Karnataka plans to set up Ayurveda University

Karnataka will set up a university for ayurvedic studies. Apart from a number of ayurvedic dispensaries, the state has ayurvedic colleges in Bangalore, Mysore and Bellary with hospitals. There are several manufacturers of traditional ayurvedic medicines also in the state.

The Government has also proposed to develop three ayurvedic colleges as part of its efforts to promote ayurveda, which is receiving greater support as most of these herbal medicines have no or very little side effects as claimed by ayurvedic practitioners.

Medical Education Minister Ramachandra Gowda said at Nanjangud, the town which was famous for ayurvedic toothpowder, near Mysore, that the state government was fast processing the proposal to establish the ayurveda university. It had set apart Rs 5 crore in the 2010-11 budget for the development of ayurvedic colleges and hospitals for advanced level treatment.

It has also proposed to set up a research centre in the Government College of Ayurvedic Medicine in Mysore to mark its centenary.

Recalling the past tradition of ayurveda in the country, the minister said historical records reveal that as many as 18,000 students were studying this traditional system of medicine in the ancient universities of Nalanda and Takshila.

The minister was inaugurating the ayurvedic medicine manufacturing unit of the Kerala-based century-old Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala in the Nanjangud Industrial Area on Monday.

Though it had an ancient background, ayurveda had suffered in the later period. Many of the herbs were being lost and there was need to protect at least the remaining species of herbal plants and expand research further for their better utilisation. A proper understanding between ayurveda and allopathy practitioners could help promote ayurveda better, Gowda said.

District in-charge minister S Suresh Kumar, who presided said Nanjangud had already housed the famous B V Pandit’s Vaidyashala and setting up of the Kottakkal unit had made the temple town a ‘home of ayurveda’.

The unit, the third such facility, the first two being at Kottakkal and Kanjikode near Palakkad, is being established at a cost of Rs 12 crore on 8.35 acre land to manufacture ayurvedic medicines on modern lines.

The medicines manufactured here would be released in Karnataka and Kerala, Vaidya Sala Managing Trustee P K Warrier said.