Who Owns Traditional Medical Knowledge? - Smithsonian Center ...

170 SITA REDDY
FIGURE 1. Frontispiece of Hortus Malabaricus vol. 1 (1678). Anonymous etching of the
Garden of Malabar in which four kneeling indigenous Malayalee children, identified by
their elongated earlobes, offer potted plants to the seated figure of Indian Botany. Courtesy
of Wellcome Library, London.
Until October 2003, when Kerala University unveiled the newly translated Hortus
Malabaricus volumes, presenting the first set to the president of India as a landmark
event. 38 Professor of Botany, K. S. Manilal, who spearheaded the university’s
30-year translation project, argued that the original Hortus Malabaricus represented
the earliest example of printing in the Malayalam language. It was the “native
heritage” of the people of Kerala, their lost knowledge, a hidden history that
the world needed to recognize. In Manilal’s view, the ethnomedical information in
its volumes was Kerala’s cultural heritage but it belonged to all humanity, a for-