Sanjeevani plant of Ramayana

When Lakshmana fell unconscious, near death, hit by an arrow from Ravana’s son Meghnad, Hanuman approached the Lankan Royal Physician Sushena for advice.

Sushena asked Hanuman to rush to Dronagiri Hills and fetch four plants: Mruthasanjeevani (restorer of life), Vishalyakarani (remover of arrows), Sandhanakarani (restorer of the skin) and Savarnyakarani (restorer of skin colour) (Srimad Valmiki Ramayana, 74th chapter, Yuddakanda, Slokas 29-34).

Hanuman, not able to pick the four from the multitude, brought back the entire hill. And Lakshmana was revived from near death back to life, and to victory.

The important one

Of the 4 plants, Mruthsanjeevani or simply Sanjeevani is the most important since it is believed to bring one from near death back to life. What then is this plant, where does it occur, and does it do what the Ramayana describes?

Though many botanists and Ayurvedic physicians have suggested candidate plants, there has been no systematic approach or unanimity. We now seem to have zoned in on one of two plants, thanks to a focused approach taken by Drs. K. N. Ganeshaiah, R. Vasudeva and R. Uma Shaanker of the University of Agricultural Science, Bangalore and College of Forestry, Sirsi.I strongly recommend the reader to read this scholarly and eminently readable paper in the 25 August 2009 issue of Current Science (downloadable free on the net). What strikes us as we read the paper is the sharp, clinical logic behind the search. First, they say that before we eliminate it to be a purely imaginary plant that Valmiki wrote about with poetic flourish, let us ask what all qualities such a plant should have.

It should refer to a particular plant, extinct or extant, which has this rejuvenating property; or it refers to a group of plants with such potential; alternately it is a metaphoric term for any good medicinal plant. Let us look for any of these three criteria before we dismiss it as an imagination of the storyteller. How do we do that?

All possibilities

Look at all versions of the Ramayana across India and in all tongues and languages. Do all of them refer to a plant with names akin to or close to Sanjeevani?

Do they talk about this plant to occur on hilltops? And does this plant have medicinal, or “resurrection” potential? Ganeshaiah, Vasudeva and Uma Shaanker searched around the Indian Bioresources database library of the common names of most Indian plants, in about 80 languages and dialects.

They searched for the term Sanjeevani or its synonyms and phononyms. Result — they found 17 species, which could be further filtered to 6 plants based on the widespread use of the terms across languages.

Of the six, only 3 of them, namely Cressa cretica, Selaginella bryopteris and Desmotrichum fimbriatum (or Rudanthi, Sanjeevani Bhooti and Jeevaka, respectively) had the closest frequent and consistent reference to the term Sanjeevani or its nearest phononym.

Now we have three to choose from. What about their habitat? Which are from the hills, which Hanuman would have sought?

Not the first one, C. cretica, because it occurs along dry tracks in the Deccan plateau or lowlands. So Sanjeevani could be either S. bryopteris or D. fimbriatum.

Now, the scientist trio used a Sherlock Holmes-type hypothesis. What would have been the criteria that physicians of the Ramayana era used as a medicinal principle?

‘The Doctrine of Signature’, a strong tenet used in ancient Indian traditional medicine posits that a plant with syndromes similar to the affected organ or body can be used to treat the disease.

The plant S. bryopteris is a highly drought-tolerant plant that lies “dead”, dry and inactive for months and at the first rain (or upon hydration) comes “alive”, turning green and flush. If ‘similar cures similar’, was it S. bryopteris that “resurrected” Lakshmana?

Biological experiments

Modern day biological experiments, using current biochemical and cell biology methods, done by Dr. N K Sah (of Gwalior, now at Bhagalpur), in collaboration with Drs. Sharmishta Banerjee and Seyed Hasnain of the University of Hyderabad, show that S. bryopteris contains molecules that protect and help recover rat and insect cells from oxidative and ultraviolet stress, both of which can affect nerve cells.

So, is Selaginella bryopteris the legendary Sanjeevani?

In true scientific spirit, Ganeshaiah and colleagues do not conclude so, but say that the other plant D. fimbriatum too satisfies these criteria and thus has an equal claim to Sanjeevani.

But, as the editors of Current Science comment in their “In this Issue” section of the journal, while Selaginella occurs in the Aravallis of Madhya Pradesh (and may be in Dronagiri in Uttarakhand), Desmotrichum occurs in the Western Ghats. “Coming back to the logistics of Hanuman, it appears, the latter species was more closely available for Hanuman”.

And Dr. D P Sharma, in his book “The Search for Lanka” thinks that the Lanka in Ramayana was not Ceylon but more likely an island in the Godavari River Delta. If so, is D. fimbriatum the real Sanjeevani?

Ganeshaiah, Vasudeva and Uma Shaanker conclude that more work is needed to choose between the two plants. Here then is a research project waiting to be taken up. 

thanks to : http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/in-search-of-the-sanjeevani-plant-of-ramayana/article17925.ece

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sci-tech-and-agri/more-on-sanjeevani-the-plant-that-resurrects-speaking-of-science/article672088.ece

More on Sanjeevani – the plant that resurrects speaking of science

A couple of studies have found plants that have the ability to play dead for months and come alive when water is sprinkled on them

The response I have had to my last column (Sept 10, 2009) on the plant Sanjeevani has been gratifyingly large. While some named a few other locales where plants with the same name are found, others named competitors to Selaginella for this distinction.

But the most scientifically rigorous and illuminating response has come from the famous plant biologist Dr. Ramesh Maheshwari of Bangalore. He pitched Selaginella as Sanjeevani from a biochemical angle. His reason focused on this plant’s ability to play dead for months and “resurrect” itself into life in full bloom when water is sprinkled on it.

This remarkable ability is shared by a few other plants such as Rudanti or D.fimbriatum found in the Western Ghats, and Myrothamnus of Zimbabwe in Africa. The logic used by Drs. Ganeshaiah and colleagues in suggesting that Selaginella or D. fimbriatum could be Sanjeevani was based on the traditional medicinal belief “Like cures Like”.

Since Sanjeevani is a plant that resurrects itself from inertness to bustling life, it is believed to resurrect near-dead people into active life. But what is the mechanism by which it is able to “go dead” and revive itself when conditions are favourable?

Professor Maheshwari points out that such “resurrection plants” are the only plants that contain the sugar called trehalose, instead of the usual sugar sucrose. And trehalose has some remarkably unique properties that no other sugar has. And the secret of resurrection plants lies in their ability to synthesize trehalose and store it as a preservative agent.

What is it about the sugar trehalose that is special? Trehalose is a molecule made up of two glucose molecules stitched together chemically; it is thus a dimer of glucose or a diglucoside. Now, a glucose molecule has five hydroxyl groups, using any one of which it can stitch itself (or chemically bond with) another glucose.

Given ten such hydroxyls, and each of them spatially disposed in one of two ways, the number of possible glucose dimers is large indeed. The resultant shape of each diglucoside, with its hydroxyl groups flung out in space, is thus a mélange or medley of molecular shapes that could teach gymnasts like Nadia Comaneci some lessons.

If maltose adopts a characteristic shape because of the way its atoms are put together, cellobiose has a different shape of its own and trehalose its own. And it turns out that the way that some of the relevant hydroxyl groups of trehalose are disposed in space exactly mimics the way water molecule is shaped — as a tetrahedral prism.

In a soup or cellular cytoplasm containing trehalose and water, when the water is evaporated off by dehydration, trehalose appears to take over, attaching itself to the cellular molecules, membranes and other units in exactly the same geometrical way that water does; and the system does not seem to realize it has lost water.

Professor James Clegg of the University of California at Davis is the pioneer in studying this phenomenon of how trehalose takes up the role of water in maintaining the integrity of cells, tissues and even organisms as they are desiccated.

He showed over fifty years ago that a particular type of shrimp called Artemia Salina produces embryos in the form of capsules or cysts that can survive complete dehydration, at a state where metabolism, as we understand it, ceases. He called this phenomenon “anhydrobiosis” or life in the dry state.

When the cysts are rehydrated, they rapidly imbibe water, resume active metabolism and develop into full grown shrimps.

Since this remarkable discovery of Clegg and the role that trehalose plays in “playing water”, keeping the cellular components in “deepfreeze” as it were, others have tried using trehalose as a preservative for cells, blood, vaccines.

Free-dried products

The idea here is to dispense with the “cold chain” or refrigerated storage and transport. Trehalose stabilized free-dried products are currently in various stages of development and clinical trials for human use.

Turning now to plants, not all plants synthesize trehalose and store them within themselves. It appears that the class that the plant Selaginella belongs to is the one that does so with ease. And for good reason — since they are among the oldest plants known to us (Dr. Jo Ann Banks of Purdue University traces them to at least 400 million years ago), and have had to survive climate catastrophes of various kinds.

Gaining genes

And apart from making trehalose to let them keep alive, they also have been able to gain genes that produce molecules to fight infection win over natural and invader–induced stress, to repel predator plants and animals, and produce plant hormones that help them grow well.

And some of these molecules are now seen to be of use in medicine, as Lord Lakshmana found out. Incidentally, I cannot resist pointing out at the same time that Sanjeevani, with its ability to go to sleep for long, beats Kumbhakarna hollow!

D. BALASUBRAMANIAN

dbala@lvpei.org