Tribal Medicinal Studies on Sriharikota Island, Andhra Pradesh#

Sriharikota Island in Andhra Pradesh is an elliptical land mass sandwiched between Bay of Bengal in the East and Pulicat Lake in the West. Sullurpet is the nearest railway station which is 18 km from Sriharikota Island and it is on Chennai-Kolkata trunk line and 90 Km away from North of Chennai. An aboriginal tribe called Yanadi dwells in Sriharikota. It is similar to Chenchu community elsewhere in Andhra Pradesh. Inspite of the community being drifted from their natural way of life due to agro-rural development activities, a few aged tribal men are still able to furnish traditional ethno-medicinal data. So far no ethno-botanical studies are conducted are in this area except for a list of 50 plants reported by the senior author and co-researchers (1989). Therefore a detailed study on tribal medicine in this area is undertaken. During this work 190 species are collected having a variety of ethno-pharmacological values. However this article deals with 23 species only, having remedial effect for arthritis and rheumatism. Out of them 10 species having anodyne properties from first hand ethnic information