Abstract
Ayurveda is one of the most historic and comprehensive medical system in the world. It was passed down as Buddhist medicine with Buddhism to influence enormously to East Asian medicine. Therefore, researches on Ayurveda is important in studying East Asian medicine as well as in studying Indian traditional medicine and althernative medicine. However, in previous studies, the term, 'Ayurveda', was mistaken and misused frequently. Clarifying the relations between the definition of Ayurveda and Indian traditional medicine is essential in preventing future controversy. Therefore, such relations were studied to draw following conclusions. 1. 'Ayurveda' is the term determining the oldest medicine system in the world that originated in India. Reportedly, the first book about Ayurveda is "Agnivesha samhita", and the oldest existing book is "Charaka Samhita". No records were found on medine books named Ayurveda, and interpreting Ayurveda to be a name of a book is explicitly misunderstanding. 2. There are various divisions of Indian traditional medicine in previous studies. However, divisions in 6 types of Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani, Yoga, Naturopathy and Homoeopathy is the most proper. 3. Ayurveda gained some similarities as it exchanged with other medicine systems. However, since each medicine system has unique characteristics, they must be separately studied. Especially, current Indian traditional medicine system has many divisions. Terms of 'Indian traditional medicine' and 'Ayurveda' must be separately used.
