Botany in Vedas

Description

A part from spiritual and metaphysical knowledge, Vedas are also treasure of scientific information. Vedic mathematics, Vedic astronomy and Vedic physics have gained enormous popularity among modern scientists. Vedic botany is also a full-fledged discipline and its advocacy is the basic purpose of this book. Although literature related to botanical wisdom in Vedas are available but they are mostly in discrete form. Attempt has been made to compile it at one place for the benefit of interested readers. Another noteworthy aspect of this book is the parallelism drawn between Vedic botany and modern day botany. Often critics of oriental knowledge argue about scientific validity of this information. This notion will be effectively removed after going through the pages of this book. Descriptions and information related to plants present in Vedas have been compared with modern science and the similarity has been highlighted. Description of morphology, anatomy, physiology and embryology of plants found in Vedas has been presented in this book. Almost all aspects of Ecology and Environmental Science are dealt in detail in four Vedas and a critical analysis of this aspect is presented in this book. Therapeutic uses of plants are another noteworthy aspect of Vedic literature. A detail discussion of few selected plants along with their uses, identification and classification is available in this book. To establish scientific validity of these plants, active principles present in them has also been given. This provides concrete evidence of recommendations present in Vedas regarding medicinal plants. At the end, definition of medical terms is provided for the benefit of readers. Hopefully, the book will prove to be a good reading material for persons interested in botany, environmental science, Sanskrit and indology.