical communities of Arabicliterature evolved one could be a cultured gentleman without havingread a single Persian text of medicine.

The drift towards a doctrinaire language, like Arabic, to tightlycontrol the medical knowledge stood out in a period marked byvernacularisation and its linkages with Islamisation and regionalidentity formations.37 But it fitted in with the general orientationof literate Muslim society towards new learning that was streamingin from the Arab lands. In the late eighteenth century the wahabiinspired ideas of Arabic scriptures and the salience of the Prophetgave religious knowledge a new austere Arab orientation. Medicalknowledge too succumbed to this trend and dropped its Persianatecomportment frill and like the revealed knowledges of the Arabicscriptures became more austere and scientistic. But unlike religiousknowledge, which translated into the vernaculars and circulatedwidely, medical knowledge confined itself to Arabic. It thus remainedan exclusive preserve of individuals, families and their select clientele.Islamisation through Arab learning helped communities of medicalliterature retain their status. It added new dimensions in the formationof regional identities.38

37 R. Eaton has shown the emergence of a Sufi folk tradition and literature, in thevernacular Dakhani, in Bijapur. This gave a unique Muslim identity to the DeccaniMuslims. See R. Eaton, ‘Sufi folk literature and the expansion of Indian Islam’. And inthe case of Eastern Bengal, Islamisation is seen by him as an unintended consequenceof expansion of the Mughal agrarian frontier. Muslim pioneer settlers, the madad-i-maash, introduced Mughal-style Islamic piety structured around the mosque and Sufi-style belief in a range of local cultural cosmologies. As Islamisation gained momentumthey too were venerated and remembered as local pirs. This gave Bengali muslims adistinct identity. See R. Eaton, The Rise of Islam.

38 Asim Roy talks about the Perso–Arabic reading elites isolating themselves fromthe evolving syncretistic regional culture of pre-colonial West Bengal. His focus ismore on their preservation of religious knowledge through the resort to Arabic. A.


In the countryside, rajas, rich families and notables separatedPersian and Arabic learning. They made the latter exclusively thelanguage of scientistic medicine and the former the sole languageof polite culture and Persianate accoutrement. As the latter slippedbeyond their control, they tightly monitored medical knowledge byrelegating it to few Arabic family schools. As medicine and theologybecame the preserve of the Arabic schools and literary norms andetiquette the hallmark of the Persian schools, an exclusivist hakim wascreated. Unlike the Mughal hakim, he was not necessarily acculturatedin the literature of polite conduct and correspondence as exemplifiedin Persian texts of medical learning. Health for him was about medicalwisdom and useful knowledge. It was not about aristocratic virtue.

The confining of medical knowledge to the doctrinal Arabic wasdeliberate. It was a reaction to the popularisation of Persian, which wasno more seen as a language that could ensure the control of the scribeand families over such knowledge. Arabic was seen to exercise thecontrol that Persian had done in the earlier century. Tighter controlwas most evident in the fewer number of Arabic learning institutesset up by families. These contrasted to the proliferation of Persianlanguage and literature learning schools. Persian schools made thePersianate Mughal cultural norms of conduct and deportment moreeasily accessible to a greater range of people. But this popularisationalso redefined what it meant to be a cultured individual in thelate eighteenth-century countryside. Unlike Mughal society, now themarkers of a well-heeled individual were no more measured in hisknowledge of medical learning, logic or natural philosophy. Instead,Persianate literary knowledge and familiarity with the literature onpolite conduct-–akhlaaq—and correspondence-–insha-–was enough tomark status. This new cultured man deficient in medical knowledgeemerged alongside a medical ‘professional’ who narrowly specialised inArabic medical texts. He was trained by scholars in the Arabic schoolswhere he read scientific and medical texts in the Arabic language.These separated healing from individual comportment and made itscientistic.

From the late 1820s to the mid-1830s, the English Companyconducted many surveys on the state of native education in northIndia. Almost all the reporters commented on the proliferation offamily-run Persian and Arabic schools in the towns and countryside of

Roy, The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal, Princeton University Press, Princeton,1983.


north India. These were said to be of recent origin and exemplifiedthe change in post–Mughal society. In 1829, the education committeereported that the Bareilly district topped the list in instruction ascompared to other parts of India. More than 300 seminaries existedin the district, which included Persian schools (maktabkhanas), Hindischools (chutsals), Sanskrit schools (putsals) and seventeen teachers whohawked their services teaching the Arabic language and sciences.39

The Arabic schools were few and had limited students. This reflectedthe exclusive clientele that families strove to maintain for the medicalknowledge they imparted. M. Boulderson, the collector of Bareilly,reported that the seventeen persons who hawked their services asArabic teachers collected students in their houses, which were thencalled the madrasas. On the whole, 114 students in the districtobtained instruction from them in the language and sciences. Suchfamily schools received no endowments from regional rulers. Theyrelied on individual or family investments. This ensured their holdover the limited clientele. Houses of notables and families doubledas schools. They were designated madrasas or seminaries. In manysuch madrasas, Persian and, occasionally, English were also taught.But sciences were taught exclusively through Arabic texts. In 1827,Boulderson reported that in his district there existed seventeen suchindividuals who instructed the youth in the sciences and the Arabiclanguage in their home madrasas. They also taught the Persianlanguage on demand. I. Davidson, sub-secretary to the Board ofRevenue, reported to the government the details of Arabic teachersand their instruction styles. Most came from reputed Arabic-knowingfamilies. Many came from theological families with long traditions ofmastery over Arabic religious knowledge. They were all keen to controlmedical knowledge and restrict it to the chosen few.

His list of medical instructors using Arabic texts ran as follows:Maulvi Niaz Ahmed—he was a ‘learned man’ and an ‘excellentastrologer’ and instructed twelve youths in the various sciences. HafizGhulam Ahmed Qazi and Maulvi Ghulam Hazrat were ‘good’ Arabicscholars and instructed people in sciences and ‘whatever they wanted’.Maulvi Ghod Muhammad-–he had ten pupils for Arabic instruction.Maulvi Syed Mahomed, Maulvi Suttullah, Maulvi Muhiuddin andMaulvi Yaqub Ali had pupils ranging from four to fifteen. Maulvi

39 Extract Bengal Pol. Consult., 5 June 1829, L No. 463, education committee tovice president in council, 9 July 1827, Boards Collection, F/4/1170, file No. 30640,p. 511.


Mullook Shah had ten pupils and instructed them in the sciences.Akbar Abdul Rahim had two pupils whom he educated in the medicalart exclusively. Muzzur-ud-din Hussain Sheikh had fifteen studentswhom he instructed in Arabic, Urdu and Persian languages. He wassupposed to be a ‘good’ mathematician. Boulderson pointed out oneKunwar Rutten Singh as one of the Arabic teachers in the city whoalso gave instruction in English. His son Kunwar Dowlat Singh wasalso an Arabic teacher of the area.40

In contrast, the Persian schools were more in number and hadfar greater number of students. There were reported to be 1,485students in the district studying in such schools in 1827. Persianliterary learning was not monopolised by individuals and families.Ordinary people opened their houses as sites for Persian instruction.They hired teachers to instruct students. Even though their salarywas as low as Rs. 3–4 per month to Rs. 8–10 per month, they werehighly respected. They obtained gifts and nazars, food and clothes fromtheir students and families. Boulderson gave a detailed break-up ofthe schools in every pargana of the district and concluded that themajor change that had set in from the Mughal times to the earlynineteenth century was that both Persian language and learningand the knowledge of sciences in the Arabic had become relativelymore accessible to ordinary people than before. This was particularlytrue of Persian learning. He wrote, ‘we gather that under the formergovernments none but ushrafs viz Brahmins, Rajputs, Bukkals, Kaitsand Khattri among Hindus and Sheikhs, Syuds, Moguls and Pathansof the Muhammadans were permitted to study sciences or even learnPersian language. But now all learn Persian’.41

However, all who learned Persian did not accomplish themselvesin the sciences. Literary accomplishments in the Persian language,readings on proper conduct—akhlaaq—and correspondence—insha-–were segregated as never before from scientific knowledge of medicine.Knowledge of medicine and science was now controlled by storingand teaching it in doctrinal Arabic. As Persian lost its monopoly overmedical knowledge, the change was noted by Company officials. Inthe 1820s, the education committee set up by the Company to survey

40 I. M. Boulderson, collector Bareilly, to Holt Mackenzie, Sec. to Govt. Gen. 29Jan. 1827, extract Bengal Pol. Consult., 5 June 1829, Boards Collection, F/4/1170,file No. 30640, pp .633–6.

41 Ibid., I. M. Boulderson, collector Bareilly, to Holt Mackenzie, Sec. to Govt. Gen.,29 Jan. 1827, p. 617, pp. 582–7.


native education lamented that the texts taught in the Persian schoolswere of little relevance to present day requirements since they are,‘chiefly epistolary compositions or compilations’. Their object wasthe ‘acquirement of skill in correspondence, or rather in the useof approved modes of phraseology and address, an accomplishmentof some value under the Muhammadan administration, but littlecalculated to exercise and invigorate the intellectual faculties’.42 Thiswas corroborated by Boulderson who noted that Persian schools taughtno medical texts. They concentrated on literary texts of high cultureassociated with the Mughals. These included Mughal favourites likethe Boostan and Goshtan (Gulistan), romance texts read and enjoyed bythe Mughal Emperors and nobles. They also had texts like Zuleikha,Neel Daman, Leila Majnu and Bahar Danish. Also listed in the curriculumwere texts of court historians like Abul Fazl, and the Mughal Inshaliterature like Insha Khalifa. The Masnavis of important poets, the divanof the Persian poet Hafiz, Divan Nasir Allee, Divan Shumsher Khan andthe Rookat Alumgiri,43 were also important readings.

Indeed in the Persian schools of the North West provinces andAgra so much was the emphasis on ‘polite education’, and theneglect of arithmetic and the sciences that the course of studywas considered incomplete if it did not include the usual forms of‘address and correspondence’. In the 1830s, J. Kerr, who reviewedindigenous schools in the area, lamented that ‘large fields of knowledgewhich would open and improve the minds of the pupils are leftuncultivated, such as to go no further in history, geography and naturalphilosophy’.44

A similar trend was evident in Punjab as well. At the time ofannexation, British commentators reported that medicine was taughtonly in the Arabic schools along with Arabic law and literature.The better Arabic schools were housed in exclusive buildings. Hereteachers taught Aristotelian natural philosophy, logic, rhetoric andphilosophy through Arabic texts like Aristotle’s Shifaa. But medicinewas taught by Arabic-knowing individuals in exclusive enclaves as well.These ranged from family homes to school sheds. Indeed in Punjab,Arabic was also used by influential families to tighten their control over

42 Ibid., L No. 463, Education committee to vice president in council, 9 July 1827,p. 515.

43 Ibid., I. M. Boulderson, collector Bareilly, to Holt Mackenzie, Sec. to Govt. Gen.,29 Jan. 1827, p. 587.

44 J. Kerr, A Review of Public Instruction in the Bengal Presidency 1835–51,Calcutta, India, 1852, part 1, p. 155.


the fast popularisation of high etiquette Persian culture. In Punjab,families tried to monopolise their control over comportment as wellby the use of Arabic. Many of the seminaries taught Arabic texts onpolite conduct and correspondence rather than leave the students toPersian literary influences. Thus the polite Arabic letter writer, theAjab-ul-Ajaib, was taught in schools along with Arabic medical texts ofAvicenna.45

In the 1830s, William Adam, who reported on the state of nativeeducation in Bengal and Bihar, noted a similar trend in the area.He noted that medical knowledge was narrowly controlled, which wasevident from the fewer number of Arabic schools where it was taught.For instance, in the south Bihar district there were 291 schools, ofwhich 279 were Persian and only 12 were Arabic. In the formerthere were 1,424 Persian students and the latter had only 62.46 Andagain like in Bareilly, many Persian schools had endowments fromthe local raja. In contrast, the Arabic schools were established byfamilies, individuals and notables eager to preserve the knowledge ofmedicine. The endowments for Arabic schools ranged from modest,Rs. 250–Rs. 200, contributed by an individual teacher, to large,Rs. 15,000–50,000, contributed by local Muslim notables.47 There wasa near absence of medical texts in the curriculum of Persian schools.They focused on Persian literary texts like Insha-i-Herkern—on formsof correspondence, verses of Persian poets like Urfi, Hafiz Ghani andKhakani and the works of Khusro.48 Only in rare instances was theaustere style Persian medical texts of the later Mughal period listed.These included the more simplistic Persian translations of Arabictexts like the Tibb-i-Akber of Emperor Aurangzeb’s Hakim MuhammadArzani.49 The Mizan-i-Tibb of the same author, which was also austerein style, was sometimes used.

As medicine withdrew into the Arabic fold, the religious divide wasalso noticeable. Of the Arabic students, two were Hindus and the

45 G. W. Leitner, Reports on the State of Education in the Punjab Since Annexationand in 1882, Lahore, Pakistan, 1882, p. 74.

46 W. Adam, Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835–8) Including Some Accountof the State of Education in Bihar and a Consideration of the Means Adapted to the Improvementand Extension of Public Instruction in Both Provinces, Ed. A. Basu, Calcutta, India, 1941,pp. 286–7.

47 Ibid., pp. 281–3.48 Ibid., p. 284.49 W. Adam, Third Report on the State of Education in Bengal Including Some Account of

the State of Education in Behar, and a Consideration of the Means Adapted to the Improvementand Extension of Public Instruction in Both Provinces, Calcutta, India, 1838, pp. 70–3.


rest were Muslims. In contrast, in the Persian school, there were 865Hindus and 559 Muslims. The reason for more mixed populationin the Persian schools was that they taught more elementary andgrammatical works, forms of correspondence, popular poems andtales and almost no sciences. These were relegated to the Arabicschools. Similarly, in the district of Burdwan, in Bengal, there wereninety-three Persian schools with 899 Hindu and Muslim studentsand only eight Arabic schools with fifty-one Muslim students. Outof these, only four were Hindus.50 Arabic was widely perceived as auniversal language of medical science by the Muslims. And at thefag-end of the Mughal innings when regional identities were beingsharply articulated in local languages, the Muslims established thepan regional links in science, medicine, astronomy and astrology inArabic. Thus the preservation of Arabic medical knowledge addeda new element in the simultaneous process of vernacularisation ofreligious knowledge, Islamisation through assimilation and regionalidentity formation.

Indeed the predominance of Arab language as the vehicle of sciencein the region prompted British observers to suggest that medicalbooks in the Arabic language taught at the Calcutta madrasa beintroduced in Punjab schools. This they felt would only reinforceand systematise their medical instruction.51 In 1829, the educationcommittee similarly suggested that the medical instruction going onin the Arabic family schools of Bareilly could also be improved andsystematised by the introduction of the Arabic scientific texts used inthe Calcutta madrasa.52

In Bareilly, Boulderson gave a list of Arabic texts that the studentsread in the family schools. Significantly, medicine was taught inconjunction with other doctrinaire disciplines like law, logic andtheology. These included texts on law and jurisprudence like the IlmFiqh, commentaries on the Hidaya—Shareh Hidayah, logic-–Ilm Mantaq,Arabic language primers—the qaidah. Such texts rubbed shoulderswith medical texts in Arabic like the Sharh-i-Mujiz. All these textsoriented towards the revealed Arabic sciences were influenced by thenew learning that flowed in from the Arab lands. They were austere

50 W. Adam, Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835–8), Ed. A. Basu,pp. 281–3.

51 G. W. Leitner, History of Indigenous Education, p. 74.52 Extract Bengal Pol. Consult., 5 June 1829, L No. 463, education committee to

vice president in council, 9 July 1827, Boards Collection, F/4/1170, file No. 30640,p. 515.


and hived medical and scientific knowledge from its Persian-derivedcomportment and wider cultural frills. Thus it was no surprise thatthe only Mughal medical text included here was the early eighteenthcentury Persian text the Mizan-i-Tibb of Hakim Arzani. The Mizanas we saw above was different from the average Mughal text. It wasbrief, austere in style and scientistic. It saw medicine separate fromindividual comportment.

Adam reported a similar trend in the Arabic schools of Bengal andBihar. These schools too concentrated on texts on astronomy andnatural philosophy that included medicine. It was significant thatthe same families and individuals who preserved medical knowledgein Arabic continued to earn their living by popularising literaryknowledge in Persian. Indeed they used their knowledge of Arabic towrite different kinds of popular literary texts in Persian. For instance,in the district of south Bihar, Adam reported two maulvis who werehighly rated in Arabic learning and had authored many texts. MaulviGhulam Hussein of Sahibgunj wrote the Persian text Jam-i-BahadurKhani, which he culled from a range of Arabic works on arithmetic,astronomy, algebra and natural sciences using his extensive knowledgeof Arabic. He also compiled the astronomical tables called the Zijbahadur Khani. Another Arabic scholar, Maulvi Mohiyuddin, of Erkiin the Thana of Jehanabad composed a 288-pages long Persian textSharh-i-Abdul Rasul on Arabic syntax. He also wrote in Arabic athirty-two pages long manuscript called Majmua Taqrir Mantiq Amani,which is a text on logic.53

Medical knowledge taught in family schools thus articulated the newidea of health as medical wisdom—science, rather than aristocraticvirtue. As medicine withdrew into the Arabic fold its popularisationwas checked. Families disseminated knowledge in Arabic to few. Andas Boulderson, the Collector of Bareilly, said here, ‘both the mastersand pupils are of a higher grade and have given their attention toscientific pursuits’.54 According to him, this was in sharp contrast tothe Persian schools.

53 W. Adam, Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835–8), Ed. A. Basu, p. 286.54 Extract Bengal Pol. Consult., 5 June 1829, L No. 463, education committee to

vice president in council, 9 July 1827, Boards Collection, F/4/1170, file No. 30640,p. 639.


Urdu Medical Tracts and the English East India Company:Medicine for Societal Well-Being

This pre-colonial medical culture in transition shaped the EnglishCompany’s engagement with Unani. Its association with the courtsand Arabic also ensured that the English too treated it as a medicalsystem.55 However, the Company’s intrusion did introduce criticalchanges. Changes came much before the anglicist reforms of the1830s that introduced English language instruction and Westernknowledge in India. And it was rooted in and shaped by the Company’suse of indigenous linguistic cultures and the medical knowledgesthat it sustained. Thus from the outset, the Company preserved adisembodied form of Arabic medical learning in new institutions oflearning that it had set up. This kept alive the production of Arabictexts and the new learning they embodied. To this it added the Arabictranslations of European texts on anatomy. These only strengthenedthe scientistic ideas of Arabic healing. But more importantly, it usedthe vernacular Urdu and the printing press to popularise these newideas. The Company intervention shifted health to the wider domainof societal well-being. It linked medical status to public service. Inthe process new referents of medical authority were devised for ‘older’medical knowledges. This section shows that this process of change wasremarkably rapid, and occurred long before the period of the 1830s,a period defined as a watershed in the conventional scholarship.56

The Calcutta Madrasa

In 1781, Warren Hastings extended patronage to Arabic learning ofall kinds by setting up the Calcutta madrasa. Its main purpose was totrain a class of maulvis in Islamic law. But it instructed students fromelite Muslim backgrounds in Arabic language and medical sciences as

55 This obviously contradicts the position held by David Arnold, Jean M. Langfordand others who argue that the Company’s motives were more ideological than materialin the encounter with Unani. See D. Arnold, Colonising the Body; J. M. Langford, FluentBodies. Ayurvedic Remedies for Post Colonial Imbalance, Duke University press, Durham,NC, 2002.

56 Scholars such as Arnold, Prakash and Langford have hitherto argued that the1830s signaled a turn towards coercion on the part of the Company as it abandonedorientalism, ‘colonised the body’, and introduced new style Western knowledge withthe help of the English language.


well. Medical knowledge in Arabic had been a part of the madrasacurriculum ever since its inception.57 But in the early nineteenthcentury a separate medical class was added that taught medical scienceto students from Arabic medical literature. It also familiarised themwith facts culled out from Western medical tracts.58 Indeed thesehybrid intellectuals were expected to be the bridge to cultivate a tastefor European medical knowledge in society.

In 1829, John Tytler, the orientalist scholar and Presidency Surgeon,declared that madrasas did not merely produce public servants. Theirjob was, he declared, to teach Arabic medical texts as well as ‘diffuseamong them [students] a taste of European literature and science[in Arabic]. If the latter is accomplished colleges would have saidto have done their duty’.59 He conducted the medical class and sawno contradiction in teaching both the Arabic and European sets ofliterature.

Tytler took full advantage of the shift to Arabic learning thathad been initiated by individuals and families locally. He observed‘that the orientals are always disposed to receive a work writtenin it [Arabic] with respect which they might reject or despise in avernacular tongue’.60 Like the notables of the countryside he was

57 L No. 12, Warren Hastings to Board of Directors, n..d., extract rev. letter toBengal, 28 Oct. 1814, Boards Collection, F/4/708, file No. 19201, pp. 91–7. Themadrasa had a rich library for which in 1820 Rs. 6818.3.7 were sanctioned bythe government. See H. Mackenzie, Sec. to Govt., to madrasa committee, 21 July1820, Ibid., p. 167. The madrasa divided the students into five classes with separateteachers. Apart from the Arabic and Persian language instruction, the sciences taughtin the madrasa were entirely through the medium of Arabic texts. These includednatural philosophy including medicine (hikmat), theology, law, astronomy, arithmetic,geometry, logic and rhetoric. Students were expected to finish the course in 7 years.

58 See for medical class, ‘Report of the general committee for the diffusion ofinstruction among the natives of India for the year 1829’, Bengal Pub. Collection, Pol.Letter transferred to Pub. Deptt., 27 Aug. 1830, Pub. Deptt. 29 Sept. 1830, BoardsCollection, F/4/1255, file No. 5050 (1), p. 55. Later in 1829, the madrasa introducedan English department as well that catered to a lower stratum of Muslim society whoat a small fee learnt only the English language. In 1849 for a high fee of Rs. 100 permonth an Anglo–Arabic class was started to instruct in the English language suchstudents from the Arabic classes who wanted to learn English. See recommendationson madrasa to the government by the council of education. Selections from the recordsof the Bengal government, No. XIV, papers relating to the establishment of thePresidency College of Bengal, Calcutta, India, 1854, MF 1/871, p. 7.

59 J. Tytler, to P. Breton, H. H. Wilson and J. Adam, members medical board, 19Aug. 1829, Bengal Pub. Collection, 27 Aug. 1830, Boards Collection, F/4/1255, fileNo. 5050 (1), pp. 726–7.

60 J. Tytler, Trans. into Arabic, A Short Anatomical Description of the Heart ExtractedFrom the Edinburgh Medical Dictionary, Calcutta, India, 1828, p. v.


convinced about the significant role Arabic would play as a languagethat would preserve medical learning in the hands of select clientele.Like the notables, he too saw Arabic as the universal language ofscience and medicine and contrasted its wider appeal with the narrowgeographical confines of Persian, Urdu and the other vernaculars.Arabic, he said, was understood ‘from Malacca to Morocco’, whereasthe vernaculars were understood only in a few provinces of India.61

Its wider connectivity meant that it could be an effective language ofmedical science.

Tytler realised the immense potential of Arabic as a conduit throughwhich medical knowledge could be weaned out of its earlier Mughal-style encasement. Thus, he not only learnt the language himself butalso set about the task of studying and editing Unani medical textsin Arabic.62 This was required not only because Arabic texts weretaught at the madrasa but also because Tytler felt that Europeanmedical tracts could be understood best by the students if translatedinto Arabic. Arabic could lend them much needed legitimacy.63

Tytler collected Arabic medical texts from family schools andassociates. He edited them for the use of the students. In 1832,he edited two manuscripts of the Arabic translation of Hoanin BenMotawukkue’s, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates called Fusool-i-Abkrat. Oneof these copies he procured from a native physician in Patna, andthe other was loaned to him by his trusted hakim assistant AbdulMajeed.64 Other Arabic texts used by him for teaching included the

61 R. Hooper, The Anis ul Musharrahin or the Anatomist’s Vade-Mecum, Trans. intoArabic by J. Tytler, Calcutta, India, 1830, p. 8. Tytler lowered his tirade againstthe vernaculars in 1834 when the introduction of English as the language of allinstruction seemed imminent. He preferred the vernaculars like Urdu to English asthe language of medical science and utility. He cited the success of the native medicalinstitution in providing public servants as an example of the usefulness of offeringmedical instruction in the Urdu language. See Tracts 1881/a/3, The Calcutta LiteraryGazette, June 14 1834, essay No. VII by J. Tytler, pp. 1–4.

62 He says that he learnt Arabic in the 14 years that he spent in India. His stintbegan in 1813 when he was posted in the upper provinces. He learnt it because thegovernment needed oriental scholars. And he says he used his own resources to learnthe language and did not take any special favours from the government. See TR-15,‘Memorial of Surgeon John Tytler addressed to the court of directors of the East IndiaCompany,’ pp. 35–6.

63 R. Hooper, The Anis ul Musharrahin or the Anatomist’s Vade-Mecum, Trans. intoArabic by J. Tytler, p. 12.

64 J. Tytler, ed., Trans. into Arabic Aphorisms of Hippocrates or the Fusool-i-Abkrat byHoanin Ben Motawukkue, Calcutta, India, 1832.


Sharh-i-Mujiz by Muhammad Kazim, the Uksari and the Sudeedi.65 Heincluded all these in the madrasa curriculum. They all lacked thePersian comportment frills. In contrast to Persian texts they wereprescriptive and comprehensive. They made Unani scientistic by theirconcentration on disease, symptoms and medication. They gave adviceon disease and medication, rather than the details of the body and itsphilosophical relations with nature. For instance, the Sharh-i-Mujiz isdivided into four sections that dealt with the general principles ofmedicine, compound medicines and treatment of local and generaldiseases. It focuses on medicine as science rather than comportment.

Such scientistic literature was complemented by the translationsof European literature on body anatomy into Arabic. Anatomy onlyreinforced the new idea of health as science. It made the ideas ofhealth even more scientistic and distant from individual comportment.Such translated literature introduced the importance of body anatomyinto the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Since body anatomy haduniversal referents, medical knowledge that was based on it saw allindividuals as equals. Health was now about levelling social differencesbetween people. It questioned hierarchies between those with similarbody anatomies. The new Arabic literature based on European textsthus made the idea of aristocratic virtue and individual comportmenteven more irrelevant to healing. Tytler hoped that the inclusion ofbody anatomy in medical knowledge would make people question thesocial hierarchies created by the Persian medical texts.

Most of the European texts he translated were on anatomy andchemistry. These included the brief twenty-two pages text, ‘a shortanatomical description of the heart’ (Tashreehul kalb) to the largerwork of Robert Hooper called the ‘Anatomist’s Vade-Mecum’. Here,Tytler offered a scathing critique of the Mughal idea of health asaristocratic virtue. He justified the translations of anatomy texts byarguing that the study of body anatomy brought out the similaritiesof all castes, religions and communities of India. The discipline heargued was a social leveler. It underlined that all human beingshad the same body anatomy. Thus, healing was about offering thecorrect inputs to make all individuals retain similar body functions. Heargued that medicine that depended on anatomy was different fromthe individual comportment-driven ideas of healing that perpetuatedsocial hierarchies.

65 IOC V/24/942, pp. 6, 39.


He contrasted the Mughal Persian texts with the new anatomicalliterature in Arabic when he said,

anatomy has a most powerful influence in counteracting prejudices that arisefrom birth or station or caste, by demonstrating that however mankind maydiffer in their externals, their internal organization is the same. Before theknife of the anatomist every artificial distinction of society disappears.66

He went on to emphasise the change in the medical culture that thestudy of anatomy would introduce when he said,

once on the dissection table, the prince will not be found to possess asingle muscle or a single artery beyond the meanest of his subjects; and theChristian, the Muhammadan and the Hindoo, the Brahmin and the Sudrahave precisely the same organs and same faculties.67

Tytler’s anatomical texts reinforced the idea of medicine as sciencethat had been initiated by Arabic texts. He used the printingpress to popularise this idea. He hoped the press would help breakthe monopoly of families and individuals on this kind of medicalknowledge. The government lithographic press churned out multiplecopies of his Arabic translations of European texts. It demystifiedmedical knowledge and moved it out of its single copy encasement.This was true both for the Unani manuscripts in Arabic and for theArabic translations of European texts.

Tytler translated Robert Hooper’s text on anatomy, called theAnatomist’s Vade-Mecum, into Arabic. Several copies of the Arabicversion, called the Anis ul Musharrahin, were produced by thelithographic Education Press. Tytler emphasised the great advancethat this style of Arabic book production represented over the earlierforms of knowledge dissemination. He wrote,

The teacher can instruct only a limited number of scholars; his influence isconfined both in space and time, and when period of instruction over, effectof it can be lost—the influence of the book is very different. They travelthrough all parts of the country and can be studied at all times, by all classesof people, old as well as young, and when their contents are forgotten theymay be reexamined—.68

He reiterated the advantages of the printed book as he said, ‘I mayalso add as perhaps the most advantageous circumstance of all, that

66 R. Hooper, The Anis ul Musharrahin or the Anatomist’s Vade-Mecum, Trans.into Arabic by Tytler, p. 14.

67 Ibid., p. 15.68 Ibid., p. 3.


thousands are able to purchase a few books who might be utterlyunable to afford the expense of the teacher’.69

The press weakened the monopoly of families over Arabicknowledge. Yet, the madrasa never severed its links with theindividuals and families of Arabic learning. D. Ruddell, secretary ofthe madrasa committee, appointed the ‘learned’ Hakim Zulfiqar Ali toteach the students not only Arabic medical texts like the Sharh-i-Mujizbut also anatomical and medical facts from the books composed atthe Native Medical Institution (NMI) by both Surgeons Peter Bretonand Tytler.70 Zulfiqar Ali’s son replaced him on his death.71 Similarly,Tytler’s favourite assistant, Hakim Abdul Majeed, taught Unani textsin Arabic at the Calcutta madrasa. The Company was first introducedto him in Mysore where he was attached as a teacher of over 12 years tothe children of Tipu Sultan.72 His command over Arabic medical andtheological texts brought him to the notice of Calcutta’s orientalistscholars H. H. Wilson, A. Galloway, Peter Breton and Tytler. The latteremployed him as lecturer of medicine at the Calcutta madrasa and alsoas translator in the committee of public instruction and assistant inthe NMI. In all these positions, Hakim Majeed was actively engagedfor more than 15 years in either teaching Arabic medical texts orcomposing and translating medical texts in Arabic.73 He earned adecent living through these various services.74 Tytler said that he was

69 Ibid.70 P. Breton, Supdtt. Native Medical Institution, to H. H. Wilson, Sec. Gen.

committee of public instruction, 5 Aug. 1829, Boards Collection, Bengal Pub. Consult.,27 Aug. 1830, F/4/1255, file No. 5050 (1), pp. 710–1.

71 Ibid., p. 712.72 L No. 16, Hakim Abdul Majeed to William C. Bentinck, Govt. Gen., 16 Feb.

1835, consult. 25 Feb. 1835, Bengal Pub. Consult. 5 Jan.–6 May 1835, P/13/12.73 Ibid.74 L No. 26, Hakim Majeed to H. T. Prinsep, Sec. to Govt. in the gen. deptt. n.d.,

consult. 1 April 1835, Bengal Pub. Consult. 5 Jan.–6 May 1835, P/13/12. He got asalary of Rs. 60 per month from the Native Medical Institution itself. In 1835 afterthe abolition of the institute and the shift away from Arabic learning, men like HakimAbdul Majeed were left jobless and in dire financial crisis. The hakim petitionedthe government to be sanctioned an allowance of Rs. 60 per month, which was hislast drawn salary, so as to maintain his large family. But the government refusedthis on grounds of there being no precedent for such allowances to men no longerin their service. In 1835, the government also refused to appoint Hakim Majeed inthe newly founded Calcutta Medical College on grounds that he did not know theEnglish language. Pundits of the Native Medical Institution, like Madhusudan Guptand Prasad Pandit, were adjusted at the college because they knew English language.See L No. 128, Medical Board to W. C. Bentinck, 17 Feb. 1835, and L No. 133, J. C. C.Sutherland, Sec. General committee of public instruction, to Lt. Col. W. Casement,


‘fully competent were he willing both to render intelligible to studentsthe Arabian medical writers and also to explain to them almost anyEuropean medical tract which I have seen published’.75

The 1830s madrasa reforms only underlined the importance ofthis new invigorated medical knowledge easily available in Arabic.In this period, D. Ruddell, the secretary of the madrasa committee,made the Arabic Sharh-i-Mujiz the core text for student entranceexamination.76 Simultaneously, the reforms also strengthened thestress on anatomical studies. They introduced a regimen of practicaltraining in body anatomy.77 The linkage of medicine with scienceand anatomy, which were seen as social levelers, introduced the ideaof a larger role that medicine could play in society. It brought theissue of health central to the well-being of society. The pressures tovernacularise medical knowledge followed and so did the move to linkmedical status with public service.

The Native Medical Institution and the Community of Urdu Literature

The most vocal critic of the madrasa experiment was CharlesTrevelyan, the in-charge of the Delhi education committee. Herealised the tremendous influence of the Arabic medical texts onMuslim society. He felt that the madrasa only perpetuated their hold.He and his team wanted to bypass the minority Muslim intellectualclass and his knowledge base. They wished to target instead Muslimswho ‘are entirely uneducated and attached to no previous system’ tocreate a new class of Muslims educated only in European sciences

Sec. to Govt., 30 April 1835, consult. 4 May 1835, India Mil. Consult. 4–18 May 1835,P/35/16.

75 J. Tytler, to P. Breton, H. H. Wilson and J. Adam, members medical board, 19Aug. 1829, Bengal Pub. Collection, 27 Aug. 1830, Boards Collection, F/4/1255, fileNo. 5050 (1), p. 726.

76 Madrasa exam report 1829/30, enclosure No. 2, D. Ruddell, Sec. madrasacommittee, to H. Shakespeare and colleagues, madrasa committee, 22 Feb. 1830,Bengal Pub. Consult., 27 Aug. 1830, Boards Collection, F/4/1255, file No. 5050 (1),pp. 151–2. He suggested that the reading of the Arabic grammar text Muqamat bereduced to the first twenty-five stories only. In its place the Mujiz be substituted asthe qualifying text for admission and scholarship.

77 P. Breton, Supdtt. Native Medical Institution, J. Tytler, Presidency Surgeon,J. Adam, Sec. Medical Board, to H. H. Wilson, Sec. to Gen. committee of publicinstruction, 24 Aug., 1829, Bengal Pub. Collection, 27 Aug. 1830, Boards Collection,F/4/1255, file No. 5050 (1), p. 702. The students of the madrasa even though notbeing trained as practitioners were expected to enhance their medical knowledge byattending practical training at the native hospital in Calcutta.


in the English language. This class could then carry forward theEuropean knowledge in the vernacular to the masses.

His pleas notwithstanding, the Company continued with themadrasa instruction and its scholar–physicians. But it did notignore Trevelyan entirely. As the ground was prepared for Englishinstruction, of a standard sufficient to impart Western medicalknowledge, it looked to the vernaculars for help. It chose alocally spoken vernacular language-–Urdu—to move the new medicallearning produced at the madrasa beyond individual well-being.Medical knowledge was all set to embrace societal well-being.

Urdu was a pigeon language that borrowed from Arabic, Persianand Hindi. In the 1820s, the Company-sponsored Native MedicalInstitution (NMI) became the place for medical learning in Urdu,and the government lithographic press became the site for Urdubook production. Urdu print culture, with its thrust on popularisingmedical knowledge and producing mass scale medical texts for saleto the public servants, only intensified the new ideas of health andbody anatomy that the madrasa epitomised. But more importantly, itpushed medical knowledge from its concern with individual well-beingto a larger anxiety about societal well-being. It created a native doctorwho as a public servant carried forward this new role that medicinewas set to play.

The NMI at Calcutta came into being in 1823. It targeted studentswho did not have the necessary backgrounds to access medicalknowledge embodied in family, courtly status, charismatic teachersor doctrinaire languages like Arabic.78 Students who were not morethan 20 years of age and of ‘respectable family background’ were thepreferred recruits.79 They were expected to have basic knowledge ofthe Hindustani script. Initially not more than twenty students wereadmitted to the NMI at a time. If more were found fit they were put

78 L No. 179, Members native medical education committee to W.C. Bentinck,n.d., consult. 28 Jan. 1835, India Mil. Consult. 23–28 Jan. 1835, P/35/9. In 1835 theabsence of boys from established families of hakims and vaids in the NMI was evidentwhen out of the sixty-seven students only one was recorded as the son of a hakim. Sixor 1/11th of them were sons of native doctors. The bulk of them were from militaryfamilies of non-commissioned native officers: five sons of subedars, sixteen sons ofjemadar, fifteen sons of havaldar, three sons of naiks, three sons of sepoys, three sonsof pundits, one son of ‘Tisser’, one son of Moolsoodee, one son of thanadar and oneson of munshi.

79 L No. 100, J. Jameson, Sec. Med. Board, memorandum on Institution foreducation of native doctors, 1 May 1822, extract Bengal Military Consultation (BMC)24 May 1822, Boards Collection, F/4/737, file No. 20085, p. 17.


on a waiting list and inducted when vacancies occurred.80 Later thisnumber was increased to 50.81 In its last year, before its abolitionin 1835, the institution had sixty-seven students.82 Each student wasfinancially supported at public charge and a sum of Rs. 8 per month wassanctioned for him.83 In 1825, this amount was revised and increasedto Rs. 10 per month, and at the end of 2 years of study it was furtherraised to Rs. 12 per month.84

The NMI systematised medical instruction and laid out strictcodes of medical apprenticeship and training. Indeed it linkedmedical instruction with professional public service, and that toounder the superintendence of the military. The superintendingsurgeon of military divisions was to recommend potential studentsof ‘unexceptionable caste, character, steady habits and good capacity’to the medical board. Each recommendation was accompanied witha descriptive roll that notified the name, ‘caste’ if Hindu and ‘tribe’if Muslim and the age of the application. The students presentedthemselves to the secretary of the medical board. Once enrolled theywere sent to the NMI and placed with its superintendent. Here theygraduated as qualified native doctors after a 4-year rigorous regime.

The native doctor as a public servant projected the new medicalconcern for societal well-being. The press popularised this idea. Thegovernment printing press played a critical role in both trainingthe native doctor and educating society on medicine’s new role. Itwas therefore not of little significance that the government-ownedlithographic press that specialised in urdu tracts and the NMI gota kick start in the same year—1823.85 Mr. Rind was made the firstsuperintendent of the government lithographic press in the same yearas NMI got its Peter Breton. He was made the superintendent after

80 L No. 133, J. Crawford, Sec. Med. Board, to Lt. Col. Casement, Sec. to Govt. inMil. Deptt., 10 Feb. 1823, BMC 7–14 Feb. 1823, consult. FW 14 Feb. 1823, P/30/10.

81 W. Casement, Sec. Govt, to Sec. Med. Board, 30 Dec. 1825, consult. 30 Dec.1825, BMC 30 Dec. 1825, P/31/41.

82 L No. 179, Members native medical education committee to W.C. Bentinck, n.d.,consult. 28 Jan. 1835, India Mil. Consult. 23–28 Jan. 1835, P/35/9.

83 L No. 108, GO 21 June 1822 for the NMI, extract BMC 24 May 1822, BoardsCollection, F/4/737, file No. 20085, pp. 62, 68.

84 W. Casement, Sec. Govt., to Sec. Med. Board, 30 Dec. 1825, Consult. 30 Dec.1825, BMC 30 Dec. 1825, P/31/41.

85 L No. 38, C. Lushington, Sec. to Govt., to Committee for reporting on Mr. Rind’splan for the formation of a government lithographic establishment, 29 March 1823,consult. 29 March 1823, Bengal Pub. Consult. 20–29 March 1823, P/11/1. In 1823the government agreed to buy the private lithographic press run by Mr. Rind for Rs.1650 and ordered four additional ones from Messrs. Gessop and Co. at Rs. 1200.


the untimely death of the founder James Jameson.86 And both menwere trained ‘in the study and practice of surgery’. They were qualifiedto serve as assistant surgeons in the service of the Company.

Both men were expected to have a good knowledge of Urdu.87

Indeed the NMI superintendent was the main lecturer for the studentsand was expected to author medical manuals for his classroominstructions. The superintendent of the lithographic press helped himin discharging medical instructions indirectly by printing the Urduliterature for orders as high as 800 copies of a single tract.88 TheUrdu books disseminated the scientistic ideas of Western medicalknowledge. These had already echoed in the Arabic literature ofthe Calcutta madrasa and family schools. Their additional highlightwas the knowledge of body anatomy that questioned the earliercomportment-driven idea of well-being. The long superintendentshipof Peter Breton (1824–1830) at the NMI revealed clearly the role ofthe NMI as the nodal point of Urdu medical book production.89 Breton,in less than a year of his taking over the NMI, was already asking forfree access to the government lithographic press. He wanted severalof his medical texts to be printed in Urdu. These included his workson body anatomy, pharmacology, orthopedics and surgery.

By October 1824, he had already produced before the medicalboard sixteen copies of his vocabulary of medical terms in the Urdu

86 Ibid. See for details of the setting up of the government lithographic press, LNo. 40, J. N. Rind, Supdtt. Lithographic press to lithographic committee, 25 Oct.1828, extract Bengal Pub. Consult. 10 Dec. 1828, Boards Collection, F/4/1290, fileNo. 51650, pp. 62–71.

87 G. Proctor, Sec. Med. Board, to C. Lushington, Sec. to Govt. in Gen. Deptt.,20 Aug. 1823, consult. 21 Aug. 1823, Bengal Pub. Consult. 14 Aug.–4 Sept. 1823,P/11/8.

88 L No. 44, Govt. lithographic committee to Sec. Prinsep, 31 March 1829, ExtractBengal Pub. Consult. 5 May 1829, Boards Collection, F/4/1290, file No. 51650, p.49. For instance, between January and December of 1826, the lithographic press haddone 150 impressions of whole sheet drawings only for the NMI.

89 L No. 138, P. Breton, Supdtt. NMI, to Lord Amherst, Govt. Gen. in Council,n.d., consult. 19 April 1824, BMC 8–19 April 1824, P/30/47. See also L Nos. 139and 140 for the confirmation of Breton’s salary at Rs. 1600 per month. For familydetail of Breton, see VCP Hodson, List of the officers of the Bengal Army 1758–1834,London, 1927, part 1, pp. 200–1. In October 1824, Surgeon Peter Breton, who camefrom an established Norman family of merchants of South Hampton, became thefirst superintendent to be confirmed to the office of NMI. After having cleared thelanguage test of Fort William College, he resigned from the Ramghur Corps wherehe was surgeon. He joined as superintendent of NMI on a salary of Rs. 1600/month.


and English language published from the lithographic press.90 Thefollowing year he submitted to the medical board twenty-four copiesof his Urdu version of the London pharmacopeias also produced atthe same press. He retained another hundred copies at the NMIawaiting government instructions for their distribution.91 By 1829, hislist of anatomy tracts composed for NMI included texts on osteology,description of thoracic and abdominal viscera, details of the brainand appendages, eye and appendages, ear and appendages, urinaryorgans and male generative organs. The texts on pharmaceuticalissues included treatises on materia medica, translation of the Londonpharmacopeias, treatises on the component parts of the air andthe posological table. His medical treatises included treatises onvaccination, cholera morbus, vegetable poison, mineral poison andvenom of serpents, rheumatism and intermittent fever and themedical topography of the ceded provinces. The surgical treatisesincluded treatises on suspended animation, cataract, hydrocele anddislocation.92 By 1829, so great was the pressure on the press bythe NMI that its superintendent Rind reported that it required theconstant use of one-fourth of his establishment, that is, two of the sixpresses. Breton complained that his orders had to wait because of therush at the press. And John Adam, the secretary of the medical board,suggested the setting aside of at least one press at the governmentlithographic establishment for only the NMI orders.93

Breton remained dependent on an establishment of pundits, hakims,artists and maulvis in putting his medical literature together. Thebest ever published anatomical engravings, like the Lizars anatomicalplates, were bought by him at a cost of Rs. 130 to aid his staffin the publication of Urdu texts on anatomy.94 He argued that heneeded both maulvis and pundits because the tracts needed to be in

90 L No. 180, enclosure, P. Breton, Supdtt. NMI, to G. Proctor, Sec. to Med. Board,14 Oct. 1824, consult. 18 March 1825, BMC, 11–25 March 1825, P/31/16.

91 L No. 181, enclosure, P. Breton, Supdtt. NMI, to G. Proctor, Sec. to Med. Board,7 March 1825, consult. 18 March 1825, BMC, 11–25 March 1825, P/31/16.

92 L No. 125, enclosure, ‘List of treatises prepared by Dr Breton for use of NMI’, J.Tytler, Supdtt. NMI, to J. Hutchinson, Sec. to Med. Board, 28 March 1831, consult.15 April 1831, BMC 15 April–6 May 1831, P/34/3.

93 L No. 143, J. Adam, Sec. Med. Board, to Lt. Col. Casement, Sec to Govt., 12 Nov.1829, and reply dated 11 Dec. 1829, consult. 11 Dec. 1829, BMC 11–26 Dec. 1829,P/33/42.

94 L No. 136, J. Adam, Sec. Med. Board, to Lt. Col. W. Casement, 1 Aug. 1828, andreply L No. 137 Lt. Col. W. Casement, to J. Adam, Sec. Med. Board, 1 Aug. 1828,consult. 16 Aug. 1828 BMC 16–29 Aug. 1828, P/33/6.


Urdu or Hindustani both in the Devnagari and in Persian script. Heentertained in his private service Maulvi Asadullah, a former teacherof the Fort William College, to assist him with the Persian script. Healso had help from a pundit. Both men were paid Rs. 25 per month.Later both got regular employment at the NMI.95

Breton had in his service an artist or draftsman—Rahim Buksh.He was hired by him on Rs. 16 per month to paint the blankanatomical sketches produced at the lithographic press.96 He alsoemployed native surgeons like the Calcutta Muslim Saut Cauree whohad been operating on people for cataract by the couching needle, andperforming other operations for dropsy, hydorcele and spleen for thelast 25 years. He trained students especially in cataract surgery at theNMI. After initial practice on the eyes of goats and sheep, the studentssuccessfully operated on human subjects. One of the students, PursunSingh, was particularly praised for his newly acquired surgical skills.Many of Breton’s tracts on cataract and the eye were influenced bythe couching technique, which he felt suited the native practitionerbetter than the Western mode of using the crystalline lens.97

Breton’s successor John Tytler, who took over the superintendshipof the NMI in 1830, continued with the tradition of composinganatomical and surgical texts. He too put together as impressive a listof anatomical publications as that of Breton. In 1832, on approval ofthe medical board, the government sanctioned his text on the vascularand absorbent systems. It ordered 400 copies of the text in Urdu, inPersian and an equal number in the Devnagari script to be producedat the lithographic press.98

Before this large order was sanctioned he had already translated orcomposed for the students of the NMI the following Urdu tracts to

95 They got salaries of Rs. 40 per month each. Ibid. Breton was also allowed, on hisrequest, access to the library of Fort William. See for government’s sanction of all hisrequests, L No. 75, Lt. Col. W. Casement, Sec. to Govt., to Medical Board, 1st April1824, consult. 1 April 1824, BMC 1–8 April 1824, P/30/46.

96 L No. 100, J. Taylor, Supdtt. NMI, to Sec. Med. Board, 15 Feb. 1833, consult.27 Feb. 1833, BMC 19 Feb.–5 March 1833, P/34/38; see also in same consult. L No.101, Lt. Col. Casement, Sec. to Govt., to Med. Board, 27 Feb. 1833. Rahim Bukshlater demanded and obtained a hike in his salary to Rs. 20 per month when he notonly just had to paint but also draw some of the anatomical plates for the medicaltracts.

97 L No. 180, enclosure, P. Breton, Supdtt. NMI, to G. Proctor, Sec. to Med. Board,14 Oct. 1824, consult. 18 March 1825, BMC, 11–25 March 1825, P/31/16.

98 L No. 122 Members Med. Board to C.T. Metcalfe, VP in council, 19 June 1832,and L No. 123, Lt. Col. Casement, Sec. to Govt., to Med. Board, 25 June 1832, consult.25 June 1832, BMC 18 June–2 July 1832, P/34/23.


be published at the lithographic press: translation of the 1824 editionof the London Pharmacopeias in Persian and Nagri script, hundredcopies each in Urdu translation in the Persian and Nagri script ofJ. Hutchinson’s Bengali tracts on the fevers, a five-page tract on theanatomy of the fetus and a tract on cataract surgery.

These were in addition to the list of tracts chiefly on anatomy andsurgery that he composed and circulated to students in manuscriptform. These included Introduction to the materia medica—37 pages;account of the most useful articles of the materia medica—178pages; a system of osteology that had descriptions of all the bonesin the skeleton, attachment of muscles and ligaments, passage ofblood vessels and nerves—69 pages; account of the abdominal andrespiratory muscles—9 pages; account of the vascular system—41pages; tract of gunshot wounds that had extracts in translation fromHooper’s chapter on gunshot wounds and Tytler’s comments on howto use them in practice—6 pages; tract on injuries of the head—14pages; tract on hernia—36 pages.99

The NMI received a range of anatomical and pharmacy literaturefrom Europe. Tytler was always enthusiastic to translate it intoUrdu. In 1835, a list of books sent for the NMI from Englandincluded Claquet’s Anatomy descriptions, Fisher on Small Pox,Cooper on Hernia, Tuain’s Anatomy, Thomson’s Dispensatory,Thomas’s Practice of Physic, Cooper’s Surgical Dictionary, Paris’sPharmacoloquia, Alison’s Pathology, Smith’s Botany by Hooker andthe Medical Gazette, volumes 1–14.100 Tytler argued that translatingthese was a sure way to diffuse new ideas of medical knowledge.

Urdu texts on anatomy and pharmacy popularised the new ideaof medical knowledge being about medical wisdom and sciencerather than individual comportment. These contrasted to the Mughalencyclopedic medical texts like the Darashikuhi in their productionstyle, and the relatively smaller range they covered. They were alsomarked out because of the ordinariness of their authors, as well as thepedestrian status they commanded because of being in the militarycamp language-–Urdu. They also differed from the dense Arabicliterature, like the Sharh-i-Mujiz, used in the Calcutta madrasa aswell as in the family schools. In the Urdu medical literature produced

99 L No. 84, J. Tytler, Supdtt. Med. Board, to J. Hutchins, Sec. to Med. Board, 11April 1832, consult. 7 May 1832, BMC 23 April–14 May 1832, P/34/21.

100 L No. 84 enclosure, Members Med. Board to C. T. Metcalf, Govt. Gen. India, 1Sept. 1835, consult. 14 Sept. 1835, BMC 31 Aug.–21 Sept. 1835, P/35/22.


by the NMI, the specialised knowledge of anatomy, surgical skills andchemistry prevailed. They lacked the encyclopedic range, the physicalornateness and the esoteric exclusivity of the Persian and Arabicliteratures. Their focus on anatomy, which was seen as a social leveler,underlined the new role of medicine. The Urdu medicine questionedthe individual comportment-centered well-being. It embraced thewell-being of society as a whole. And it made medical knowledgeavailable to those so far excluded from its ambit.

Making of a Medical Public Servant: From Scholarto Native Doctor

The wider social role of medicine ensured that the NMI focused onpractical training as well. The knowledge of anatomy and surgerygained from texts was elaborated in lectures and practicals. Thishelped translate medical wisdom to medical practice. It welded apractitioner out of a scholar. Every Tuesday and Thursday, the pupilsattended lectures given in Hindustani on anatomy. They also particip-ated in performing experiments in chemistry and preparing materialsused in medicine and surgery: neutral salts, acids, spirits, camphor,benzoic, sulphur and so on. On Friday night they were made to readfrom 8 to 10 pm the Urdu texts prepared for them at the institute: thepharmacopeias, materia medicas and tracts on anatomy. Each studentwas provided a copy of every text produced by the NMI. At this sessionthe senior students were expected to memorise the names and featuresof the bones of the human body, the component parts of the brain, thethoracic and abdominal viscera, structure of the eye and its append-ages, and answer questions on the subject. They were also expected tomonitor the readings of the junior students on these themes.101

They received practical knowledge of anatomy at the generalhospital and Company dispensaries. Here they observed the Britishsurgeon dissect the human body. In 1825, Assistant Surgeon WilliamTwining, posted at the general hospital in Calcutta, regularlydemonstrated to them the anatomical details of bodies he dissected.And the apothecary Mr. Reid, at the Calingah dispensary located closeto the NMI, trained students in chemistry. Students also got clinicalexperience in their interactions with patients at these institutes.102

101 L No. 7, enclosure, P. Breton, Supdtt. NMI, to J. Adam, Sec. to Med. Board, 25March 1829, consult. 15 May 1829, BMC 8–15 May 1829, P/33/26.

102 Ibid.


This was followed up in the classroom by anatomical wax models ofthe arm, leg and other body parts that came from London.103

In 1830, when John Tytler took over as superintendent of NMI he re-tained this thrust on anatomy lessons. He systematised its instructionand made it more practical oriented and rigorous.104 Good studentswere employed by him as dissectors in his anatomy classes and hewished this practice to be formalised. He pointed out that the studentswarmed up to dissections and often urged him to use the animal bodyto explain anatomical facts. Indeed, one of them—a Hindu calledDurohun Lall—brought to him a human skull, which his friend hadpicked up from the banks of the river so as to be used in the classroomdemonstrations. Encouraged by this incident, Tytler asked the board tosend him for the purpose of teaching ‘a well prepared human skeleton,a set of separate bones, an injected head, trunk, preparation oflymphates, a pelvis with ligaments, a fetal head, a heart and lungs’.105

But medical authority for the native doctor also came from his beinga public servant and that too in the coveted service of the Company’sarmy. The government order of 21 June 1822 clarified that studentsadmitted to the NMI would be enlisted as soldiers. And like all othersoldiers they were to be fully supported financially throughout theirstint at the NMI by the government. The medical board examinedthem at the end of their 3 years and issued them a certificate thatenabled them to work as native doctors in the military.

Most sepoy regiments of the Company had a Hindu and a Muslimnative doctor. These took care of the sepoys whose caste identities

103 L No. 13, Lt. Col. W. Casement, Sec. to Govt., to President and members ofMed. Board, 11 Sept. 1829, consult. 11 Sept. 1829, BMC 4–11 Sept. 1829, P/33/34.

104 L No. 84, J. Tytler, Supdtt. Med. Board, to J. Hutchins, Sec. to Med. Board, 11April 1832, consult. 7 May 1832, BMC 23 April–14 May 1832, P/34/21. The studentswere divided into four classes: the lowest class started with anatomy and the highestended with surgery. In between they studied Materia Medica and physics. Teachingof anatomy ran through all the four classes of the NMI. Tytler himself introduced thediscipline in an introductory lecture. He followed this up with the demonstration ofreal bones. He made the students aware of their different forms, the attachment ofmuscles and the passage of vessels and nerves. After this demonstration he explainedto the students the soft parts—the viscera of thorax, abdomen, pelvis, brain and senseorgans-–on the bodies of sheep and goats. He compared the physiology of the animalbody to that of the human structure. And through this comparison highlighted theirdifference. This training was padded up at the general hospitals and dispensaries,which the students attended to observe human dissections.

105 L No. 84, J. Tytler, Supdtt. Med. Board, to J. Hutchins, Sec. to Med. Board, 11April 1832, consult. 7 May 1832, BMC 23 April–14 May 1832, P/34/21.


the Company zealously preserved.106 In the past, the pamperedsepoys had refused to be attended by native doctors who were of lowcaste or not of respectable status. This had prompted the militaryauthorities to ensure that native doctors came from respectable familybackground.107 Most came from lower level service gentry families.They were acculturated in the tradition of ‘public service’ from theircontact with older regimes. But as Company servants they had moreclout and authority. They were primarily military doctors. But theycould be sent on civilian postings as well.108 Many of them functionedas government vaccinators in the civilian stations and others workedin the local dispensaries.109 Some of them were employed as assistantteachers at the NMI itself.110 As public servants they were responsiblefor the health of society as a whole.

The harnessing of the new medical knowledge to societal well-being and public service was evident in the special status given toqualified public servants from the NMI. This added new referentsto medical authority. Additional allowances were sanctioned to thosewith certificates from that institution. Thus, a certified native doctorfrom the NMI received a monthly salary of Rs. 25 when posted inthe field, instead of the Rs. 20 slotted for those who did not have anNMI certificate. And when in garrison duty in civil areas he receivedRs. 20 instead of Rs. 15 that his untrained colleagues received. The

106 J. Hutchinson, Code of regulations for medical department of the Bengalestablishment, compiled by order of government under superintendence of themedical board, Calcutta, India, 1838, L/Mil/17/2/450, Article 4, p. 207.

107 L No. 95, enclosure in L No. 93, civil finance committee to W. C. Bentinck, 9Sept. 1830, consult. 3 Oct. 1833, BMC 5 Sept.–3 Oct. 1833, P/34/47.

108 Extract from GO relating to NMI, 21 June 1822, J. Hutchinson, Code ofregulations for medical department of the Bengal establishment, compiled by orderof government under superintendence of the medical board, Calcutta, India, 1838,L/Mil/17/2/450, p. 265. In 1834, native doctors were posted in civil stations insouthern central Assam, in Guwahati and in Patna. See L No. 113, Members MedicalBoard to C. T. Metcalfe, 26 July 1834, consult. 7 Aug. 1834, BMC 31 July–21 Aug.1834, P/34/66; and L No. 55, Members Medical Board to C. T. Metcalfe, 17 Oct.1834, consult. 23 Oct. 1834, BMC 16 Oct.–6 Nov. 1834, P/34/69.

109 For a native doctor appointed as vaccinator, see L No. 17, Col. J. A. PaulMacgregor, Mil. and Auditor Gen. to W. C. Bentinck, 16 April 1833, consult. 19April 1833, BMC 3–19 April 1833, P/34/40.

110 Native doctors Jashoda Misser and Ram Ishawar Awasthi were employed at Rs.25 per month to be assistant teachers at NMI. See L No. 6, Col. W. Casement, Sec. toGovt. of India Mil. Deptt., to Medical Board, 26 Sept. 1836, consult. 26 Sept. 1836,India Mil. Consult. 19–26 Sept. 1836, P/35/45; and L No. 18, Col. W. Casement toCol. J. A. Paul Macgregor, Mil. and Auditor Gen., 19 April 1833, consult 19 April1833, BMC 3–19 April 1833, P/34/40.


additional Rs. 5 was viewed as a special military allowance calledbatta. It was witheld when the doctor went on long leave.111 Again, asa further incentive the native doctor got an additional increase of Rs.5 per month after completing 7 years of service if he was favourablyrecommended by his medical officer.112

Again, the military took care of the pension benefits of the doctor inthe same way as it did for the sepoys and other native officers servingits regiments. Every native doctor was entitled to an invalid’s pensionin case he could no longer serve because of wounds received in theservice or disorders contracted while on duty. Those who had servedfor less than 7 years with the army received a monthly pension of Rs.7 per month, whereas a service period of 7–15 years entitled him toone-third the salary of his field pay if posted with the army. The samepercentage of his garrison pay was given to him if on civil duty. Allnative doctors who had served for more than 15 years received aninvalid’s pension of Rs. 10 per month. This was raised to half theirsalary after a service of 22 years.113

The native doctors were governed by military law. This made themexclusive in society. And very much like the sepoys they enjoyed aspecial status in village society. Their medical authority derived largelyfrom this military backing. Thus no native doctor could be summarilydismissed without a court martial. And even here his respectabilityand authority in local society was protected zealously by the army.The army ordered that under no circumstances penalties like corporalpunishments were to be used for its doctors.114 In an 1832 governmentorder, the Commander-in-Chief took serious note of a case of corporalpunishment involving a native doctor. The order noted that, ‘theCommander-in-Chief desires it may be understood that he does not

111 Extract from GO relating to NMI, 21 June 1822, J. Hutchinson, Code ofregulations for medical department of the Bengal establishment, compiled by orderof government under superintendence of the medical board, Calcutta, India, 1838,L/Mil/17/2/450, p. 265. See also L No. 135, Maj. J. Stuart, Deputy Sec. to Govt. in Mil.Deptt., to Med. Board, 27 Feb. 1834, BMC 27 Feb.–13 March 1834, consult. 27 Feb.1834, P/34/59. The government discouraged long leave and left it to the discretionof the Commander-in-chief.

112 The medical officer had to certify that the general character and professionalconduct of the individual was worthy of this hike in salary. See extract from GOrelating to NMI, 21 June 1822, J. Hutchinson, Code of regulations for medicaldepartment of the Bengal establishment, compiled by order of government undersuperintendence of the medical board, Calcutta, India, 1838, L/Mil/17/2/450, p. 265.

113 Ibid.114 Ibid.


consider corporal punishment as a fit sentence for a class of personswhose respectability His Excellency is desirous to maintain’. Theorder emphasised that the Commander-in-Chief authorised the courtmartial to dismiss the native doctor as the most extreme punishmentrather than publically humiliate him.115

The institution of the native doctor lifted the focus from healthbeing tied to comportment or mere scientific scholarship that wasindividual centric. He represented the new idea of public servicethat tied medicine to the well-being of the society. The texts heread and consulted underscored this idea. And such texts had widecirculation through the person of the doctor himself. Texts literallymoved around with the marching regiments whose doctors carriedthem for consultation. Almost all regimental doctors carried Urdutranslations of the pharmacopeias, anatomy and surgical literature.Many stitched copies of the translated London Pharmacopeias weresent to the general and native hospitals, dispensaries, marine andpolice departments and garrison surgeons of Fort William Collegefor consultation. Breton was always happy to assist the lithographicpress with his editorial assistance and staff whenever big demandsfor any Urdu medical text came from the widely scattered surgeonsof the native corps. The government was invariably supportive of theendeavour.116

In 1829, Breton reported to the medical board the wide circulationof his Urdu medical literature. He clarified that its circulation wasnot restricted only to the students and European and native assistantsof the NMI. The texts were not confined either to the governmentdispensaries or to the hospitals. He said that it had a readershipoutside the Bengal Presidency. Copies of the texts were dispatchedto the Madras and Bombay presidency, the Hindu and Mohammedancolleges in Calcutta, Fort William College, the Medical and PhysicalSociety of Calcutta and the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The literaturehad a clientele beyond these English enclaves as well. Breton reportedthat they were sent on demand to the hakims of the raja of Lahore, tothe French settlement at Pondicherry and also to those native doctors

115 Ibid., p. 207.116 In 1828 the government gave the sanction to the lithographic press for one such

big contract for texts in Urdu that was made on applications received from surgeonsof native corps and civil stations for them. See L No. 149, J. Adam, Sec. Med. Board, toLt. Col. W. Casement, 7 Feb. 1828 and L No. 150, Lt. Col. W Casement, to J. Adam,Sec. to Med. Board, 15 Feb. 1828, consult. 15 Feb. 1828, BMC 15–22 Feb. 1828,P/32/55.


who had never been trained at the NMI.117 A happy Breton never failedto underline the great difference the lithographic press had made onthe diffusion of the new medical knowledge at minimum financialstrain to the government. This was particularly true of the productionof anatomical plates—which had so far remained major lacunae inmedical education. With the printing press in place he said all thatwas required was ‘paper and ink’. He always had words of appreciationfor Surgeon Rind, the superintendent of the press, for his ‘exertionsand solicitude-–to render me every assistance in his power in printingmaterial as speedily as I can prepare them for the use of students’.118

The Age of Reforms

This concluding section argues that the anglicist reforms of the1830s were limited in their impact. Without a doubt, institutionsof Arabic and Urdu Unani learning were abolished. New English-language institutions of Western medical knowledge and instructionwere established. However, neither of these changes extinguishedthe medical ethos already established from the previous interactionbetween the Company and the indigenous medical knowledges andlinguistic cultures. Multiple ways of articulating medical authoritycreated in the period of transition to colonial rule survived the reforms.These were used by the hakims in the late nineteenth century toorganise their resistance to increased colonial intrusions.

Abolition of the NMI and Madrasa Medical Class

In the 1830s age of reforms and financial crisis, both the medicalclass of the Calcutta madrasa and the NMI came under severe attackfrom the civil finance committee, which found it an uneconomical

117 L No. 7, enclosure, P. Breton, Supdtt. NMI’s report on the NMI, to J. Adam, Sec.to Med. Board, 25 March 1829, consult. 15 May 1829, BMC 8–15 May 1829, P/33/26.See also for dispatch and receipt of Bretons’s texts to Bombay and Madras, L No. 155,J Adam, Sec. to Med. Board, to Lt. Col. Casement, Sec. to Govt., 13 April 1829 andhis reply L No. 156, consult. 18 April 1829, BMC 10–18 April 1829, P/33/24.

118 L No. 181, enclosure, P. Breton, Supdtt. NMI, to G. Proctor, Sec. to Med. Board,7 March 1825, consult. 18 March 1825, BMC, 11–25 March 1825, P/31/16.


experiment and recommended its abolition.119 But more importantly,these institutions came under the fire of the anglicist lobby.They attacked oreintalist scholars, like John Tytler, and saw theirinstitutions as an impediment to the introduction of Western medicineand English instruction in India. With the backing of the newgovernor general, William Cavendish Bentinck, they supported theestablishment of a medical institution that would open up Westernmedical learning, in English to a ‘respectable class’ of Indians.120

The future of the medical class at the madrasa and the NMI thusgot tied up with the education debate between orientalist scholarsand the anglicists over the appropriate timing of introducing Englishinstruction in India.121 In 1835, Bentinck, on the recommendation ofthe native medical education committee, abolished the institution andthe medical class of the madrasa. He recommended the establishmentof a new medical college in Calcutta.122

The Company of course viewed the college as representing a newera in its functioning. From the viewpoint of London, the abolition wasviewed as a change of official policy and a victory of the anglicist lobby.Locally, the change was less perceptible. Many of the NMI staffersfrom its superintendent John Tytler to the native hakims, maulvis,pundits and native doctors like Ram Ishwar Awasthie made pleas tojoin the new college. They did not see it as representing any majorchange as far as the content of medical instruction was concerned.123

119 L No 93, Civil Finance Committee to W. C. Bentinck, 9 Sept. 1830, consult. 3Oct. 1833, BMC 5 Sept.–3 Oct. 1833, P/34/47.

120 See Dr. H. H. Goodeve’s paper on the NMI that makes a case for its abolition andsuggests the setting up of an alternate institute that would impart Western medicaltraining in English to Indians from respectable family backgrounds. He hoped thiswould create a class of medical professionals called sub-assistant surgeons. L No. 103,H. H. Goodeve’s paper, consult. 3 Oct. 1833, BMC 5 Sept.–3 Oct. 1833, P/34/47.

121 See for the details of this debate, D. Arnold, Colonising the Body.122 For the detailed report of the native medical education committee, see

L No. 179, Members native medical education committee to W. C. Bentinck, n.d.,consult. 28 Jan. 1835, Indian Military Consult. 23–28 Jan. 1835, P/35/9. Theirobjections to the NMI were on grounds of economy, unsatisfactory administrativecommand structure and lack of regulations. They critiqued the knowledge impartedin Urdu that did not teach Western medical science in its entirety. For Bentinck’sminute abolishing the NMI, see L No. 183, Minute by the Govt. Gen of India, 26 Jan.1835, consult. 28 Jan. 1835, India Mil. Consult. 23–28 Jan. 1835, P/35/9.

123 In 1835 the Medical Board forwarded the applications of NMI staffers HakimAbdul Majeed, Madhusudan Gupt and Prasad Pandit. They wanted appointment atthe new college or at the education deptt. They also requested for a pension sincethe closure of the NMI had left them jobless. Hakim Majeed could not be adjustedsince he did not know English, but the other two were taken into the service of the


In 1834, John Tytler made it clear to the Company that he did notsee any contradiction between the old and the new order. He wasneither against the introduction of the English language nor Westernmedical education. Indeed he said he was ‘clearly of the opinion thatEuropean literature should be made a permanent object of study;but I do not think the English language should be made an exclusivemedium of instruction’.124 The Company of course thought otherwise.It therefore turned down Tytler’s application to be considered for thesuperintendentship of the new college, despite his continued pleadingsfor a reconsideration of his case.125

British officers in India cautioned against making too much of thechange. As late as the 1850s the recommendations of Alloy Sprenger,the principal of the Calcutta madrasa, that urged the Company toshow only a philological interest in Arabic learning were opposedlocally. The council reporting on the madrasa advised the governmentagainst such an ideological shift. It argued that the elite Muslimfamilies continued to pursue a scholarly interest in Arabic sciences.The Company needed to be careful as for many families medicaleducation still was ‘more than just employment’.126 The note of cautionfrom officers in the field reflected that the medical culture of the periodoutlived these reforms.

At one level the Calcutta Medical College continued with the NMIagenda to invigorate the Arabic sciences through the introduction ofWestern-style anatomy and surgery. The similarity of the agendas ofthe two institutions was reflected in the transfer of medical items ofthe NMI to the new college for its use.127 But the NMI had grafted

General Committee of public instruction that produced books for the new college. SeeL No. 128, Medical Board to W. C. Bentinck, 17 Feb. 1835, consult. 4 May 1835,Indian Mil. Consult. 4–18 May 1835, P/35/16; also see L No. 133, J. C. C. Sutherland,Sec. to GCPI, to Col. W. Casement, 30 April 1835, consult. 4 May 1835, Indian Mil.Consult. 4–18 May 1835, P/35/16.

124 Tracts 15, Memorial of Surgeon John Tytler of the Bengal establishment,addressed to the court of directors of the EIC. L No. ix, J. Tytler’s reply to thecommittee of native medical education as to the best language to be used as a mediumof instruction, p. 26.

125 Ibid., p. 6. See also L No. xi, J. Tytler to J. Cosmo Melvill, Sec. to EIC, n.d., pp.31–40, for his strong case for the job of superintendent of the new college.

126 Selections from the records of the Bengal Govt., no. XIV, papers relating to theestablishment of the Presidency College of Bengal, Calcutta, India, 1854. MF 1/871.,pp. 4, 10–11.

127 L No. 129, Col. W. Casement, Sec. to Govt. of India, to Med. Board, 19 Feb. 1835,consult. 19 Feb. 1835, India Mil. Consult. 19–24 Feb. 1835, P/35/11; and L No. 9, Listof medicines and other articles from NMI to M. J. Bramley, Supdtt. of Calcutta Medical


the new knowledge on existing medical communities of literature andthe Urdu linguistic culture. In contrast, the new college carved out aless compromised way of operation. Bentinck was of the view that thenew institution would impart Western medical learning in its entirety,including human dissections, to Indians. He was convinced that thiswould be of great political and economic benefit to the Company. Itwould be more economical, since it would teach Western medicine inthe English language and cut expenses on translation. It would churnout better-qualified Indians. This would reduce the cost of maintainingthe huge establishment of Western practitioners in India. And costswould also go down when learning of oriental languages would nolonger be necessary for ‘Britishers’ posted in India.128 He appointed M.J. Bramley as the superintendent of the new institution and dispensedwith the services of Tytler. He was sanctioned 2 years on an allowanceof Rs. 1790.129

However, in March 1835, Bentinck perhaps did not realise thelimitations of his reforms when the medical board reported to himthat on the closure of the NMI they propose, ‘to furnish each of thestudents with a complete set of all the tracts in the native languageand to lodge the remainder in our office to meet future demands’.130

In May 1835, with their Urdu medical texts firmly in place, they ‘leftthe presidency in boats hired at their own expense under the care ofthe native assistant teacher Sheikh Waris Ali and Hira Lall’.131

As the students of the NMI and its staffers dispersed in their qasbasand towns of the north Indian countryside so did their new ideas andtexts about the fresh ways of articulating medical authority and linkingit to welfare of society. These continued to simmer in society alongsidethe flame of Arabic medical learning ignited by the Calcutta madrasa

College, 19 May 1835, consult. 1 June 1835, India Mil. Consult. 25 May–8 June1835, P/35/17. The list of items included anatomical models, surgical instruments,books like Lizar’s Anatomical Plates, Tuson’s Mythology, Dewhurst’s Anatomy of Muscles,Annesley’s Diseases of India, and accessories like tables, chairs, thermometer, electricmachine and other professional articles.

128 For Bentinck’s minute abolishing the NMI, see L No. 183, Minute by the Govt.Gen of India, 26 Jan. 1835, consult. 28 Jan. 1835, India Mil. Consult. 23–28 Jan.1835, P/35/9.

129 L Nos. 184, 186–190. These are copies of the Government Order of 26 Jan.1835, abolishing the NMI, that were sent to the Adjutant General Army, MedicalBoard, John Tytler, etc. consult. 7 May 1832, BMC 23 April–14 May 1832, P/34/21.

130 L No. 184, Members Medical Board to W.C. Bentinck, 4 March 1835, consult.13 March 1835, India Mil. Consult. 13–18 March 1835, P/35/13.

131 J. Hutchinson, Sec. Med. Board, to members of Medical Board, 16 May 1835,consult. 1 June 1835, India Mil. Consult. 25 May–8 June 1835, P/35/17.


even though its medical class was abolished. And the patronage toPersian medical learning at the level of regional courts also continuedto flicker. All these strands of learning continued to invigorate themedical culture of the region. And this was more than evident in thelate nineteenth century when hakims used the Persian, Arabic andUrdu strands of the medical culture to contest colonial medical drivesin the period of high nationalism.

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history of unani medicine

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early colonial north

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