One among the ancient science know to the mankind. Origin is particularly unkown, and basically from the Veda (the oldest text known to humans). It is highly scientific and fully practical based on its principles. Because in todays scenario people are unaware of the basic doctrine of Ayurveda, so they called it as Pseudoscience. Which finally creates so many myths about it, like its meaning, origin, area of action, scientific nature, therapeutic uses, connectivity to other sciences, mode of action and branches etc. list is so long.
Here I will make a small step and I try to ease your knowledge regarding the great science of Ayurveda;
It is the oldest therapeutic science or easily we can call it as science of life. Because it will not only tells about the cure of the disease but basically it tells about the life. Charka samhit (the text of Ayurveda) starts with the explanation of Ayu (life), like why a person comes to a human body? What the soul should do in that body for the whole life? The answer for that is a human body is formed to attain Purushartha chatustaya (Dharma, Artha, Kama & Moksha). And for perceiving all these purushartha a body should be healthy. For that purpose to being healthy or swastha /disease free Acharya (Charaka, Sushruta & Vagabhatta etc.) give the knowledge through their text/book or writing.
So basically it tells a human body what he should do in his whole life along with proper meaning and understanding. If I elaborate its meaning then we should understand the concept of Purusharta chatustaya. It is formed with four words (Dharma, Artha, Kama & Moksha)
The word Dharma means what a human should do with rightness as per the time and place. This time and place is again originated from a concept which is widely used in Ayurveda and Ancient science. This is basically a fundamental concept which can change the whole scenario of knowledge i.e. Matra and Kala (amount and time).
As per the basic fundaments of Veda, a human is originated to this world to attain Moksha (here human refers to the Yoni or class of the individual). It is quite popular among the Hinduism that this human birth is to get the emancipation or liberation from this world. Also some of the old scriptures talks about the soul will attain moksha only in the form of human. So the human body should do the right things to attain that. That is simple meaning of Dharma, as it is change for person to person & time to time; so it is different for all the humans.
In simple language Dharma means to do the right thing to society as well to yourself.
The word Artha means the fruit, profit, benefit, or sometime we call it as money. Here it means the things we get after doing any karma (any thing we did, called as karma). Hence Artha is the resultant of Karma.
Kama is very much simillar to Karma, but at the same time it is different too. Here Kama means the desire or it is very much simillar to the sexual desires. Which is very usefull to run the circle of life, without this there will be no life. So because of that reason it comes under the purushartha chatustaya.
It is very popular on very misinterpret word in today’s generation. It simply means to get rid off the pain or the cycle of life & death. To intermix the soul into the cosmos or to merge an Atma into the Parmatma is the actual meaning of moksha.
These four words are originated from the Sanskrit because that is base of Veda. And to get fulfill all these four thing a person should keep himself healthy and to being healthy he/ she should follow Ayrveda.
That is the basic meaning of Ayurveda
