The demand for Āyurveda is growing globally, the scientific fraternity is attracting towards alternate systems of medicine, which are safe. Accordingly, the quest for the new therapeutic leads by exploring ancient Āyurvedic texts is increasing day by day not only from the Āyurvedic fraternity but also from other allied Scholars. It is very difficult, if not impossible to procure and refer all Āyurvedic classics to meet the above requirement since some books are in out of print. Further, Scholars of Āyurveda and allied sciences experience difficulty in finding the drug descriptions mentioned in various Nighaṇṭu. In this Scenario, development of an e-book on Nighaṇṭu is the need of hour.

National Institute of Indian Medical Heritage (NIIMH), CCRAS, Hyderabad being actively involved in literary research brought out various important classical works in to publication.

This institute also developed e-books on Caraka Saṁhitā and Suśruta Saṁhitā , which are readable in 8 Indian Oriental languages namely Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarathi, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Indo-Romanic transliteration (Diacritical) and Phonetic English. These books are in wide circulation and highly appreciated by scientific fraternity across the globe.

In this process of e-books development,this institute has initiated the present work e-Book entiled “e-Nighaṇṭu (Collection of Āyurvedic Lexicons)” which facilitates the scholars to search the requisite information instantly from all 25 Nighaṇṭu at once.

I am happy to present e-Nighaṇṭu (Collection of Āyurvedic Lexicons) purely for the dissemination of Āyurvedic knowledge across the globe for academic and research purpose.

Nighaṇṭu covered in this work are:

I hope this will cater the demands of the Āyurvedic scholars, Researchers, students & practitioners.

I thankfully acknowledge Vaidya Pammi Satyanarayana Sashtri, Harita Ayurveda Kendra, Vijayawada, Vaidya Mohan Lal Jayaswal, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Dravyaguna, National Institute of Ayurveda (NIA), Jaipur and Dr. Sanjeev Lale, Research Officer (Ayurveda), National Vriksha Ayurveda Research Institute, Jhansi for providing the copies of some Nighantu which were referred for comparison of this work.

I appreciate the efforts of my team members, who have put their efforts in bringing out this voluminous work.

ALA NARAYANA
DIRECTOR, NIIMH