The Table of Herbal Qualities

About this text

Mooligai Guna Attavanai, “The Table of Herbal Qualities,” is a short prose work coming from Ramalinga Swamigal, lovingly known as Vallalar (1823–1874).

It is different from his poems and his ethical texts. It is a working list: hundreds of plants set down one after another, each paired with the disease it was held to relieve or the role it played in the medicine of its day.

The chart belongs to the world of Siddha medicine, the ancient healing system of the Tamil land in which Vallalar further purified by removing cruel substances such as blood, organs, egg and bones.

It moves through the plants a nineteenth-century healer would have known by sight and by name. From neem and Tulasi to the sacred tree of Vilvam and the humble plantain.

For many plants the list goes further, naming the separate powers of the flower, the root, the bark, the sap, and the leaf, so that a single plant may occupy several lines.

“The discipline of Jeevakarunya alone is the worship of God.” — Vallalar

Why would Vallalar, whose whole teaching was compassion, set down a list of herbs and minerals? Because for him the two were never separate. His central value was Jeevakarunyam, active compassion for every living being, and relieving the suffering coming from any disease is an act of Jeeva Karunyam itself.