Anthony Cerulli’s The Practice of Texts is a much needed book at a time when Ayurvedic education in India is receiving particular academic and policy scrutiny. In particular, it offers novel insight into the nature of modern Ayurvedic ‘gurukulas’ and the unique roles they serve, as fluid spaces within which ‘neo-traditions’ of Ayurveda evolve and are transmitted from practicing vaidya-gurus to students. It also masterfully reinterprets and transforms the very notion of the classical Ayurvedic text from a bounded, static re-telling of history, to a ‘fluid and conversational resource’ (pp. 40) that is a ‘field of knowing on which (the) vaidya-guru coordinates (her) interactions with patients (and students) (pp. 87)’. It is written with great nuance, both in terms of factual accuracy as well as anecdotal richness, and offers to the reader a rare and expansive presentation of the larger historical, political, and pedagogical frameworks within which the Ayurvedic gurukula exists and functions, in contemporary South India.
