Sound as Medicine: How Ancient India Engineered Healing Through Nāda Yoga

Long before modern music therapy, India’s sages treated sound as medicine. This research paper traces an unbroken textual lineage, from Rigvedic hymns and Atharvavedic mantras against fever and insomnia, through Ayurveda’s clinical use of sound in the Caraka and Suśruta Saṃhitās, to the rāga pharmacology of the Nāṭyaśāstra, Bṛhaddeśī, and Saṅgīta Ratnākara. Drawing on original Sanskrit passages with translations, it shows how ritual, philosophy, aesthetics, and medicine formed one integrated science of vibration. Modern EEG and stress-marker studies now confirm what the rishis knew: nāda heals.