Dr Pranjivandas Manekchand Mehta MD,MS,FCPS 1889–1981 and Caraka Samhita (1949)

Abstract

Pranjivandas Manekchand Mehta (1889–1981), MD, MS, FCPS, also known as Dr P M Mehta, was an Indian physician and surgeon in Bombay, who then became the personal physician of the Maharajah Jamsaheb of the former Princely State of Nawanagar, Gujarat, British India. The Jamsaheb appointed Mehta as the Chief Medical Officer of Nawanagar, and with the guidance of the French radiologist, Jean Saidman, oversaw the construction of the first solarium in India. Mehta persuaded the Jamsaheb to fund an institution dedicated to Ayurvedic studies, named the Shri Gulabkunverba Ayurvedic Society, the precursor to the first Ayurveda college in India, and he became the Director of the Central Institute of Research on Indigenous Systems, which later came under the umbrella of the Institute of Teaching and Research in Ayurveda, Jamnagar. P M Mehta was instrumental in establishing a medical college in Nawanagar's capital, now known as the M. P. Shah Medical College, Jamnagar. His work in Ayurvedic medicine and assembling a group of Sanskrit scholars led to a detailed translation of the ancient Sanskrit medical text Çaraka Samhita, also spelt Charaka Samhita, into English, Hindi and Gujarati, published in six volumes in 1949. In 2022, the World Health Organization and the Indian Government established the Global Centre for Traditional Medicine in India, and chose Jamnagar as its location, noting that that was where graduate-level Ayurvedic studies began. Mehta's efforts in Ayurvedic education and the Çaraka Samhita translations have largely been forgotten over several decades, and a recently issued reprint omits the mention of his name. The aim of this paper is to give some glimpses into Mehta's life and his role in the revival of Ayurveda in India, during the lead-up to and during the early years of independent India.

Keywords

Pranjivandas M Mehta Indian medical history Nawanagar (Jamnagar)

Early life and education

Pranjivandas Manekchand Mehta was born in 1889,¹ in a village in the former Princely State of Nawanagar, Gujarat, British India.² Figure 1. He is not to be confused with the Parsi lawyer Pherozeshah Merwanji Mehta (1845–1915), or Dr Pranjivandas Jagjivandas Mehta (1864–1932) who achieved fame due to his friendship with Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948).

Figure 1.

Dr Pranjivandas M Mehta (from the collection of Mrs Nayana Goradia, his granddaughter).

Mehta's education and early medical training were essentially Western. He attended Bombay's Wilson College, developed in 1832 from the Scottish missionary Reverend John Wilson's (1804–1875) Free General Assembly Institution School, which continues today.³ He subsequently joined the generously funded Bombay's Grant Medical College, named after Sir Robert Grant (1779–1838), who was the Governor of Bombay. After graduating, Mehta practised as a physician and surgeon in Bombay,^4,5 and as early as 1932 he was using the post-nominals FCPS (Fellow of the College of Physicians and Surgeons).⁶

Nawanagar

In 1933 Mehta was invited by Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja GCSI GCIE (1895–1966), the Maharaja Jamsaheb of Nawanagar State from 1933 to 1966, Figure 2, to become his personal physician and appointed him the Chief Medical Officer of the State.⁷ A significant influencer in Mehta's life, Sir Digvijaysinhji, was constantly in the public eye. He was married to Kunverba (1910–1994), Figure 3, daughter of the Maharaja of Sirohi, and had succeeded his uncle, the famed cricketer Colonel K S Ranjitsinhji GCSI GBE (1872–1933). It appears no coincidence that the Colonel had been being treated at a solarium run by the French radiologist, Jean Saidman (1897–1949), at Aix-les-Bains, France.^8,9 In 1933 Mehta persuaded Sir Digvijaysinhji to expand the existing Irwin Hospital.¹⁰ This was followed by the creation of the M. P. Shah Medical College, Jamnagar, with the help of a donation from the Gujarati Jain businessman and politician, Meghjibhai Pethraj Shah (1905–1964).¹⁰ Mehta also initiated the construction of a solarium on the campus of the medical college.⁹ In an article published in 1939, he clarified that to have a solarium in Jamnagar was the idea of the Colonel.⁸ It is possible that the failure of conventional treatment led the Colonel to explore alternative natural therapies at the solarium at Aix-les-Bains. He must have gained some benefit leading him to feel that sunny India would be a more useful location for a solarium, and beneficial to his subjects.⁸ The Colonel died in 1933, but the project was completed by his nephew, the new Jamsaheb. The structure was named the Ranjit Institute of Poly-Radio-Therapy, and it was functional from 1934.⁸ It was 40 feet tall, and it had 10 treatment rooms in the rotating section. One rotation took an hour. Some rooms had filters to permit rays of predetermined wavelengths suitable for the various diseases treated there.¹⁰ This was the only solarium in India and one of three in the world. Mehta said himself that ‘the whole construction has been planned so as to make use of radiation, especially solar, in the most scientific way’.⁸ A few years later, in 1942, he reiterated that ‘measurements are necessary to the progress of any science or art’.^11,12

Figure 2.

Jam Shri Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, Maharaja Jam Saheb of Nawanagar by Bassano Ltd, whole-plate film negative, 21 October 1935, ^©National Portrait Gallery, London.

Figure 3.

Maharani Shri Gulabkunverba Sahiba by Bassano Ltd, whole-plate film ^©National Portrait Gallery, London.

Sir Digvijaysinhji later gained international fame by establishing the Polish Refugee Camp in Balachadi, a village near the Gulf of Kutch, which housed 640 refugee children during World War II. Sir Digvijaysinhji catered for the children's education, healthcare and cultural events, and his memory is cherished to this day in Warsaw, Poland, where memorials and schools have been established in his name.¹³ It is quite possible that Mehta may have had some involvement in the care of these children.

Recollections of a nephew

Dr Dilip Mehta is the nephew of P M Mehta. He recalls that his uncle, known to him as ‘mama’, was Chief Medical Officer and personal physician to the Jamsaheb. He was awarded a salary of Rs. 2000/month and was not required to pay any tax. This arrangement provided a significant amount of money in those days and was equivalent to the salary of the Jamsaheb's Prime Minister. In addition, Mehta received a rent-free bungalow to live in and had access to a compartment in a private train so that he could travel in comfort anywhere on the narrow-gauge railway in Saurashtra and through Viramgaum to Rajasthan.¹⁰ Not only was this arrangement highly attractive to Mehta, but it also provided him with the opportunity to improve the health standards in the State.¹⁰

Dilip remembers that Mehta was deeply involved in Ayurveda in the 1940s:

Mama's days were very structured. He got up at 5 a.m. and I would make tea for him. It was a pain to do so in winter using a kerosene stove in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Mama would then read for at least two hours. He always slept in a large bed with a lamp so that he could read and with several books and some pedas (sweets) or biscuits for a midnight snack and his dentures in a box. He was an eclectic and voracious reader. His interests were wide. He read history, almost all textbooks on medicine, history of medicine, books on gems, astrology, astronomy, philosophy, science and other subjects but not on politics or classical literature. He read books in Sanskrit and Hindi too. At about 8 a.m. he would come downstairs and meet subordinates who came to see him. Several of them came to get medical help while others came just to pay respects to someone who was considered very influential in the kingdom. Sometimes he would have half a cup of tea with them. Around 9 a.m. he would shave and then go for his bath (everything was kept ready for him, either by a servant or by me). He always wore a three-piece silk suit, tie, and carried a cane (for style, not support) and striped shirts with separate stiff white collars. He also sported a safari hat. His driver Akubhai would bring the car in front of the house and take Mama to the hospital. He came back around 1 p.m. He would change into comfortable pyjamas and kurta. He would peck at his lunch (he was always a light eater) and go to sleep with a hot water bottle even in summer) and with the fan on. I could never understand that combination. Later in the afternoon he would conduct the administrative work of the hospital and sign a lot of papers. The clerks would bring up the files and show him where to sign while someone would explain what it was about. After his tea and a snack, he would go out for a walk usually with someone from the Caraka Samhita project or hospital staff. He had dinner at about 8 p.m. and then he would play bridge or rummy. There would be light banter while playing cards. He went to bed at about 10 p.m. but read for about an hour before going to sleep. He had a sharp temper. When angry, he would get red in the face and was so upset that he could barely control himself from striking out. I have seen him hurl a glass across the room to get his frustrations out. Nevertheless, most of the time he was very patient with people. Mama was very curious about everything, and he got into all sorts of details. For example, he asked someone to make a foldable tent with a mosquito net so it could be put over a child (Nayana, his granddaughter) to prevent mosquitoes from biting her but at the same time one should be able to see the child inside. The mechanic made five to six different models using umbrella parts. One model finally worked and Nayana was protected from the famous Jamnagar blood suckers! Mama was a forceful and spellbinding speaker. I have heard him give a talk to over a thousand Vaidyas (Ayurvedic medical practitioners) and Hakims (Unani physicians). He had them listening patiently and with rapt attention. His speeches were humorous and full of anecdotes. He used his vast and varied knowledge to make interesting points. He was also a writer, having published several books, most of them dealing with medical or health-related topics.

Ayurvedic studies

Mehta's interest in the history of Ayurveda certainly began before the 1940s.⁹ In 1938, at the meeting of the Baroda Medical Union, as Director of the Solarium, Jamnagar, Mehta read his paper titled ‘Basic Principles of Solarium Treatment’, in which he made reference to cures of leprosy and skin diseases by exposure to the sun in the seventh century Sanskrit hymn Surya Shataka.⁸ In 1940, he succeeded in persuading the Jamsaheb to establish the Gulabkunverba Ayurvedic Society.¹⁰ His nephew recalls that Mehta collected medicinal plants whenever he travelled and brought them back to Nawanagar to be planted in a specially designed garden. In 1944, a capacious building for Ayurvedic studies was constructed with a generous donation from the Jamsaheb and was named the Dhanwantari Mandir after the legendary physician to the Gods to whom the science of Ayurveda is attributed. Recognizing the value of the work attributed to Çaraka and failing to find a satisfactory translation of this work in English, Mehta took to building a team to work on a meticulous translation from Sanskrit into English, Hindi and Gujarati.¹⁴ It was under the aegis of the Gulabkunverba Ayurvedic Society that reputed Ayurvedic physicians were invited to develop this branch of medicine in the State. This led to the development of a magnum opus on the Çaraka Samhita in six volumes which were edited by Mehta. On 1 July 1946, a separate college for Ayurvedic Studies was established and named the Shree Gulabkunverba Ayurved Mahavidyalaya, which metamorphosed in 1999 into the Institute of Teaching and Research in Ayurveda.¹⁰

His activities in the years approaching independent India can be seen calling out for Ayurvedic studies.¹⁵ One of Mehta's translators was the Gujarati scholar in Sanskrit, Vaidya Chandrakant Prabhushankar Shukla (1922–2015). Mehta had met him in Shukla's hometown of Bhuj, and recognising his talent, invited him to Jamnagar. Upon joining the Gulabkunverba Ayurvedic Society in Jamnagar in 1944, Shukla wholeheartedly dedicated himself to the monumental task of translating the Çaraka Samhita, initiated under the Chairmanship of Dr P. M. Mehta, in collaboration with other esteemed luminaries of Ayurveda, including Shri Yadavji Trikamji Acharya and Shri Durgashankar Kevalram Shastri.¹⁶ Shukla would later become the Dean of the Institute of Post Graduate Training and Research in Ayurveda, Gujarat Ayurveda University, Jamnagar.¹⁷ The first page of volume 1, the Çaraka Samhita in 1949, clearly marks Dr Pranjivandas Manekchand Mehta, President of the Çaraka Samhita Editorial Board of the Shree Gulabkunverba Ayurvedic Society. Listed under his name are the contributors of the Sanskrit, English, Gujarati and Hindi translations, including Shukla.¹⁸ Of the six volumes, the first, which contains historical data and a philosophical resume of the life along with the significance of Çaraka, is entirely the work of Mehta as recalled by Dr Narendra Bhatt of the Someshwar Bhatt Foundation, who met Dr P M Mehta regularly in Bombay.¹⁹

Figures 4 and 5 and Table 1

Figure 4.

List of contents volume 1.

Figure 5.

List of contents volume 1.

Table 1.

Various editions of Caraka Samhita and commentaries.

Volume 1	Various editions of Caraka Samhita and commentaries
	Medical institutions in ancient India Part 1
	Medical institutions in ancient India Part 2
	Some aspects of life in Caraka's time
	The philosophical concepts in Caraka
	The science of the triumvirate of pathogenesis or of constitutional pathology
Volume 2	Sutrasthana – the section on general principles
Volume 3	Sarirasthana – the section on the human embodiment
Volume 4	Chikitsasthana – the section on therapeutics
Volume 5	Sutrasthana – index
Volume 6	Vishyakramanik

Note: Throughout these six volumes, the name is printed as ‘Caraka’ and not ‘Çaraka’.

According to the Indian philosopher Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918–1993), in Science and Society in Ancient India (1977), Mehta was the ‘general editor of the magnificent edition of the Caraka-Samhita, originally produced during the period of systematic codification of medicine’ or the ‘scientific era of medicine in India’.²⁰ The foreword to volume 1, written by Mehta, provides information on the motivation behind the book.

The Caraka Samhita with its firm grasp of the very roots of life and of the working of the human organism can serve as an eternal touchstone for evaluation of newer findings in the field of health and therapeutics. There was a general desire to fully understand the origins of medicine in India, and despite an earlier translation of the work, the Caraka Samhita in a form intelligible to the scholar, practitioner and layman remained a desideratum. It is to fulfil this general need that the present effort was undertaken.¹⁸

He furthermore wrote …

that some eight years back (1941) the Gulabkunverba Ayurvedic Society of Jamnagar was formed with an anticipation of this eventuality that was to come, and as a first but inevitable step in the fulfilment of that vision, the publication of the great classic of Indian medicine rendered into the foremost modern Indian languages and into English, the international language of today, was undertaken. The full gravity of the task was slowly realized only after entering upon it.¹⁸

Mehta wrote that …

we did not start on this task with any ambition to achieve unprecedented profundity or originality in the work. We were content to have produced a readable and reasonably correct translation of the texts and not stand between the author and the reader to any degree. If we have succeeded in that, we have cause to feel satisfaction. But at no time have we lost sight of the fact that the ancient texts have to be rendered intelligible to the readers placed in the context of modern life, language and patterns of scientific thought. If our achievement bears out this, its object will have been fulfilled.¹⁸

Dilip Mehta recalls that his uncle was able to attract the finest Sanskrit scholars, translators, botanists, and Ayurvedic experts from around the country. The quality of their work and reputation mattered and not whom they knew or where they were from. The most well known was Krisnamurthy who was a Sanskrit and English scholar and a poet. His daughters Yamini and Padmini were at that time five and seven years of age and later they became famous classical Indian dancers.

I remember the discussions at that time and the people working on Caraka Samhita were very idealistic, worked very hard and seemed to get along well with each other. Dr P M Mehta was a good leader and an organizer. The mundane details of keeping the show running were handled superbly by one Mr Dholakia. The aim was to translate the outdated text in Sanskrit and bring it out in English as well as Gujarati while modernizing the concepts therein. His group would argue for hours about what exactly a phrase or paragraph meant. They were also taken up by the fact that this system was indigenous to India and some of the concepts seemed way ahead of their time when compared to ancient Western medicine. They published a six-volume set of Çaraka Samhita in 1949.¹⁰

Later works

Dilip Mehta's memories of his uncle's interest in the history of medicine and research correlate precisely with Mehta's writings after 1950. Mehta wrote a ‘History of Medicine’ in 1952.²¹ In 1955 Mehta, as Director of the Central Institute of Research on Indigenous Systems, published a book titled Vaidyakīya subhāṣitavalī, also known as Medical Anthology. It was reviewed in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences by Kenneth David Keele (1909–1987), a British physician and later President of the History of Medicine Society of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1960 to 1962. Keele notes that the Oath of Çaraka is possibly the most interesting part of the whole anthology, because of its similarity with the Oath of Hippocrates and he goes on to say that

since Çaraka's great medical book consists of a collection of the medical wisdom from antiquity, and the date of his life is unknown, it is impossible to decide whether this Oath precedes or was derived from that of Hippocrates. More interesting is the evidence it presents that medical morality has been so uniform amongst men of all races at all.²¹

Acclaim of Dr P M Mehta's contribution

The 1949 translated Çaraka Samhita won Dr P M Mehta wide acclaim and according to Dilip Mehta, there were letters from Dr Henry Sigerist, (1891–1957), Swiss medical historian, Dr Jean Filliozat, (1906–1982), the French historian who wrote important works on the history of Indian medicine, and Dr Max Thorek (1880–1960), a Hungarian American surgeon who founded the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. These letters unfortunately cannot be found today. Henry Sigerist had previously recommended the establishment of an Institute for the History in India and Mehta contributed to this by publishing work on the medical man and his ideals in ‘The Golden Age of Ayurveda’.²² On retirement, Mehta settled in Bombay with his sons and continued his studies, writing papers and discussing Ayurveda with interested students and postgraduates. Dr P M Metha died in Bombay shortly after sustaining a fractured femoral neck.

Subsequent commentaries and books on the Çaraka Samhita make little or no mention of Mehta's pioneering and detailed work. This is all the more striking as the work edited by Mehta had, in volume 1, a list of earlier publications of the Çaraka Samhita listed over 15 pages. At the end of this section is the following statement:

Besides the translations in Indian languages like Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Telngu, Malayalam etc., we find references to enable us to conclude that Caraka Samhita was translated into Arabic, Tibetan, Pahlvi and Persian. Alberuni refers to an Arabic translation by Ali-ibn-zain from Tabaristan. This was prepared for the use of the princes of the House of Barmecides. One Abdulla-b-Alee translated Caraka Samhita from Persian into Arabic by order of Yahya b -Khali. For enthusiastic research workers, the vaults of Government Oriental Mss. Library, Madras (formerly at Tirupati); Scindia Oriental Institute, Ujjain, Sanskrit College, Calcutta; Dacca University P O. Ramna, Bombay University Library; Bombay Branch of Royal Asiatic Society, Dahi Laxmi Library, Nadiad; Indian Museum, Calcutta; Nathadwara Library, Udaipur; Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta; Kottah State Library, Kottah; Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute; Bharat Itihasa Samshodhau Mandal, Poona; Anand ashram, Travancore University; D, A. V. College, Lahore, can provide valuable materials to work upon.¹⁸

In conclusion, Dr P M Mehta and his team produced a detailed and scholarly edition of the Sanskrit classic named after Çaraka. Spread over six volumes, it provides a wealth of information on the original contents of the Samhita, an analysis of various editions of this work before Mehta's team started, and expert commentaries that improve our understanding of the medical and philosophical aspects of the text. To give but one example; discussion of the choice of who can be a teacher of medicine, the duties of medical teachers, and how students wishing to study medicine should be evaluated and assessed periodically once admitted to the teacher's home for training, all carry important lessons for planners of medical education in India even today. Similarly, the descriptions of quacks amongst medical practitioners and the codes of medical ethics laid down centuries ago deserve study and admiration.

The aim of this article is to prompt further study of the life and work of Dr P M Mehta, particularly his achievements as an author of the Çaraka Samhita, from which there is so much to be gained especially in the understanding of Indian medicine.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Mrs Nayana Goradia, Dr Mehta's granddaughter and an accomplished author, has been of immense help. From her files, she provided much useful information and photographs. I have reproduced the portrait supplied by her. Dr Dilip Mehta (son of Dr Mehta's sister) shared his memories from the 1940s. I have included some of the above. I am grateful to Dr Ashok Vaidya, a well-known Indian clinical pharmacologist. He brought alive to me the field of the history of medicine and in the process got me inextricably addicted to it. He has shared his insights into the life and work of Dr Mehta, some of which I have included here. Dr Narendra Bhatt, a consultant in Ayurveda and the son of Vaidya Someshwar Bhatt, met and interacted weekly with Dr Mehta after the latter had retired and was staying with his sons in Bombay. I am grateful for his help and shared memories of Dr Mehta.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Sunil K Pandya

Author biography

Sunil K Pandya, Professor of Neurosurgery, Seth G S Medical College and K E M Hospital Mumbai, India.

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