DISEASED SELVES AND SOCIAL OTHERS: CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF EPILEPSY AND LEPROSY IN INDIA

Illness has long been understood not only in medical but also in symbolic and moral terms. Within the Indian subcontinent, conditions marked by visible disfigurement or sudden loss of consciousness such as leprosy and epilepsy became closely tied to stigma, exclusion, and religious interpretation. This paper explores the cultural construction of these two illnesses, tracing their shifting meanings across textual traditions, historical contexts, and social practices. Drawing on Sanskrit medical treatises, Puranic and epic narratives, medieval hagiographies, colonial ethnographies, and oral histories, the study examines how epilepsy(apasmara)and leprosy(kushtha)were situated at the intersection of medicine, cosmology, and morality. Ayurvedic texts such as the Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita offered medical classifications, yet framed both conditions within karmic and cosmological worldviews: epilepsy linked to demonic possession or divine punishment, leprosy to moral transgression and ritual impurity.