PONGAMIA PINNATA: AN HEIRLOOM HERBAL MEDICINE

Abstract

Pongamia pinnata, or Karanja or Indian Beech has been among the pillars of ancient Indian medicine and invaluable ecological resource. It is a popular Ayurvedic, Siddha, and Unani medicine, an indigenous Indian sub-continental plant with centuries of human experience of its vast curing power. A rich constitution of bioactive compounds, which are flavonoids, alkaloids, terpenoids, steroids and fatty acids, are found in the leaves, seeds and oil and basically characterizes its medicinal image. More recent scientific findings support these old claims and demonstrate that P. pinnata is a good antioxidant, anti-microbial agent, anti-inflammatory, anti-glycemia and anti-wound-healing agent. Furthermore, its application is significantly broader since farmers apply it to improve the soil, environmentalists to restore the land and engineers to make the oil a possibly promising source of clean biofuel. The current paper will build a progressive argument of how P. pinnata has evolved into a modern medicine and environmental resource as well as a traditional medicine and how intergenerational ethnomedicinal knowledge is connected to the scientific paradigm of drug development