Maharishi Ayurveda and historical newspaper articles: A statistical analysis of latent factors

Abstract

For more than a hundred years, Western news media intermittently reported on the unique properties and practices of Ayurveda, the science of health and long life from ancient India. However, in the last 40 years there has been a significant explosion of reporting on Ayurveda, and this has been in large part due to the efforts of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Beginning in the late 1970s, Maharishi, along with eminent Ayurvedic physicians Dr Brihaspati Dev Triguna, Dr V. M. Dwivedi, and Dr Balraj Maharishi, began a program to restore the full dignity of Ayurveda by revitalising its foundations in Veda and the Vedic Literature and expanding its range to include the fundamental role of consciousness in health on the one hand and its application to collective health and the environment on the other. This program of revitalisation, called Maharishi Ayurveda, has been reported in newspapers but the contents of these historical articles have never been documented. The present study statistically analyses the dates, locations and sources of quotations in newspaper articles, identifies 29 key topics, and uses exploratory factor analysis to uncover four unobservable themes embedded within them. The outcome of these analyses is a comprehensive exploration of the historical public record of Maharishi Ayurveda between 1982 and 2013.