The gift of health: medicine as Śiva’s dharma in premodern India

Abstract

Abstract Concerned with the intersection of early Indian medicine and religion, this article examines the scope, scale, and influence of the medical philanthropy undertaken by Śaiva Hindu communities in medieval South Asia. It begins first with a non-exhaustive survey of epigraphs in Sanskrit, Tĕlugu, Tamiḻ, and Kannaḍa from various regions of South Asia during the Śaiva Age. Doing so, it identifies a substantive pattern of Śaiva monasteries, temples, and patrons building hospitals, donating medicines, establishing endowments for physicians, and/or teaching medical texts. It then proceeds to recognise the Śivadharma corpus, especially the Śivadharmaśāstra and Śivadharmottara , as a key theoretical guide that almost certainly informed and incentivised Śaiva medical interventions through its conceptualisation of the ārogyadāna (gift of health) as a highly meritorious act of dharma. The article also speaks to how the Śivadharma corpus helped nurture among Śaivas a broader concern for therapeutic interventions and longevity, which I suggest was also reflected in their engagements with alchemy and in their development and circulation of curative Sanskrit tantras. Finally, using philology, this article identifies the impact that the Śivadharma corpus had on both influencing the conceptualisation and normative importance of medical philanthropy in broader Hindu (esp. Smārta) discussions of charity in late medieval digests on dharma.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2026 · DOI ↗