Traditional healing practice and conservation of the indeginious knowledge in Nepal

Before the arrival of allopathic system of medicine tribal healer from different ethnic groups widely used to practice different healing systems for the purpose of restoring and protecting the health of people. The healing approach of our tribal healers still practices nowadays although not tremendously as before. It is greatly based on the particular culture and tradition and this indigenous knowledge has been handed over generation to generation till now. Different ethnic groups have different healers and are named accordingly as pande of chepangs, lama of gurungs, and gurewa of tharu and so on. However all the tribal healers basically practice plants, animals, and minerals based medicines, spiritual therapeutics (e.g. shamanism), ritual systems and many more to treat, diagnose or prevent illness. In different regions of Nepal still traditional beliefs and practices are deeply rooted in such a way that they think the occurrence of complicated ailments due to curse of some evil spirits, displeasure of Gods or breaking of religious taboos. Many more people are attracted towards their healing system because of several demerits of allopathic system of medicine as well. Although not described from the scientific background a lot of evidence of efficacy of the healing system of these tribal healers can be found. A number of people in community have been found treated of their ailments with these sorts of practices, especially the people with chronic illness.

In the present context, there is a great danger of this indigenous knowledge being lost in the country because of lack of proper documentation and scientific study. These several traditional healers may pass away without handing down their knowledge and the future generation will be of more aware of their culture and tradition in this regards. Most predominantly, tribal healers use several herbs in their healing traditions. They use their own knowledge for the treatment of any disorders and these things are stored only in their memories. From their experiences in treating and diagnosing disease, it is possible to gather important knowledge regarding the using strategy of several herbs and the harmful and useful aspects as well. The healing tendency of the particular herbs in specific ailments can be the subject of research. This information can be used further in the development of medicines as well. Scientific study is very necessary to be done in order to utilize the locally available medicinal resources to great extent. These sorts of ailments are also found benefited from this healing practice of tribal healers. The great achievement could be obtained if a lot of scientific study can be carried out and this things be explained from scientific background. Hence the identification, documentation, and scientific study of traditional healing system are much necessarily to be carried out prior to the loss of vast srores of indigenous traditional healing knowledge stored in the mermory of these tribal healers.