Basic Research in Ayurveda: The Questions We Never Asked, the Ecosystem We Never Built - You Cannot Import a Research Culture

Foreign campuses can import teaching but not research culture. Ayurveda faces the same problem at home.

Dr. Aakash Kembhavi

MD (Ayu-Shalya), PGDMLS, MS (Counseling & Psychotherapy) Academician, Clinician & Researcher Chief Editor, International Journal of Ayurveda

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are my personal opinions. They do not represent the position of any institution, organisation or body with which I am or have been affiliated, and nothing here is medical advice. In the interest of transparency, integrity and honesty, I disclose that this article was developed in collaboration with AI tools, which I used for research, structuring and drafting. The idea, the views and the final conclusions remain my own.*

A Newspaper Report and a LinkedIn Comment

On 13 October, Business Standard reported that foreign universities setting up campuses in India are unlikely to reshape the country’s research ecosystem any time soon. Most are expected to run teaching-led programmes in business, finance, data science, cybersecurity and software engineering, with research as a later and more uncertain ambition.

The reasons the experts gave are worth reading slowly.

  • Manindra Agrawal of IIT Kanpur pointed out that research-focused universities always run at a loss and need government or donor backing.
  • Shantanu Rooj said tuition-led economics alone are unlikely to create research-intensive universities quickly, because laboratories, doctoral and postdoctoral systems, long-duration grants and sustained faculty investment are needed.
  • Syed Sultan Ahmed made the simplest point of all: teaching can be imported easily, but the whole research ecosystem is hard to bring along with it.

Under a LinkedIn post about this report, one comment claimed that basic research in India is not up to the mark. IISc, TIFR, the IISERs and the CSIR laboratories do serious basic work. What is true is that India’s research intensity is modest. Spending on research and development is below one per cent of GDP, and private-sector participation is limited.

Now replace “India” with “Ayurveda” and the comment becomes far more uncomfortable, because the claim is closer to the truth.

Basic research in Ayurveda exists, but it is thin and scattered, and it rests on almost none of the infrastructure that makes research cumulative.

The newspaper’s lesson applies directly to us: research follows ecosystems, not buildings and not brand names.

What Basic Research Means in Ayurveda

Basic research asks “what is it, and how does it work?”

Applied and clinical research asks “does it help patients?”

The first builds the concepts, standards and tools on which the second stands.

A clinical trial of a formulation is only as meaningful as the definitions of the disease, the drug and the outcome that go into it. If those foundations are weak, a well-conducted trial still produces a weak answer.

The classical Pramana framework, with Pratyaksha, Anumana, Aptopadesha and Yukti, was designed to serve exactly this purpose: to establish a sound footing before application. Basic research in Ayurveda is, in that sense, the modern continuation of a very old discipline.

In practice it falls into four areas.

1. Fundamental and conceptual research

This is the study of the core constructs: Tridosha, Prakriti, Agni, Ama, Srotas and the Rasa, Guna, Virya and Vipaka framework. The task is to define each construct operationally, identify what can be measured, and test whether the concept does the explanatory work claimed for it.

The gap is that concepts are mostly used as explanations rather than treated as hypotheses. “Agni” is measured as digestion in one paper, metabolism in another and immunity in a third. A construct that means everything cannot be tested, and a construct that cannot be tested cannot be improved.

2. Literary and Samhita research

This covers critical editing, the comparison of manuscripts and printed editions, textual variants, terminology, semantics and the historical layering of the classics, including the Brihat Trayi and the commentaries.

The gap is that we teach, quote and build research on printed editions that differ from one another, often without asking which reading the Acharya actually wrote. Digitisation efforts exist but are scattered, and semantic analysis of key terms is rare. Every conceptual study quietly depends on the text being right, so this is the foundation under the foundation.

Here the work includes pharmacognosy (authentication, adulteration and the botanical identity of source plants), pharmaceutics (standard procedures for Shodhana, Bhavana, Murchana and other processes), phytochemistry, and preclinical pharmacology and toxicology.

This is the area with the most activity, yet the gaps are real. Plants such as Brahmi and Shankhapushpi have more than one botanical claimant. Processing steps are rarely validated to show what they change and whether the change is reproducible. Preclinical studies are sometimes run on a formulation without confirming the identity of its raw materials.

4. Methodological research

This means developing and validating the instruments Ayurveda needs: Prakriti assessment scales, Dosha and Agni questionnaires, and outcome measures that reflect Ayurvedic concepts rather than only borrowed ones.

A number of tools exist. Far fewer have been tested for reliability across assessors, validity across populations and languages, or agreement with one another. A tool that two vaidyas cannot use to reach the same Prakriti is not yet a measuring instrument.

The Borrowed Science Problem

The most common failure in what is called basic research is the borrowed assay.

A formulation is given to animals or patients, a laboratory value moves, and the paper concludes that the formulation “improves Agni” or “balances Vata”.

Consider what has been skipped. What is Agni, in the text and in operational terms? Is the chosen marker a valid proxy for it, and who decided so? Would the Acharyas recognise that marker as describing what they meant? If the value had not moved, would the author have concluded that Agni was unchanged, or that the marker was wrong? Without answers to these questions, the study measures something, but it is not clear that it measures Ayurveda.

Modern methods are not the problem. Using them without first making the Ayurvedic construct measurable on its own terms is.

The Questions Basic Research Must Ask

An ecosystem is useful only if it asks the right questions. A starting list for any basic research proposal in Ayurveda:

  1. What exactly is the construct? Can it be defined operationally without distorting the classical meaning? If it cannot be defined, it cannot yet be studied.
  2. What would count as evidence for it, and what would count against it? A concept that no result can contradict is a belief, not a hypothesis. This is the discipline of Yukti: reasoning that can be checked.
  3. Is the text we are testing the text the Acharya wrote? Which edition, which manuscript, which variant reading? Tantrayukti, the classical methods of exposition, give us tools for reading carefully before we test.
  4. Is the plant we are testing the plant the text names? Botanical identity, part used, season, source and adulteration must be settled before pharmacology begins.
  5. Does the process change the product in a measurable and reproducible way? If Shodhana or Bhavana matters, show what it changes. If it does not change anything measurable, we should know that too.
  6. Does the tool measure what it claims to measure? Reliability across assessors, validity across populations, and agreement with other tools should be reported, not assumed.
  7. What is the null hypothesis, and are we prepared to accept it? A research culture is defined less by its positive findings than by its willingness to publish negative ones.

These questions are not hostile to Ayurveda. They are what Pramana, applied honestly, demands.

The Ecosystem This Work Needs

Questions need a place to be asked. Drawing on the same lessons the newspaper report offers about foreign campuses, a functioning ecosystem for Ayurveda needs seven things.

  1. A shared conceptual agenda. A community-agreed roadmap of priority constructs, their operational definitions, and what will count as validation. Without it, laboratories produce disconnected studies that never add up.
  2. A researcher pipeline. Research-track doctoral programmes with real training in methodology, biostatistics, philosophy of science and textual skills, followed by postdoctoral positions. At present the career path is mostly “teacher”, with research added on as an obligation.
  3. Long-duration funding. Multi-year, peer-reviewed grants with separate streams for basic and clinical work, along with fellowships. One-year projects cannot validate a concept.
  4. Shared infrastructure. Core facilities for pharmacognosy, analytical chemistry and preclinical work, a reference repository of authenticated plant samples, and a digitised corpus of critical Samhita editions that everyone can use.
  5. Interdisciplinary collaboration as equals. Sanskritists, philosophers, statisticians, pharmacologists and epidemiologists working alongside vaidyas, ideally through joint laboratories with institutions such as the IITs, IISc and ICMR. The report makes the same point: partnerships can substitute for building everything in-house.
  6. Quality governance. Functioning ethics committees, pre-registration, replication, data sharing, and journals with genuine peer review. Researchers should be judged on the quality of their questions, not the count of their publications.
  7. Protected time and a questioning culture. Faculty need relief from the teaching and compliance load that consumes research hours, and institutions need a norm of testing claims rather than affirming them.

The order matters. Agenda, people and funding come first. Buildings come last. Experienced researchers, as the experts quoted in the report note, choose institutions for the strength of the research ecosystem and not for the salary or the signboard.

The Uncomfortable Reality

It would be unfair to say nothing good exists. There are individual scholars doing careful textual and pharmacognostic work, departments that have built real capability, and collaborations with modern science institutions that have produced useful results. These are worth naming and supporting.

But they are pockets, not a system.

**Much of the research output in Ayurveda is driven by regulatory requirements, promotion criteria and publication counts. **

A dissertation is completed because it must be, a paper is published because a form demands it, and the project ends when the funding or the semester ends.

This produces output.

It does not reliably produce knowledge, because knowledge accumulates only when the next study can build on the last one, and that requires shared definitions, shared standards and shared data.

I have been analysing the titles and abstracts of published papers and dissertations in Ayurveda, and it is with great disappointment that I say the majority of them are poor in research design and in the language used to describe it. **Objectives are vague, study designs are named wrongly or not at all, outcomes are not defined, and conclusions go well beyond what the data can support. **Yet most of these papers are published in journals, dissertations are accepted, and PG and PhD degrees are awarded, often without a proper review at any stage.

I do not wish to judge anyone. The researchers, guides, reviewers and editors are products of the same system, and many of them were never trained to do any better.

But this is the reality, and it is an uncomfortable one. A system that cannot tell a well-designed study from a poorly designed one cannot build on its own findings, and it cannot expect the world to take them seriously.

If we want basic research to mean anything, we have to confront this honestly and address it, beginning with how we train, how we review and how we certify.

Teaching the World: Do We Have the Evidence?

The ecosystem question is not only a domestic one.

students come to India to study Ayurveda, in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and in shorter courses. Ayurveda courses of varying length and rigour are now taught in many countries. Ayush Chairs have been established in universities abroad, and Indian experts are deputed to teach and represent the system. MoUs between governments and institutions are signed regularly and announced with some ceremony.

Much of this is welcome. Visibility, exchange and curiosity about Ayurveda are good things. But every one of these activities rests on an implicit claim: that we have a body of evidence, basic and clinical, strong enough to teach to students who will practise or teach in their own countries, and strong enough to promote across the world as a system of healthcare. That claim should be examined, not assumed.

The questions are the same ones this article has been asking, now with higher stakes.

  • Basic evidence. When we teach Tridosha, Agni or Prakriti to a student trained in biomedicine, can we say what each construct means operationally, how it is measured, and what evidence supports it? Or can we only say what the text says?
  • Textual evidence. Which edition are we teaching from, and do we tell students that readings vary?
  • Drug evidence. Can we state the authenticated identity, standardised processing and safety profile of what we teach and export? The heavy-metal content of certain preparations has already drawn regulatory attention overseas, and we cannot treat that as someone else’s misunderstanding.
  • Clinical evidence. For the conditions we claim to treat, can we point to well-designed trials, registries and outcome data, or only to tradition and case reports?
  • Educational evidence. Is a foreign student assessed against the same standard as an Indian one, and does anyone check what that student can actually do?

Then there is the matter of MoUs. A memorandum is a statement of intent, not an output.

The test of an MoU is what exists a few years after the signing. How many joint studies were completed? How many papers were co-authored, datasets shared, tools validated, trials registered or curricula accredited? How many exchanges actually took place? Very few MoUs publish answers, and an MoU that produces nothing still counts as an achievement in the annual report.

The same applies to Ayush Chairs. What is the research output of each one? Are experts deputed because of their research record, or only for teaching and outreach? Is there a research mandate, or is the role limited to lectures and events?

The risk here is credibility.

Foreign regulators, scientists and students will ask the questions we have not asked ourselves, and they will not be kind about the gaps.

A student we teach without a firm evidence base becomes a practitioner repeating those claims to patients.

The foreign-campus report warned that teaching is easy to import but research culture is not.

We are in the mirror position: we are exporting teaching without the research base it needs.

Evidence should lead and promotion should follow.

A Way Forward

None of this requires waiting for a new campus. A few steps are within reach:

  1. Agree a short priority list of constructsand publish operational definitions for public criticism. Even imperfect definitions create something researchers can test and improve.
  2. Fund the unglamorous infrastructure first: critical editions, authenticated reference samples, validated tools and open data.
  3. Build research-track doctoral and postdoctoral routes that are distinct from the teaching ladder, with protected time.
  4. Form joint laboratories and joint supervision with established science institutions, so that rigour is learned by practice and not only by regulation.
  5. Let journals act as gatekeepers of quality. That means rewarding clear questions, transparent methods and honestly reported negative results, a standard that journals in this field, including the one I edit, must keep raising.

Back to the Comment

So is basic research in Ayurveda “not done or not up to the mark”? The fair version of that comment is that it is thin, scattered and unsupported.

Some is done, and some of it is good, but it is rarely cumulative, rarely tied to clearly defined Ayurvedic constructs, and rarely sustained by the people, funding and culture that research needs.

The foreign campuses will learn that a signboard and a classroom do not make a research university.

Ayurveda should learn the same lesson about its own institutions.

A college, a department or a journal becomes a research institution when it begins to ask questions it is willing to have answered against its wishes.

Before the next study begins, then, three questions are worth carrying into every laboratory and every classroom.

  • What exactly are we measuring?
  • How would we know if we were wrong?
  • And who will build on this when we are done?

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