Arpita Chakrabortya* & Jyoti Kumarb
aDepartment of Botany, Narajole Raj College, Narajole, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, India
bUniversity Department of Botany, Ranchi University, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India
Received : 05th January, 2025 ; Revised : 04th February, 2025
DOI:-https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16416692
Abstract– Surveys were carried out to investigate and document traditional formulations of some plants used by the people of Ghatal subdivision of Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal. Ghatal subdivision is mainly a riverine area with fertile alluvial soil with beautiful greenery. As there is profuse growth of different plants, naturally the inhabitants used them for their different livelihood purposes. The plants such as Cocos nucifera, Canna indica, Cannabis sativa, Bombax ceiba, Aristolochia indica, Dillenia indica, Lablab purpureus, Clerodendrum indicum, Curcuma domestica, Curcuma amada, Trichosanthes dioica, Piper nigrum, Cucumis sativus, Carica papaya, Mimusops elengi are taken into consideration. The selected plants are used traditionally to cure different diseases such as colic, piles, eczema, rheumatism, jaundice, leucorrhoea, rickette, hemicrania, menorrhagia etc. Medicines are prepared from different parts of the plants. To verify the genuineness of the folklore study, different medicine men interacted with the same plant for the same disease. But it has been noticed that a single plant with same parts is used to cure for a specific disease, but there is at least a little bit of difference to make the polyherbal/ monoherbal formulation too. This is the secrecy of medicine man in ethnobotany and here remains the need of documentation, as the formulation is transferred from generation after generation orally only. With the demise of a knowledgeable older person, their formulation diminishes. Now-a-days, most of the new generations are reluctant to the traditional system of medicine and shows their dominant dependency on modern medicine. So, to protect our different traditions including traditional medicine, our folklore, documentation of each of these is very much essential. Now-a-days, ethnopharmacological study, molecular level study also proves the genuineness of the traditional medicinal formulations. The advance molecular level studies also prove in most of the cases the exact polyherbal formulations demonstrated by medicine men shows effective molecules to prevent a specific disease. Present study deals with the primary and base level of work i.e. documentation of traditional herbal medicine used to cure different disease in the said area.
Keywords: Ghatal sub-division, riverine area, greenery, monoherbal and polyherbal formulations, folklore, documentation.
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