Tactics of nomenclature in Ayurveda: An up to date review

Abstract

The urge for exploration is the inherent quality of man. Exploration of the nature for the betterment of humanity made ancient seers to coin synonyms of the dravyas as per their medicinal uses, gross morphological characteristics etc, such that there is no confusion in identifying and using the available dravyas. With the advancement of time more and more number of plants were explored which were somewhat similar morphologically but varying from each other in one or the other way. Thus, a need of keen morphological description of plants aroused and modern science provided a number of tactics to identify and classify the available flora. So, the methods of nomenclature witnessed a sea change from the ancient times till today’s 21st century. So, the present work aims to discuss an up to date insight of the tactics adopted for nomenclature of plants in chronological manner.