Introduction

Naturopathy is a term made popular in the early 1900’s to describe a system of medicine that emphasizes natural therapies including herbs. Naturopathy - “nature cure” meaning treatment of suffering or disease via nature. Naturopathic treatment implies connection with nature, focusing on the body’s capacity to heal itself. The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (Kühn's and Rieger's). Naturopathy is a system of treating, preventing, curing disease with natural care -- such as fresh air, organic diet, water from natural sources far from any contamination, herbal treatment, etc. Body comes in harmony with the constructive principles of nature on physical, mental, moral and spiritual planes of living. Naturopathy has great health promotive, disease preventive and curative as well as restorative potential. Naturopathic treatment modalities include herbal treatment. The art of herbal healing has very deep root in Indian culture and folklore. Medicinal plants have been playing an important role for the survival of the ethnic communities, who live in remote villages and forests. Traditional folk medicine, which is mostly undocumented, has been handed down orally from one generation to another. Large sections of the Indian population still rely on traditional herbal medicine 1. Even today, most of the forest tribals are depending on local traditional healing systems for their primary health care. Their reliability on healing plants is still more for the people inhabitating the deep forest of Western Ghats in India, where it is difficult for them to get modern medical facilities for their day to day problems.

Medicinal plants attracted considerable global interests in recent years. Due to various human activities such as deforestation and other developmental activities, both natural vegetation and traditional culture in India are fast declining. There is an urgent need to document all ethnobotanical knowledge available with different ethnic and folklore communities before their traditional culture is completely lost. Ethnobotanical knowledge has been documented from various parts of Indian subcontinent 2, 3. In Karnataka state ethnomedicinal value of plants in possession of various tribals and rural communities for treating various diseases and disorders has been done to some extent 4, 5. A perusal of these reports suggested that the ethnobotanical survey in Karnataka is incomplete and traditional herbal healing knowledge of a large number of folk communities need documentation. There is no previous report in the records of ethnobotanical knowledge from Soligas tribals of Chamarajanagar district forest in Karnataka. An attempt has therefore been made to collect and document the folk knowledge from tribals, local herbal healers and knowledgeable elder people of different castes and communities residing in certain forest area of Chamarajanagar wildlife forest.

Naturopathic treatment modalities include diet and clinical nutrition, behavioral change, hydrotherapy, traditional herbal treatment, physical medicine, etc. Naturopathy is an alternative way of body healing i.e self-healing via “nature” by focusing on some very basic things such as diet, herbal treatment and lifestyle. Many other approaches such as dietary supplement of plants, herbs, exercise, massage, iridology, acupuncture, hair analysis and homeopathy may also be incorporated.

Study Area

Chamarajanagar district is in southern Karnataka, in India, surrounded by Mandiya and mysore in north, Nilgiris and Salem in Tamil Nadu and West Wayanad district in Kerala. About 49% of the total areas in the district are covered by forest. Chamarajanagar wildlife forest division is consisting of 5 forest ranges which are in Chamarajanagar, Yelanthur, Kolegal, Bylore and K.Gudi ranges. The elevation ranges from 300 to 900m (it is situated between 13°42 ' and 14°06'N latitude and between 75°35' and 75°52' E longitude)

About 54 tribal villages are located in this district forest, particularly BRT (Bilgrims Ranganathan Temples) hills in Yelanthur, Bylore, Punjur and K.Gudi ranges demarcated areas of tribal population. BRT wildlife sanctuary is well known for its rich diversity of flora and fauna and it has large variety of plants and animal species covering area of about 572 sq.km. Vegetations like scrub jungle, dry deciduous, moist deciduous, semi-evergreen, evergreen and shoal forest are covered all over the sanctuary and receives an annual rainfall ranging from 750-1950mm. Moreover, it has large number of endemic species and medicinal plants. Hence, it has very high population of forest dwelling tribals, with large number of Soligars followed by jenu kurumba, betta kurumbas. Most of the tribals are inhabitant of the forest in BRT hills. Many religious temples are located in BRT hills like Ranganathan temple and Male Mahadeshwara betta temple in MM hills (Male Mmahadeshwara). Two languages are spoken in this district. Kanada being the state language of Karnataka is the main language in Chamarajanagar district. Tamil is a minor language within the district in many areas like Kollegal and Yelandur.

Present knowledge on local folk medicine

Ethnobotanical knowledge has been documented from various parts of Indian sub-continent 2, 6, 7. In Karnataka state, ethnomedicinal value of plants in possession of various tribal 8, 9, 4 and rural folk communities for treating various diseases have been done to some extent 5, 10. A perusal of the literature reveals that several ethnobotanical studies among various tribals have been reported from the various district of this state except Chamarajanagar district, which has not yet been studied from ethnobotanical point of view.

Methodology

A preliminary survey of Soligas tribal villages in Chamarajanagar district revealed that local communities used herbal medicine for their healthcare extensively. Frequent field surveys were made in Chamarajanagar district. Each area was visited twice in different seasons in 2009-2010. Ethnobotanical data (local names, part used, mode of preparation, medicinal uses) were collected through interviews and discussion with the tribal practitioners in and around the study area. Data were also collected through questionnaires in their local languages (Kannada and Tamil). Informations were collected through by interview with fifty four persons aged between 40-80 (38 Men and 16 Women), who had traditional knowledge of plants. In addition to the vernacular names, questions were also asked about each plant prescribed, such as part of

the plant used, medical uses, detailed information about mode of preparation (i.e., decoction, paste, pills, powder and juice); from the usage either fresh or dried and mixtures of other plants used as ingredients were also collected. The claims were compared with available important works on Indian ethnobotany and medicinal plants such as 11. The medicinal plants were identified (local names), photographed and sample specimens were collected for the preparation of herbarium documentation.

The collected plant species were identified taxonomically using the Flora of Presidency of Madras 12 and the Flora of Tamil Nadu Carnatic 13. The identified plant specimens were then confirmed through a referral tour programme with herbaria of Botanical survey of India. The specimens were deposited in the herbarium of survey of medicinal plant unit, Regional Research Institute of Unani Medicine, Chennai. The tribal information is also kept in the same institute, voucher specimens along with other details are given in Table 1.

Result

Chamarajanagar district Wildlife forest has a variety of medicinal plants which are used by soligas for their primary health care. The present study identified tribal healers using 61 species of ethnomedicinal plants distributed in 55 genera belonging to 33 families to treat various diseases. The result of the survey presented in Table 1, in which the plants are arranged alphabetically by botanical names for each species. The following ethnobotanical information were provided; Botanical names, Family name, Voucher specimen numbers, Local names, Part used, mode of preparation, route of administration, ethnomedicinal uses and major chemical constituents according to the informations collected. They mostly used plant parts among the tribals are fruit and leaves followed by seeds, root, bark, whole plant, flowers, stem, rhizome, bulb and gum. These are commonly occurring and medicinally important plants used to treat various diseases like asthma, skin diseases, sex-related problems, rheumatism, hepatitis, diabetic, piles, ulcers, poisonous bites and wound healing etc. This is consistent with other general observations which have been reported earlier in relation to medicinal plants studies by the Indian system of medicines like Siddha, Ayurveda and Unani 14, 15. Different types of preparation made from medicinally important plants include decoction, juice, powder, paste, oil and plant extract. Drugs are prescribed either single or in a combination of more than one plant/parts of same or different plants to the people suffering from various diseases. In Chamarajanagar district, the local herbal healers and elder people rich in traditional knowledge depend on the natural resources of the area. Most of them still consider traditional herbal knowledge as knowing traditional secrets. But, through repeated contacts, and discussions, they shared their traditional herbal knowledge. Medicinal plants play an important role in providing knowledge to researchers in the field of ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology. The observation of present study shows that traditional medicine plays a significant role in the life of tribal people.

Discussion

Naturopathic treatment modalities include Ethnomedicines, Traditional medicinal treatment is one of the Naturopathic treatments. It has turned out to be a very important and beneficial remedy for our physical as well as mental health elevation. Traditional medicinal plants are an important element of indigenous medical system in India and also rest of the world.

The study of ethnomedicinal system and herbal medicinal as therapeutic agent is a paramount importance in addressing health problems of traditional communities and third world countries as well as industrialized societies. Previous reports on the ethnobotany of different districts in Karnataka 8, 9, and adjoining areas provide evidence for the presence of numerous ethno medicinal plants used by various tribal communities4, 5 . But, so far no systematic ethnobotanical survey has been made in this area, except the documentation of medicinal plants used by the tribes like Siddis and Gowlis. The therapeutic uses of herbal drugs and drug preparations differ from one region to the other. For example, people in different villages in India, exclusively used Andrographis paniculata Wall ex Ness for curing malarial fever and snakebite, headache, dysentery, diarrhea, ulcers and fever 2, 16, 17. However, tribals of Chamarajanagar used Andrographis paniculata Wall ex Ness to treat skin allergies. The traditional knowledge about utilization of local plant species is vital in alternate health care system as well as for the self sustenance of local population. High costs coupled with numerous side effects of synthetic drugs are forcing people to depend on the locally available herbal medicine for their health care needs.

Conclusion

India has a long history and strong base for ethnomedicine, which is the traditional herbal medical system. Herbal plants play an important role in preventing and treating of human diseases. People have been using plants as a traditional medicine for thousand years ago. Plants have been associated with of human civilization around the whole world. The present study revealed that traditional development medicines are still in common use by the Soligas tribal communities. Thus study ascertains the value of a great number of plants used in tribal medicine for various diseases which could be of considerable interest in the development of new drugs. The collected data show that majority of the medicines are taken orally and most of the reported preparations are obtained from a single plant; Mixtures are used rarely in other parts of the country and the use of mixtures of the plant species in treating particular ailments is fairly common in this area. Generally, the people of the study area still have strong belief in the efficacy and success of herbal medicine. The results of the present study provide evidence that medicinal plants continue to play an important role in the health care system of Soligas community. Finally to conclude, this research article will attract the attention of ethnobotanist, phytochemist and pharmacologist for their critical investigation of medicinal plants present in the region of Chamarajanagar district, Karnataka, India. Moreover the ethnomedicinal studies are important for naturopathic treatment so the medicinal plants play an important role to cure diseases through naturopathy.

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to The Director General, Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine (CCRUM), New Delhi and Deputy Director, Regional Research Institute of Unani Medicine, Chennai, for providing fund and other facilities and also thank the Principal Chief Conservator of forest, Bangalore, District Conservator of forest, Chamarajanagar, for permitting us to conduct this survey. The authors express sincere thanks to Soligas tribals in the study area for revealing their ethnomedicinal-knowledge.

Ethics Statement

The study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the Code of Ethics of the International Society of Ethnobiology. Ethics approval was not required by the Institutional Ethical Committee. Verbal informed consent was obtained from each informant prior to all interviews. During this discussion, the research objectives and interview procedure were explained to each informant and confidentiality was assured. Consent for photos was also taken and kept in the Herbarium of Survey of Medicinal Plants Unit, Regional Research Institute of Unani Medicine, No. 1, West Madha Church Road, Royapuram Chennai-13.

Funding Support

The authors declare that they have no funding support for this study.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.