Indigenous Knowledge System and Traditional Medicinal Practitioner

Introduction

Over the ages, indigenous peoples have developed innumerable technologies and arts. They have devised ways to farm deserts without irrigation and produce abundance from the rain forest without destroying the delicate balance that maintains the ecosystem: they have learned how to navigate vast distances in the Pacific using their knowledge of currents and the feel of intermittent waves that bounce off distant islands: they have explored the medicinal properties of plants: and they have acquired an understanding of the basic ecology of flora and fauna. If this knowledge had to be duplicated from scratch, it would beggar the scientific resources of the West. Much of this expertise and wisdom has already disappeared, and if neglected, most of the remainder could be gone within the next generation.

Knowledge is widely recognized as the key resource for development. The basic component of any country’s knowledge system is its Indigenous Knowledge (IK). IK is also referred as traditional or local knowledge and encompasses the skills, experiences and insights of people, applied to maintain or improve their livelihood. Indigenous peoples consists of some 5000 diverse and distinct groups, represent about 4 percent of world’s population, about one third of world’s 900 million extremely poor rural people, and live in more than 70 countries and 70 per cent of them live in Asia [1].

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Over millennia, indigenous peoples have developed and sustained extremely practical systems of knowledge and behavior. For a host of political and historical reasons, indigenous peoples tend to suffer from neglect and discrimination: many do not have legal right to live on the lands they depend on for survival, or use the resources they have managed sustainably for thousands of years; pushed onto least fertile and most fragile lands, harsh environments, they find it difficult to grow enough food to eat; earn a living; receive education; receive medical care; living far from centers of commerce and power; find it hard to influence the policies, laws and institutions that would improve their circumstances and shape their futures. Any effort to eradicate poverty must address the special needs of these minority ethnic groups [2].

Interestingly, there is no standard definition of indigenous knowledge. However, there is a general understanding of what it means. Some people define indigenous knowledge as the local knowledge that is unique to a given culture or society. Some have defined it simply as "local knowledge", while others have expressed it as "folk knowledge", "information base for a society", "traditional wisdom" or, when it applies to the physical environment, as "traditional ecological knowledge".

Regardless of the definition, there is a consensus that various communities, cultures and societies have indigenous knowledge systems. We can define it as the "knowledge acquired over generations by communities as they interact with their environment". It mainly refers to a system of understanding one's environment in the broadest sense.

Indigenous knowledge is the basis for local-level decision making in agriculture, health care, food preparation, education, natural resource management, and a host of other activities in communities.

Primarily traditional knowledge differs from modern knowledge in the manner of creation i.e. traditional knowledge is normally empirically validated therefore it is said that Modern Knowledge has been validated in laboratory of brick and mortar whereas traditional knowledge has been validated in the laboratory of life.

Types of Indigenous Knowledge

Indigenous knowledge is more than just technologies and practices. It can be grouped as follows:

- Information (trees and plants that grow well together; indicator plants-plants that show soil salinity or known as flower at the beginning of rains)

• Practices and technologies (seed treatment and storage methods; bone-setting methods; disease treatments)
• Beliefs play a fundamental role in people's livelihood and in maintaining their health and environment (holy forests are protected for religious reasons and maintain a vital watershed; religious festivals can be an important source of food for people who otherwise have little to eat)
• Tools (equipment for planting and harvesting; cooking pots and implements)
• Materials (house construction materials; materials for basketry and other craft industries)
• Experimentation (farmers' integration of new tree species into existing farming systems; healers' tests of new plant medicines)
• Biological resources (animal breeds, local crop and tree species)
• Human resources (specialists such as healers and blacksmiths; local organizations such as kinship group, councils of elders, or groups that share and exchange labour)
• Education (traditional instruction methods; apprenticeships; learning through observation)
• Communication (stories and messages carved on palm leaves; folk media).

Special Features of Indigenous Knowledge

Some of the features relevant to Indigenous Traditional Knowledge are:

• Locally appropriate and specifically adapted as per the requirement of local conditions.
• Restraint in resources exploitation needed for immediate survival.
• Having diversified production system without overexploitation of a single resource.
• Symbolizes the respect towards nature.
• Flexible for new interventions and integration of green technological advances.
• Inspires the social responsibilities.

Material and Method

The present study was based on the secondary literature on Tagin tribe collected from different libraries tribal research centers of India. In this review work researcher collect information on the traditional medicinal plant and practice, especially Ethnomedicinal information. Important given even on information on Traditional Medicine (TM) preparation, application and associated social belief prevailed among the Tagin Traditional Medicine Practitioners

Results and Discussion

The Tagin ethnicity comprises of 39,000 individuals scattered in different pockets of upper Subansiri and adjacent districts [9]. The study among the Tagin people revealed practice of an age old tradition of herbal medicine for cure and prevention of diseases/ ailments. A total of 10 medicinal plants used for TM preparation were recorded amongst the Tagin people. All the medicinal plants recorded are used in human healthcare as well as for animal disease.

Freshly collected leaves are the major components of their TM preparation. While some of this indigenous preparation is used for topical application for wound healing, burn injuries, skin diseases etc, others are used for oral administration for health problems like stomach disorder, diarrhea, joints pain, blood clotting, fever, tonsillitis, blood pressures, gastritis and jaundice (Table 1). Tagin peoples of Arunachal Pradesh still conserved their indigenous knowledge on traditional medicine and its practice.

The different parts of these plants are used as a medicine. The use of above ground plant parts is higher than the below ground plant parts. Of the above ground plant parts, leaf is used in the majority of the cases followed by roots, fruit, Stem, seed, rhizome, bark, flower, berries, shoots and branches, buds, dried leaves, dried plants, flower buds, flower pulp, pods, tubers, young seedlings, young shoots less than 1% respectively and about 16% from whole plant (Table 2).

The method of preparation was mostly a paste or juice form followed by decoction and raw and vegetable, or sometime eaten raw. Doses were mainly taken twice a day and the dosage depends on the age and physical appearance of the individual and children’s are given less than adults which approximate to 100-150 ml twice daily depending on the type of illness and treatment [10].

The present review study showed high diversity of plant used by the ethnic communities of Arunachal Pradesh in treating different types of ailments. This can be an indication of the significant role of phytotherapy based traditional medicine in meeting the basic healthcare needs of the people. The frequent use of herbaceous species among the tribal communities could be a result of their relative abundance as compared to trees and shrubs as also witnessed by investigators of this study. The study area experiences tropical, sub-tropical and temperate humidity for most months of the year creating favorable condition for the growth of herbs.

Due to lack of adequate communication, remoteness of the villages and unavailability of modern health care facilities the local people use traditional medicine for their common ailments. This traditional knowledge system among the tribes is a complete system of theory and practice that have been evolved through ages of human experiences and independent of conventional biomedicine. Similar to the Tagin tribe, practice of herbal medicine among other tribes Arunachal Pradesh like Apatani, Adi, Monpas, etc. have been reported [11, 12, 13, 14].

The Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) has put much emphasis on conservation of this indigenous knowledge invariably in different parts of the world [15, 16]. India has a great history of ancient medical systems such as Ayurveda and other similar repositories of knowledge, which represent valuable resource of medicinal plants [17]. The study shall help the indigenous Tagin people of Arunachal Pradesh in getting necessary attention from the world communities for conservation of these TM. Practice of herbal medicine for curing various ailments has been reported from other countries of the world.

Several such medicinal plant species has been reported to use for fertility control by the people of Trinidad and Tobago and Vietnam for treatment of ailments like influenza, cough, malaria, dysentery, and helminthes parasites [18, 19]. Some of the plants used by Tagin people for TM preparation are also used by some other tribal population of Northeastern states as well as some other parts of India. The use of Paedaria foetida L. for stomach disorder by the Tagin people is also reported from the Apatani tribe of Arunachal Pradesh [20]. The leaves of Ageratum conizoid L. and Bryophyllum calycinum Salisb are used by the Jaintia tribes of north Cachar hills district of Assam for burn injury and wounds [21]. The medicinal value of Piper nigrum (L) was reported from the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu [22].

Similarly, the Tinospora cordifolia used for curing scabies by the Tagin tribe of Arunachal Pradesh is used for treating wound healing in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu [23]. The linkage of use of similar plants by different group of people across India remains to be investigated. Whatever may be the reason, the information suggests that the epistemology of the TM used by these tribal people needs to be reviewed by the epistemology of scientific knowledge. Use of Embelia ribes Burm by the Tagin people for stomach disorder has gained importance in research and development for curing skin diseases and leprosy [24]. Availability of a large number of medicinal plants made Arunachal Pradesh one of the global biodiversity hot spot. The documentation on the traditional medicine of the Tagin tribe of Arunachal Pradesh illustrates the wide range of application of the traditional knowledge of medicinal plants for wellbeing of the human society.

Many people of this region still depend upon herbal medicine for the treatment of some common diseases. Thorough biochemical investigation along with clinical trials of these locally available herbal TM may provide new leads for human health care system. In addition, it will pave the way in creating the mass awareness regarding the need for conservation and economic empowerment of the local tribal people and also the efficacy and safety of all the claimed medicinal plants need to be evaluated through pharmaco-chemical studies.

Suggestions

The suggested measures to extend protection to knowledge, innovations and practices in India are documentation of Indigenous knowledge, registration and innovation patent system, and development of a sui generis system

Acknowledgement

Author is grateful to all the researcher who worked on Traditional or Indigenous people or whose information was used in the article. The author also likes to express our deepest appreciation to Prof. A.K. Kapoor and Prof. Satwanti Kapoor for their help in the study. An author is also thankful to the other traditional health expert and librarian of different university and tribal research centers for giving me proper facility to collect appropriate information in order to give final shape to the present work.