Introduction

Medicinal plants play an important role in the primary healthcare systems for the majority of the rural people [1]. 2003).The indigenous people of different countries of the world, living amid nature, have first-hand knowledge on benefits provides by the plants including medicinal value. They used plants not for only the treatment of various ailments, but also used as preventive measures against different ailments [2]. A number of important modern pharmaceuticals have been derived from plants used by indigenous people [3] including antibiotics, anti-malarial drugs, cardiotonics, sympatho and para-sympathomimetics etc. The ethnomedicinal knowledge about the uses of medicinal plants can be a resource for the scientists to identify potential drugs and also may have high impact from a future bio-economic point of view [4]. Thus proper documentation of these knowledges overtime is crucial to protect them from extinction [5]

There are several reports of an ethnomedicinal survey conducted among the herbal practitioners in Bangladesh [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22]. However, there is no information on ethnomedicinal plant uses by the Khasia community of Bangladesh. So, Khasia community is selected for the purposes.

The Khasia’s are an indigenous group of people living in the forested regions of Moulvibazar district, north-eastern part of Bangladesh. They have their own traditional medicinal practitioners, called Baidday who uses plants for therapeutic as well as preventive purposes. Since this uses has been going on for centuries, it was decided to document the uses of these plants for treatment of various diseases, as practiced by the Khasia tribal practitioner. Accordingly, a survey was carried out at different Khasia village (Punji) of Moulvibazar district of Bangladesh.

Methodology

The Khasia community people lives in the Sylhet, Moulvibazar and Habigonj districts of Sylhet division. Moulvibazar was selected for the study area as most of the Khasia people lives in this district. Within Moulvibazar district three Khasia Punji (small village) were selected purposively. The selected Punji’s were Lawachara, Magurchara and Kalinji under Sreemongal and Kamolgonj Upazilla. An ethnobotanical survey was conducted during 2015-16 in the selected Khasia villages. The community people particularly Baidday’s and Montri’s (Head of the Khasia village) were briefed extensively about the purpose of the survey and told that information obtained from them may be disseminated in both national and international journals and conferences. Information were collected with the help of a semi-structured questionnaire followed by Martin [23] and Maundu [24]. In this method Baidday’s were interviewed on guided field-walks through areas from where they collected their medicinal plant. Information collected on the mentioned local names, uses, and method of use, formulations, diseases for which the formulations were used and dosages. Information also collected on the season of collection, which plants parts used. Collected information were validated through eight group discussion. The collected voucher specimens were identified with the help of Forest Botany Division of Bangladesh Forest Research Institute.

Results and Discussion

The study reveals a rich diversity of medicinal plants used to treat various disease conditions by the Khasia people in Moulvibazar district. It was further revealed rich ethnomedicinal knowledge among the Khasia community people. The families like Asclapidaceae, Apocynaceae, Liliaceae, Lauraceae, Meliceae, Piperaceae and Verbenaceae, were the dominant in this study are consistently recorded in other ethnomedicinal studies.

A total of 45 plants were identified by the Baidday’s of Khasia community along with their medicinal uses. The plants were distributed into 37 families (Table 1).

Most of the plants recorded during the study found to possess multi uses. The plants used to cure different ailments by the Khasia’s were tree 36% (16 species) followed by herb 24% (11 species), creeper 20% (9 species) shrub 16% (7 species), and fern 4% (2 species) (Figure 1).

Plant parts like leaf, stem, root, rhizome, bark, fruit, flower and gum/resin were used for treatment of different diseases. Leaves constituted the major plant part used (35%), followed by rhizome (19%), root (12%) and bark (11%). Other plant parts used included stem (10%), fruit (5%), flower (4%) and resin/gum (4%). The results are shown in Figure 2.

About 26.5% plants were used to treat stomach problem followed by different type of pains (24%), dysentery (17.5%), cough (13%), asthma (13%), sexual diseases (13%), skin diseases (13%) and diarrhea (11%).

Fever, diarrhea, skin diseases, rheumatism, insect bite, tooth ache, injury and jaundice are the other major complaints treated by Baidday’s. The most common disorder skin diseases and rheumatism treated with 6 medicinal plants (13%). However, the Baidday’s used 12 plants for the treatment of stomach problem, 11 plants for pain and 8 plants for dysentery which suggests this is a common disorder among the Khasia people of Moulvibazar district.

Conclusion

It is important that modern scientific studies to be done on these medicinal plants, so that the plants may be used as remedies in a more rational scientific manner. The result of this study revealed a rich diversity of medicinal plants used to treat various disease condition and ethnomedicinal knowledge, among the Khasia people. Through proper scientific investigation may yield novel compound to treat both old and emerging diseases. The study should be extended other parts of the country to discover an unknown potential use of any medicinal plants that have not been noticed earlier, but is being used for the centuries to treat many difficult diseases.

Acknowledgement

We like to express sincere appreciation and deep gratitude to all participants in this work particularly the Khasi’s of Moulvibazar who have given the permission to conduct the study.