Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada   

Propitiating ‘god of medicine’

Students worshipping at the idol of Dhanwantari in Vijayawada on Tuesday.

VIJAYAWADA: Thick smoke emanating from a ‘homagundam’ arranged on the premises of Dr. Nori Rama Sastry Government College for Ayurveda welcomed visitors to the college on Tuesday morning.

Students and faculty members, dressed in traditional attires like ‘langa-voni’ and ‘dhoti’ attended the college with devotion and reverence as if they were visiting a temple, and began watching the ritual with utmost attention.

Marking the birth anniversary of ‘Dhanwantari’, the god of medicine in the Indian belief system, the college management performed Dhanwantari homam for the first time. Sandalwood, pure ghee, cereals and a few varieties of fruits and herbs were used for the three-hour ritual, which was performed by Pavuluri Hima Sagara Chandramurthy and B.V.N.R. Prasad, faculty members of the college, under the direction of city-based Vedic scholars Sriramakrishna Varadarajula Sharma and Aakella Narasimha Sharma.

“According to Mahabharatha, Dhanwantari was born during ksheera saagara madhanam (churning of the mythical sea of milk) on the day of Karthika Bahula Trayodasi. Every year, we observe the birth anniversary of Dhanwantari in our college. But, for the first time, we planned this homam for the social well-being,” explained M.L. Naidu, principal of the college. He recalled that a similar ritual was performed on the premises of Government Hospital for Ayurveda in the city a couple of decades ago. “To my knowledge, this is a first of its kind ritual in our college,” he said.

As if answering the usual contention of rationalists that such rituals should not be performed, more particularly in government-run institutions, college vice-principal K. Nishteswar asserted that there was enough of scientific evidence to suggest that there was a drop in environmental pollution following the performances of such homams in different places.

“A few European scholars conducted a study and proved that the herbs used in homams kill harmful bacteria. We too are confident that the Dhanwantari homam we performed today will make our city and its people healthy,” he said.

Registrar of Dr. N.T.R. University of Health Sciences T. Venugopala Rao, too, turned up with his family members to participate in the ritual.

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