Compendium On Traditional Tribal Medicine

Abstract

Preparation of the compendium on traditional tribal medicine has been an attempt to collect, collate, compile and comprehend the studies conducted on Traditional Tribal Medicine of various tribal communities in Odisha, understand tribal people's perception of diseases, their indigenous typology and attributed causes of sickness and health deterioration, preserve the knowledge base of the traditional healers vis-vis the sources of medicine, process of their preparation, prescription, their application and effectiveness, prepare a community wise inventory of indigenous medicines & healing practices and analyze the importance of magico- religious practices associated in healing, process of their transmission from the healers to their disciples and their importance in tribal context. The Compendium has helped tounderstand the gaps in studies undertaken so far in ethnomedicine, compile and consolidate the treasure of information on ethnomedicine of tribes at one place and made the information available in public domain in disaggregated form. The study has suggested that an action plan must be formulated and put into implementation for comprehensive documentation of tribal traditional medicine that would help enrich tribal life and knowledge by which the modern society could also benefit.Effort should be taken toset up tribal resource groups and guide and encourage them to use their traditional, ethnobotanical and ethnoecological knowledge to identify, preserve and propagate the useful and endangered species, to under-take indigenous plantations and herbal gardens.Future policy and research projects should accord importance to the tribals' ethnic, ethical and emotional attachments with plant world and their philosophical interpretations embedded in their folk lore, oral lore, art forms, etc