Health battle: A Lankan bouncer to Kerala's ayurveda

Just when everyone thought that God’s Own Country was the wellness tourism destination of the world, a new claimant from across the Palk Straits is staking claim to the title. India has the written word — the oldest known ayurveda texts like Susrutha Samhitha and Charaka Samhitha — but Sri Lanka is using the Mihintale hospital, the oldest known ayurveda hospital in the world, to draw tourists.. The remains of the hospital, at the base of the Mihintale mountain, are well preserved. It is said to have been established by the Buddhish monk Mahinda, who introduced Sri Lanka to Buddhism.

Mahinda, the eldest son of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, took Buddhism to the island during the third century BC. It is clear that ayurveda reached the island nation long after India. The older ayurveda hospitals in places like Taxila (now in Rawalpindi, Pakistan) during the fifth century BC have been destroyed. But Sri Lanka has held on to its roots. At the entrance to the Mihintale hospital is a stone tub with a human shape dug inside it where patients were said to have been immersed in oil.

The immersive oil bath, one of the oldest forms of ayurveda treatment, is common in Sri Lanka. Not anywhere in India, not even in Kerala which is synonymous with ayurveda in the country. “The medicinal tub is called ‘droni’ from which the word ‘thoni’ (canoe) was derived. The tub we use for the oil bath is more or less flat, we don’t drown our patients in oil,” said Dr Soumya Lakshmi, who runs Janani Ayurveda Centre in Thrissur, Kerala. “But I have seen such a ‘droni’ in my ancestral home where my grandfather practised ayurveda,” said Dr Lakshmi, who belongs to a line of traditional ayurveda physicians.

These carefully preserved archaeological discoveries have given Sri Lanka’s ayurveda the stamp of authenticity. After the insurgency ended in 2009, promoting ayurveda was one of the first tasks taken up by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government. It was like turning a full circle. If it was a peace-loving monk named Mahinda who established the first ayurveda hospital, it was another Mahinda, a hawkish one, who revived memories of the hospital.

“In these seven years, Sri Lanka has eaten up at least 35 per cent of our wellness tourism pie,” said Sajeev Kurup of Kerala Ayurveda Tourism Promotion Society. According to him, Sri Lanka only has the remains, some broken bones of a long dead past, not the real thing. “It is a diluted, commercialised version of ayurveda that they are promoting,” Mr Kurup said. “But it has to be said that they have promoted it well.” It is done so aggressively that oil massages begin inside the flight to Colombo.

Europeans, Japanese, Chinese and even domestic markets like Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh now associate ayurveda not with Kerala but Sri Lanka. Lanka’s biggest catch has been the Japanese, the world’s highest-spending tourists. Buddhism is a draw as is ayurveda. Since the end of conflict in 2009, the flow of Japanese tourists to Sri Lanka has doubled. In 2015, more than 40,000 Japanese tourists visited Sri Lanka, an exponential growth from a mere 1500 Japanese tourists before 2009.

Commercial considerations, too, have played a part. “Our costs are comparatively high,” Mr Kurup said. “Lankan flights offer wonderful rates. Once in the airport, the entry is smooth unlike in Kerala.” Less rigorous ayurveda practices also make it more seductive. Take cross-massaging (men massaging females and vice versa) for instance. This is prohibited in India, not in Sri Lanka.