Dhanvantri- The Divine Doctor

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                                               The composed  by Prof. A.V. Narasimha Murthy, former Head, Department of Ancient History &Archaeology, University of Mysore, Mysore and presented by A Narayanaswami, Foermer DGM, Bharat Heavy Eletric Ltd, in the' Chajjuka Chaubara' Program.

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Some years ago I was in Tokyo (Japan) to attend an International conference
on oriental studies which included archaeology and other related subjects
and Ayurveda also. I took some time off from archaeology section and went to
the Ayurveda session which was arranged in another huge hall.
I was surprised to see over one thousand delegates from different parts of
the world including Russia, USA, England etc. I saw huge photographs of
Dhanvantri, Charaka, Sushurta and Patanjali adorning the dais. That was for
the first time I saw a photograph of Dhanvantri, the mythological divine
doctor of India adorning the dais in a foreign land.
According to our tradition, he was a divine doctor and the inaugurator of
Ayurveda. He is not mentioned in the Vedas. The first reference to him is
found in Kaushika Sutra (8th century BC). His origin is traced to the famous
episode of churning the ocean of milk. It is said that Lakshmi came first
followed by Dhanvantri draped in pure white with a pot containing amrita or
the divine elixir which made gods immortal. Bhagavata purana considers him
as the twelfth incarnation of Vishnu. He is considered as a specialist in
treating the poison from snake bite. As he also good at treating other
diseases also, Gods requested him to be their physician.
Mahabharata described him as the son of the king of Kashi by name Dhanva.
He got the knowledge of medicine from sage Bharadwaja. This consisted of
eight branches such as Shalya, Sakalya, Kayachitisa etc., and Dhanvantari
later taught these to his disciples. To give him a human status, some texts
refer to him as one of the nine gems (scholars) of Gupta emperor
Vikramaditya. A doctor who could prescribe one hundred medicines was a
Vaidya; a person who knew two hundred medicines was called a Bhishak and a
physician who knew three hundred medicines was called Dhanvantri.
Another source makes him the son of a Vaishya woman, who was blessed by a
sage to have an illustrious son. This boy prayed to gods Ashwins and
received the knowledge of medicine. Dhan-vantri is credited with a large
number of books on Ayurveda of which Dhanvantri Nighantu is most famous.
The Bhagavata Purana gives a graphic description of the iconography
features of Dhanvantri. He is handsome with long and stout hands, reddish
eyes, neck resembling a conch shell, blue in complexion and young in
appearance, has an yellow cloth, decorated by garlands, stance like a lion
and holding a pot containing nectar. The shilpashastra texts like
Vishnudharmottara codified these characters.
There are many interesting stories about Dhanvantri. Once, Indra's wife
Sachidevi became sick and required urgent treatment. God suggested that
Dhanvantri be requested to attend on her. But Indra refused because
Dhanvantri was not one among the gods and his status was lower and hence

decided to invoke Shiva himself. Shiva appeared and told Indra to approach
Dhanvantri who alone is capable of curing the disease of Sachidevi. Without
any other way, Indra approached and requested Dhanvantri. He readily agreed
and cured Sachidevi of her illness. Thus the vanity of Indra was humbled by
the plan of Shiva himself. Dhanvantri's status increased among the gods, and
they began to show more respect to him.
According to another story, snake king Vasuki sent snake queen Manasa
against Dhanvantri to kill him and his disciples, because they were curing
the snake bites among the people. Thus nobody used to die of snake bite and
they were all praising Dhanvantri and his disciples. The snake king and
queen felt that this was an insult to their power and prestige. At this
point Shiva emerged and chastised Vasuki and his wife for their hatred
against Dhanvantri who was respected even by gods. Vasuki fell at the feet
of Dhanvantri and apologized to him for his action.
Though there are many temples for Vaidyanatha Shiva, the temples for
Dhanvantri are rare. In the same manner, the sculptures of Dhanvantri are
also rare. The famous Sri Ranganathaswamy temple of Srirangam has an
interesting connection with Dhanvantri and the part played by Ramanujacharya
in this. There is a shrine for Dhanvantri in the fourth prakara of the
temple. There are stone records of Hoysala kings dated 1257 and 1493 AD
which mention gifts to this temple of Dhan-vantri. Dr. Padmaja and Dr.
Chitra Madhavan of Chennai have furnished some interesting incidents
relating to this shrine.
Ramanujacharya was a great devotee of this temple and had emotional
attachment. Different types of offerings (naivedya) were being offered to
the deity in large quantities. One day when Ramanujacharya visted this
temple, he found Sri Ranganatha to be sick. Ramanujacharya was very sad
because his favourite god was suffering from some disease. Immediately he
made enquiries about the food offered to the deity the previous day. He was
informed that the deity was offered Jambu fruit (nerale or jamoon) along
with curd and rice.
Ramanujacharya immediately understood that the combination of Jambu and curd
had caused cold to the deity and hence he is sick. He ordered that a
medicinal decoction (kashaya) be prepared and shown to Dhanvantri for his
approval in his shrine and this should be carried to Sri Ranganatha and
offered to him before the closure of the temple every night. Thus the
practice of offering to the deity is more than 800 years old. Thus
Dhanvantri is believed to be capable of curing even Vi-shnu also. That is
the greatness of Dhanvantri, the divine physician and the founder of
Ayurveda. Even today people recite Sanskrit verses praising him to get cured
from disease. His birthday is celebrated the next day after Deepavali.

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2)BRANDS

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( WRITTEN AND COMPOSED BY A NARAYANASWAMY)

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( Former Dy General Manger, The Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd. He is Writer and Thinker )

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Purchasing a tooth paste got me thinking about what it takes to build and maintain ---a brand. After all what is toothpaste other than a brand? Brands are critical to purchasing decisions. But how can small companies develop their own brands. Why is a brand important? It seems self evident, but brands are so much a part of our lives that we forget how much we depend on them. We use brands as shorthand to make our trips to the grocery store easier; we use brands to reassure us about our purchasing decisions: we even use brands to define ourselves in society...Large corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars building their brands, and there is a reason.

Brands build customer loyalty and lead to repeat purchases. Brands make it easier for current clients or customers to refer you to others. Brands send a message as to what your customers can expect...Brands convey an emotion and add value to the product.

A strong brand adds immense value to a product. Coca-cola is regularly listed as the world’s valuable brand; consider how much extra you can charge for a few ounces of flavored water when   it carries the coca-Cola label. The thing to remember is this; a brand is a promise. With a brand, you set customer expectations. When someone buys your product or service, they count on those expectations to be fulfilled. At the more basic level, to build a brand you must develop a strong brand image. Let us analyze how this brand culture was extended by the new companies which were founded in this country.

BIRTH  OF THE FAMOUS NAMES                                                      STRANGE  & NATURAL CIRCUMSTANCES CREATED THE FAMOUS  NAMES   MERCEDES  This was actually the financier's daughter's name.  ­­­­­ ADOBE  This came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.    APPLE  COMPUTERS It was the favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if his other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 O'clock that evening. CISCO It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for  San  Francisco COMPAQ    This name was formed by using COMp, for computer, and PAQ to denote a small integral object. COREL     The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for  COwpland  Research Laboratory.  GOOGLE     The  name started as a joke boasting about the amount of  information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the  number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros.After  founders- Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and  Larry Page presented their project to an angel  investor, they received a cheque made out to  'Google'...thus  the name. HOTMAIL   Founder  Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the  web from a computer anywhere in the world.When Sabeer  Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail  service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail'  and finally settled for hotmail as it included the  letters "html" -the programming language used to  write web pages. It was initially referred to as Hot Mail with selective uppercasing. HEWLETT  PACKARD  Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.  INTEL   Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company '' Moore Noyce''but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.  LOTUS  (Notes)  Mitch  Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus  Position' or 'Padmasana'.Kapoor used to be a teacher  of Transcendental Meditation of  Maharishi Mahesh  Yogi.  MICROSOFT   Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware.Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.  MOTOROLA   Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called   Victrola.   ORACLE  Larry  Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting  project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).The  code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA  saw this as the system to give answers to all  questions or something such).The project was designed  to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.  SONY   It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.  SUN   Founded by four Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod  Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture  computers based on it,and Bill Joy to develop a  UNIX-based OS for the computer.    YAHOO!    The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book 'Gulliver's Travels'.It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely  human.Yahoo! Founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.                                                     ******************************