Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the Malayali medical gurukula, "house of the teacher," and suggests that two modes of expression, Sanskrit orality and vernacular commentarial writing, sustain a highly ritualized practice of texts in the education of physicians in contemporary Kerala.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I explore the Malayali medical institution of the gurukula, "house of the teacher," and examine two modes of expression, Sanskrit orality and vernacular commentarial writing, which sustain a highly ritualized practice of texts in the education of physicians in contemporary Kerala. On the one hand, Sanskrit pedagogy in the gurukula asserts a phonocentric ideology. Although the texts of the medical canon were produced and put to writing in the first six centuries C.E., students in the gurukula do not read these works like conventional books. They learn to experience and, ultimately, embody the Sanskrit sources. In ritual processes of memorizing and understanding these texts, medical practitioners and medical texts are not isolable entities; the Sanskrit texts are treated as unfixed methodological fields of knowledge, which become operative in the flow of discourse and practice. They are truly discursive, moving back and forth between teacher and student, being presented and represented again and again, from beginning to end, with ratiocinative scrutiny. On the other hand, alongside oral exchange, recitation, and rote memorization of medical compendia, the Malayali gurukula also promotes an ideology of vernacular commentarial writing and the production of workable (or clinical) texts; the commentary tradition serves as a means of authorization, and it opens up the possibility of ensuring its continued dissemination over time.