Chapter 3 The Religious Orientation and Cultural Identity of Early Classical Ayurveda * Philipp A. Maas 1. Introduction The history of Indological research on the religious orientation and cultural identity of Ayurveda can be roughly divided into two phases that correspond with two radically differ- ent perceptions. In the initial phase, starting with the publication of Julius Jolly’s survey of ayurvedic medicine in 1901, scholars viewed Ayurveda as a derivative of Vedic medicine that, in it is religious dimension, was an offshoot of Vedic Brahmanism. 1 This assessment persisted throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Even as late as 1964, Jean Filliozat sum- marized in the English translation of his La doctrine classique de medicine Indienne the results of his research on the religious affiliation of Ayurveda in the following manner: Indian medicine has therefore drawn on the Veda even for the principal elements of its general doctrines. Thereby Ayurveda is the legitimate heir to the Veda, but it has developed to a large extent the patrimony thus received. 2 Filliozat was well aware that Ayurveda is built upon conceptions that are lacking in the Vedic intellectual world such as, for example, the teaching of the three pathogenetic substances wind (vāta), bile (pitta), and phlegm (śleṣman or kapha), which exist in a healthy human body in a suitable relation. Despite these apparent innovations, he saw Ayurveda as a continuation of Vedic medicine based on a Vedic worldview. * This article is an extended and revised version of the presentation “Āyurvedic approaches to reality as reflected in the Carakasaṃhitā and its origin myth of rasāyana” on June 13, 2015, held in the the- matic panel “The Carakasaṃhitā as a Mirror of South Asian Cultural History” at the 16th World Sanskrit Conference, Bangkok that the present author co-organized together with Karin Preisen- danz. Other occasions at which materials pertinent to the present study were presented are the invited online presentation at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine: “The Cultural Identity and Religious Orientation of Early Classical Ayurveda” on February 22, 2022, and my habilitation colloquium at the University of Leipzig on December 19, 2021. I am grateful to the audiences of these events for their comments, which helped me develop the presen- tations into the present article. Special thanks are due to Patrick Olivelle, who prevented me from perpetuating the Indological myth of puruṣārtha as “the goals of life” by pointing me to his article on trivarga (2019). 1 Jolly 1901. 2 J. Filliozat 1964: 188.