Overview

Indian Medicinal Plants in the Shifting Terrains of Science traces the medical and botanical reconnaissance of indigenous medicinal plants in nineteenth-century Bengal and observes their integration into the framework of modern science. These processes involved critical inroads into mapping the natural world and building foundations for the disciplines of medicine and botany in the colonies. Varied and diachronic processes of scientific review of the colony's natural resources were concurrent with rapid epistemological advances on the global scene and a simultaneous build-up of utilitarian colonial configurations. This led to the eventual budding of critical nationalist and popular indigenous responses and actions, making way for a history of convergence between opposing, contrasting, balancing and adaptive forces of intellection within both the indigenous and non-indigenous spheres. The present volume arose from a deeply felt need to draw attention to the critical issues of engagements and disjuncture between science and environment as well as the increasing endangerment of medicinal plants in the present era. The documentation of this journey also sheds light on these silent species before irretrievable changes render them into oblivion.

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Nupur Dasgupta is Professor of History, Jadavpur University. She was the recipient of the Charles Wallace Fellowship at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Calcutta and the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich. Her areas of interest include ancient Indian history and archaeology as well as the history of science, technology and medicine. She has published several books, including The Dawn of Technology in Indian Protohistory; Suvarnatantra: A Treatise on Alchemy, as well as several co-edited volumes on the themes of her research, such as Exploring the Green Horizon: Aspects of Environmental History.

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