book less accessible to non-specialists than it would otherwise have been.

Unfortu-
nately, the book is also afflicted by more than its fair share of typographical and
grammatical errors, although only in a few instances does this obscure the sense
of what is said. Aside from these relatively minor defects, the book constitutes a
valuable contribution to the literature on Skhya and Vaiavism, and on the
mythology surrounding Kapila in particular. It will be of substantial interest to
scholars and students of Indias rich religious, mythological, and philosophical
heritage.
Mikel Burley
University of Leeds
Doi: 10.1093/jhs/hip015
Advance Access Publication 24 September 2009
Recipes for Immortality: Medicine, Religion, and Community in South India.
By Richard S. Weiss. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN-13:
978-0-19-533523-1; ISBN-10: 0-19-533523-6, pp. ix, 260. $74.00.
Richard Weiss has written a fine analysis of the multi-leveled discourse of modern-
day practitioners of traditional medicine in Tamil Nadu, albeit at the expense of
providing an adequate account of their practice. Traditional Siddhar medicine, so
called for the legendary Tamil Siddhars (perfected beings) who were its founders,
combines the prophylactic and therapeutic use of mainly indigenous plants and
minerals with mercurials in much the same way as ayurvedic physicians through-
out India have done for some two thousand years. And there lies the rub for the
practitioners extensively interviewed and quoted by Weiss, because for them
Siddhar medicine in its ancient and present forms is proof positive of the primacy
and superiority of all things Tamil over and against the later, corrupted, and infer-
ior medical system of north Indian Brahmins (ayurveda) in particular, but also the
Muslim unani system and western biomedicine. Here, the exceptionalist claims
made by Tamil vaidyas track closely with those of other actors in the contested
arena of South Asian identity politics, most notably the Hindu nationalists. Like
the Hindu nationalists, the Tamil Siddhar vaidyas (whose agenda for an indepen-
dent Tamil nation state has been historically aligned with that of the principal
Tamil nationalist party, the DMK the Dravidian Advancement Party) argue that
the entire human race originated in their land, and that in a utopian past their
race, language, culture, religion, and medical system were the sole human race,
language, culture, religion, and medical system on the planet. According to the
Tamil revivalist imagination, this golden age was brought to an end and the Tamil
race, culture, Dravidian language, and Siddhar medicine corrupted by the influx of
246 Book Reviews

a
t

T
h
e

U
n
i
v
e
s
i
t
y

o
f

C
a
l
g
a
r
y

o
n

A
u
g
u
s
t

2
,

2
0
1
2
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
j
h
s
.
o
x
f
o
r
d
j
o
u
r
n
a
l
s
.
o
r
g
/
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m

the inferior and mainly derivative language, culture, religion, and medicine of the
Aryan Brahmins. In other words, in their respective inventions of the past, Aryan
Brahmins are to Tamil nationalists what South Asian Muslims are to Hindu nation-
alists: the demonic other against which they define themselves.
As Weiss demonstrates, this contestation has been most acutely felt among
Tamil practitioners of Siddhar medicine, which was already relegated in colonial-
period Indian nationalist discourse to a secondary and derivative status vis vis
ayurveda. For the Tamil Siddhar vaidyas, this is yet another example of what Ashis
Nandy has termed internal colonization, in this case of the non-brahmanic
Dravidian south by the brahmanic Aryan north. On the one hand, Siddhar physi-
cians are economically embattled, finding themselves obliged to fight to hold their
own against foreign medical systems in their Tamil homeland, most particularly
in the face of nationwide programmes for the propagation of ayurveda. On the
other, the same practitioners have, by narrating a history in which Aryan Brahmins
from the north destroyed their perfect medical system, contributed significantly to
Tamil revivalist ideology by linking Tamil identity to Siddhar medicine. This they
have done through a number of strategies, pushing back the dates of the founding
Siddhars as far back as 10,000 BCE, arguing that the Siddhars were enemies of
brahmanic priestcraft and the caste system, and that their pharmacopoeia and
techniques were and remain capable of curing cancer and AIDS and affording
bodily immortality. If modern-day Siddhar medicine has not yet cured AIDS or
cancer, it is because the Siddhars original teachings have been lost through manu-
script decay and the impenetrability of their esoteric language (paripai, the Tamil
form of the Sanskrit paribh), because the mineral and botanical elixirs they used
are either unidentifiable or inaccessible, or due to the fact that like all other things
Tamil, the Siddhars tradition has been corrupted by outside influences and the
workings of time. As Weiss convincingly argues, present-day Siddhar vaidyas have
generally succeeded in winning patronage and patients from their competitors by
linking their claims for the boundless potential of their ancient medical system to
the broader discourse of Tamil revivalism.
Weiss leaves himself open for criticism on a number of points. His implicit claim
is that all Siddhar vaidyas embrace the same Tamil revival-based rhetoric of
authority, that there is no minority position or no body of practitioners who sim-
ply offer treatments to their local clientele without the rhetoric. While his exten-
sive interviews and use of archival material support his hypothesis, Weiss nowhere
provides statistical data to prove it, a rather serious lacuna given his sociological
approach. His hermeneutics of suspicion approach to Siddhar vaidya claims regard-
ing the specificity of their traditions over and against ayurveda in particular would
have been greatly strengthened had he devoted more space to a hermeneutics of
retrieval of the respective contents of both medical traditions. A case in point con-
cerns the preparation, properties, and claimed effects of muppu Siddhar medi-
cines lost elixir of immortality and agent of transmutation which are identical
to those of treated mercury in northern alchemical traditions that predate Siddhar
Book Reviews 247

a
t

T
h
e

U
n
i
v
e
s
i
t
y

o
f

C
a
l
g
a
r
y

o
n

A
u
g
u
s
t

2
,

2
0
1
2
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
j
h
s
.
o
x
f
o
r
d
j
o
u
r
n
a
l
s
.
o
r
g
/
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m

alchemy by several centuries. Greater attention to the Indic contexts of these Tamil
traditions would have supported Weisss arguments more than his somewhat tire-
some evocations of western theorists of secrecy, utopia, ideology, and so forth.
Nonetheless, in his reconstruction of the 75-year history of the synergy between
the Siddhar vaidyas and proponents of the broader Tamil nationalist agenda,
Richard Weiss has made an original and significant contribution to the historiogra-
phy of Tamil revivalism.
David Gordon White
University of California, Santa Barbara
248 Book Reviews

a
t

T
h
e

U
n
i
v
e
s
i
t
y

o
f

C
a
l
g
a
r
y

o
n

A
u
g
u
s
t

2
,

2
0
1
2
h
t
t
p
:
/
/
j
h
s
.
o
x
f
o
r
d
j
o
u
r
n
a
l
s
.
o
r
g
/
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m