ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Roads 9781472512574, 9781474293495, 9781472507181

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Transliterations and abbreviations
Introduction: Medical encounters along the Silk Roads
1 Narrating Eurasian origins of medical knowledge
2 Of dice and medicine: Interactions in Central Asian‘contact zones’
3 Myrobalans: The making of a Eurasian panacea
4 Tibetan moxa-cautery from Dunhuang: Practices and images on the move
5 Medicine of the Bakhshis: Cross-pollinations in Buddhist Iran
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
lndex

Citation preview

ReOrienting Histories of Medicine

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ReOrienting Histories of Medicine Encounters along the Silk Roads Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, 2021 Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover image: Merchants travelling by camel caravan to Cathay, China, following in Marco Polo’s footsteps, from Catalan Atlas published for Charles V of France, c.1375, Cresques, Abraham (1325–1387) & Cresques, Jehuda (1360–1410) (attr. to) / Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permissions for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Yoeli-Tlalim, Ronit, author. Title: Reorienting histories of medicine : encounters along the silk roads / Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim. Description: England ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020035941 (print) | LCCN 2020035942 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472512574 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350195820 (paperback) | ISBN 9781472507181 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472512499 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Medicine–History. | Medicine–Cross-cultural studies. Classification: LCC R131 .Y64 2021 (print) | LCC R131 (ebook) | DDC 610–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035941 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035942 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-1257-4 ePDF: 978-1-4725-0718-1 eBook: 978-1-4725-1249-9 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

For Asher, Avigail and Jonathan

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Contents Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Transliterations and abbreviations Introduction: Medical encounters along the Silk Roads 1 Narrating Eurasian origins of medical knowledge 2 Of dice and medicine: Interactions in Central Asian ‘contact zones’ 3 Myrobalans: The making of a Eurasian panacea 4 Tibetan moxa-cautery from Dunhuang: Practices and images on the move 5 Medicine of the Bakhshis: Cross-pollinations in Buddhist Iran Afterword

viii ix xii xv 1 25 41 63 85 103 127

Notes 131 Bibliography 195 Index231

Illustrations Figures 0.1 0.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2

Paul Pelliot examining Dunhuang manuscripts Solomon Schechter examining Genizah manuscripts Dice divination text of the Bower Manuscript Irk Bitig Tibetan dice divination from Dunhuang Oblong dice from Sirkap made of ivory and bone Oblong die from near Termez Central Asian oblong dice (Mount Mugh and Panjakent) Ivory oblong die from Fustat Arab ship on the Indian Ocean Medicine Buddha holding myrobalan Tibetan moxibustion chart from Dunhuang Chinese moxibustion chart from Dunhuang Uighur moxibustion chart from Turfan Mountains of Tibet from Rashīd al-Dīn’s Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh Turkish cautery chart

14 14 54 54 54 56 57 57 60 72 80 96 97 98–9 109 122

Maps 0.1 0.2 1.1 5.1

Map of the Silk Roads Map of the Indus River from the Book of Curiosities Map of the Tibetan Empire Map of the Mongol Empire

6 15 35 104

Preface At the end of 2013 the Silk Road was suddenly all over the news, although not for the best of reasons. It transpired that it was the name of an illegal dark web site, selling drugs and providing other unlawful services. The choice of the name by its founder built on the long history of transmission of exotic substances – including medicines and drugs – from little-known places in Asia into Europe. Several months later it was mindfulness which made it into the headlines – the millenniaold Buddhist practice of meditation was discussed at the Davos Summit and appeared on the front cover of Time magazine. These two seemingly unrelated pieces of news both relate to the topic of this book: medicine along the Silk Roads. The best way to explain how this book came about would probably be to recount how I came to write it, starting from long long ago. I had always wanted to go to Tibet. Working as a freelance journalist during my undergraduate years landed me there, giving me probably the most meaningful Tibetan Culture 101 I could ever imagine, and leaving me with a profound desire to learn more. It took some time and effort to go back to university for an MA (I was already a mother and working full-time in a publishing house). A PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London came next, where I worked on the oral teachings of the Tibetan Kālacakra Tantra in exile. Working on the Kālacakra sowed the seeds for the main topics which were to occupy my time for the years that followed: the links with Islam, medicine, and the associations between the microcosmos and the macrocosmos. These interests found a welcoming home at the Warburg Institute, where I first worked on Tibetan astro-medicine, leading into a more cross-cultural view of the topic (Akasoy, Burnett and Yoeli-Tlalim 2008). During this time Yossef Rapoport, who was working with Emilie SavageSmith on the eleventh-century Egyptian Book of Curiosities, came to see me about a very interesting map of the Indus River, which appeared to mention Tibet and Lhasa. This map and the route it described was very important in thinking about the connections between Tibet and the Islamic world, which I was then formulating into the Islam and Tibet project proposal, subsequently funded by the AHRC. Around the same time, I also began to work on the Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang, on a project that took me to work with Vivienne Lo at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL,

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funded by the Wellcome Trust. During this time, as we were beginning to think collectively about more globalized approaches to the history of medicine at the Centre for the History of Medicine, I came across a fascinating Hebrew medical text, the Book of Asaf. It first caught my attention as it was suggested that this text is based on Tibetan medicine (Lieber 1984). Reading this text, I realized that while we can safely disregard the Tibetan link (Yoeli-Tlalim 2018), this early Hebrew medical text raises many other fascinating issues. Three things in particular stood out for me: the first was its many mentions of India; the second was its narrative on its multicultural origins; and the third, the forms of many materia medica names which were very similar to those I knew from the Tibetan tradition. Thanks to another research grant from the Wellcome Trust, I was able to slowly clarify some of the many enigmas concerning this text. *** It was only when working on the narratives discussed in this book (mostly in Chapter 1, but throughout the book as well), that I began to wonder about the beginning of this narrative of mine. I began to ask myself whether the beginning of the narrative (‘I had always wanted to go to Tibet …’) is where the story really begins. The answer was: no. One of the first stories we read in English at my school in Haifa was the Longman abridged version of Lost Horizon. It was then that the seed was sown. Embarrassing. Or is it? Stories and narratives told and written by those who we love and trust, in the home, in our societies, in our cultures, run deep. It is very hard, often very painful, to step out of the matrix, and try to observe this from the outside. In essence, this is what Buddhism tries to teach us. This is also what is at the heart of the concept of Galut, exile, of my forefather, the Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk (Leżajsk): it is by leaving the comforts of one’s own home and society that one can gain insights otherwise obstructed. Explored more broadly and theoretically, the ‘home’ and ‘society’ are also the language you feel at home in; and in the case of academia – the discipline you might feel at home in and the great potential, marred by endless difficulty, of interdisciplinarity.

Why Eurasia? It was Herodotus who was puzzled by ‘why three distinct women’s names should have been given to what is really a single landmass’1 and the process by which their boundaries were decided upon. Where, or indeed whether, these

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boundaries lay, has continued to trouble many people in multiple contexts. I was recently reminded of Herodotus’ question, in a [e-global] discussion we had as the editorial board of the journal Asian Medicine. The question debated was: where should we place the westernmost border of what we call ‘Asian Medicine’? During that global discussion, I was also reminded of lesson one as a Teaching Assistant for the eminent historian of China, Professor Tim Barrett at the School of Oriental and African Studies, in his class ‘Religions of East and Central Asia’. Professor Barrett’s first lesson began with this same question, making students realize that there is no geographical border which separates Asia from Europe. In a recent visit to Istanbul, the experience of moving in an instant from ‘now we are in Asia’ to ‘now we are in Europe’ reminded me of the experience of hopping over meridian zero in Greenwich. Fundamentally, these meridians and boundaries are constructed. We have much to gain by looking at the landmasses, languages and cultures in question as continuums, rather than clearly defined entities with lines of one sort or another drawn neatly around them. This book presents a number of case studies of Eurasian medical encounters: there is no pretence of presenting any sort of comprehensive history of such encounters. Over the years I have published in different contexts: history of medicine, Tibetan Studies, and lately, Jewish Studies and history of science.2 It is unlikely that any person (except myself) would ever read all of these, and so the purpose of this book is to bring understandings gleaned from all these together, and to try to provide a broader context to illuminate their links. Some sections of the book have previously appeared elsewhere. The Introduction is an extended version of my chapter in Pamela Smith’s edited volume Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia.3 Chapter 1 is based on my chapter in a book edited by Lennart Lehmhaus,4 as well as from my contribution to Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Galen.5 Chapter 4 is an extended version of my contribution to a co-authored chapter with Vivienne Lo in her co-edited book Imagining Chinese Medicine.6 Our coedited volume on Rashīd al-Dīn, and especially my collaborative work with Anna Akasoy on his Life of the Buddha, served as a starting point for Chapter 5.

Acknowledgements This book has been long in the making and hence I have acquired many debts of gratitude along the way. The research leading to this book has been generously supported by the Wellcome Trust, primarily through my project ‘Re-Orienting Early Medicine: Bridges of Knowledge between East and West’ (grant no. 088251). I have also benefited from belonging to a series of wonderful collaborative projects, which have all fed into the material I discuss here in one way or another. The ‘Islam and Tibet’ project at the Warburg Institute (2005–2008), funded by the AHRC and led by Professor Charles Burnett was instrumental in drawing the first contours of Tibetan culture as a mediating Eurasian one. My collaborative work with Anna Akasoy in that project, and especially on Rashīd al-Dīn’s Life of the Buddha, served as the basis for the material on the bakhshi medicine, which I discuss in Chapter 5. During the ‘Islam and Tibet’ project I began to explore what these Eurasian connections might imply with regards to the history of medicine. Together with Vivienne Lo of UCL and Susan Whitfield, head of the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library at the time, we were able to bring together a group of international scholars who work on various aspects of medicine on the Silk Road. I learned much from the participants of that workshop, who also contributed to the special Silk Road issue of Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, which I co-edited with Vivienne Lo. The discussions with many of them continued for years to come, especially with Chen Ming, Paul Buell and Peter Zieme. During my fellowship at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL (2007–2010), funded by the Wellcome Trust, I benefited enormously from the opportunity to spend three years with some of the world’s best medical historians, both permanent staff and those who were passing by. I am endlessly grateful to Vivienne Lo for her knowledge and support in ways too numerous to recount. I am also grateful for the opportunity to take part in the collaborative effort of the Centre at that time to think about the history of medicine in a more global way, primarily through seminars led by Professor Harold Cook. My next research project (2010–2015), also funded by the Wellcome Trust, on the Hebrew Book of Asaf, allowed me to look at a comparable case to the Tibetan

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material I had been working on. Although I was not able to take up my Institute of Advanced Studies fellowship at the Hebrew University as part of the research group led by Professor Gad Freudenthal and Reimund Leicht, ‘Jewish Physicians in Medieval Christian Europe’, I have benefited enormously from my external link to this group. Gad Freudenthal led me through the hoops of this new field with patience, skill, endless knowledge and generosity for which I owe him many thanks. In the summers of 2014 and 2015 I was very fortunate to be part of a working group led by Professor Pamela Smith of Columbia University at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, working on ‘Entangled Itineraries of Material, Recipes, Practices, and Knowledge across Eurasia, 750–1800’. Here too, among incredibly stimulating colleagues from our group and the Institute at large, I was able to develop the slightly more conceptual material that forms the basis of my Introduction. I benefited enormously from hugely inspiring conversations with the entire Itineraries team. I am especially grateful for having had the benefit of conversations with Pamela Smith, Lorraine Daston, Maria Mavroudi, Sonja Brentjes, Luca Mola, Khodadad Rezakhani and Dagmar Schaefer. I am also deeply indebted to Professor Mark Geller who invited me to be a Visiting Scholar in the ‘Episteme in Bewegung’ Excellence cluster in Berlin in the summer of 2016. I gained much from the discussions which followed my keynote lecture there to a group of renowned scholars working in related topics. Many other wonderful colleagues and friends have provided help, support and inspiration along the way: Shigehisa Kuriyama, Janet Gyatso, Yossef Rapoport, Emilie Savage-Smith, Vesna Wallace, Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, Efraim Lev, Jonathan Brack, Dan Martin, Dominik Wujastyk, Fabrizio Speziale, Paolo Delaini, Dror Weil and Matt Kimberley. Various invitations to present my work in seminars and workshops were followed by inspiring discussions, which helped me develop my thoughts in many ways. I am especially grateful for Professor Giacomella Orofino’s invitation to present my work on the Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang at L’Orientale, University of Naples (2013); Gad Freudenthal’s invitation to talk about ‘Persian lore in the Hebrew Book of Asaf ’ at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Jerusalem (2013); the invitation to present my work at the Found in Translation: A Conference on the World History of Science workshop at the University of Pittsburgh (2015); Francesca Tarocco’s invitation to speak about the ‘Bower Manuscript’ at the Moving Objects: Authorship, Ownership and Experience in Buddhist Material Culture workshop at NYU Shanghai (2016); the

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invitation to speak about the Asian aspects of Roger Bacon’s Medical Alchemy at the Medicine and Yoga in South and Inner Asia: Body Cultivation, Therapeutic Intervention and the Sowa Rigpa Industry workshop (2017) at the University of Vienna; Shireen Hamza’s invitation to be the panel discussant for ‘Where in the World is Unani Medicine: Multiple Historiographies Revisited’ at ICTAM IX, Kiel (2017); Professor Rob Mayer’s invitation to talk about ‘Lost and found knowledge’ in the Asian Treasure Traditions Seminar, Merton College, Oxford (2017); and Professor Fabrizio Speziale’s invitation to present my work in the Persian Culture and South Asia Seminar of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (2018). I am also very grateful to all colleagues, friends and family members who read previous drafts of chapters of this book and made helpful suggestions for their improvement: my anonymous reader, Geoffrey Samuel, Gerrit Bos, Sonja Brentjes, Jacqueline Rose, Francesca Tarocco, Natalie Ohana, Asher Tlalim and Avigail Tlalim. All remaining faults remain of course my own. My colleagues at the History Department at Goldsmiths have been extremely supportive along the years in many ways. I owe special thanks to Howard Caygill, Sally Alexander, Helen Jones, Richard Grayson, Vivienne Richmond, John Price and Daniel Fraser. I am also very thankful to all my students who have taken my Medicine along the Silk Roads module for their interest in the topic, and for helping me clarify my thoughts. Lastly, but most deeply, I owe a huge gratitude to my family: my parents, Nehama Yoeli and the late Professor Michael Yoeli, who instilled the love of learning in me; to Asher Tlalim, for his love and endless support, and to Avigail and Jonathan, who make it all worthwhile.

Transliterations and abbreviations Tibetan words appear either in extended Wylie transliterations or in phonetic renderings, particularly for relatively known terms, or in both. For Hebrew, I have followed the general transliteration rules of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Arabic and Persian are transliterated based on modified IJMES transliteration rules, generally following the Arabic pronunciation for shared Arabic and Persian words. Chinese transliterations follow the Pinyin system.

Abbreviations A Arabic C Chinese H Hebrew P Persian PT

Pelliot tibétain

S Sanskrit T Tibetan

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Introduction: Medical encounters along the Silk Roads

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Wang Yuanlu, a Daoist monk from the western frontiers of China, accidentally discovered a cave full of manuscripts near the Chinese town of Dunhuang, in modern-day Gansu province.1 The cave, which had been sealed for nearly a thousand years, contained several tonnes of manuscripts. This cave, now known as Cave 17, or the ‘library cave’, was sealed in the early eleventh century for reasons which are still being debated by scholars.2 Following this discovery, a race began between the great nations of the time to acquire as many manuscripts as possible. Today these manuscripts are dispersed between libraries in Paris, London, St Petersburg, Tokyo, Beijing and elsewhere and are currently being united on the internet as part of the International Dunhuang Project, based at the British Library.3 The Dunhuang manuscripts are of enormous significance for Buddhist, Central Asian and Chinese history. Their significance for the history of science and the history of medicine has only recently begun to be explored in European scholarship.4 Observed in their overall context, the Dunhuang manuscripts are a bit like a time capsule, providing traces of what medicine was like ‘on the ground’, away from the main cultural centres, at this particular geographical location. Being in manuscript form they preserve the benefits of unedited texts, revealing more diverse forms of healing, telling different stories from those that medical canons preserved in print.5 Around the same time as the opening of the Dunhuang ‘library cave’, in Old Cairo, the Scottish twin sisters Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson – accomplished scholars of Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew and Greek – purchased a few leaves of an ancient Hebrew manuscript. They returned to Cambridge, and showed it to Solomon Schechter, lecturer of Talmud at the University of Cambridge, whose excitement was unstoppable.6 Realizing this was a fragment of the Hebrew

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Ben-Sira book, the existence of which had been debated till then, Schechter was soon on his way to Old Cairo, searching for the source of this manuscript. Once there, he was taken to a windowless room on top of the Ben-Ezra synagogue, reachable only by ladder. Later describing the jaw-dropping sight that met his eyes, of heaps of papers, manuscripts and printed books, Schechter said it looked like ‘a battlefield of books, a battle in which the literary productions of many centuries had their share, and their disjecta membra are now strewn over its area’.7 This ‘battlefield of books’, even less than the Dunhuang Cave 17, was no archive, but a dumping ground, where the Jewish community had been placing their worn-out and disused books and documents since at least the eleventh century – a genizah. The idea of a genizah is based on an old Jewish custom that no writing which may contain the name of God should be destroyed. Hence, in chambers adjacent to synagogues, or near cemeteries, papers and books which contain Hebrew letters are buried. Such genizahs are found all over the Jewish world, but none to date have been as staggering in their significance as the genizah discovered in the Ben-Ezra synagogue of Fustat (Old Cairo). The Genizah Collection, like the Dunhuang one, is today scattered in libraries and archives around the world. Its largest repository is the Taylor-Schechter Collection at the Cambridge University Library, comprising more than 193,000 items in Judaeo-Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. Much like the Dunhuang collection, the Genizah provides a rare glimpse into what life – and medicine – were like ‘on the ground’. There are almost 2,000 fragments dealing with the medical profession and medical matters, dating mostly from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries.8 A large proportion of the medical texts from the Genizah are written in Judaeo-Arabic. In addition to Arabic and Hebrew translations of medical texts, there is a great variety of other types of texts: detailed prescriptions, popular recipes, medical responsa, technical and herbal dictionaries in diverse languages and pharmacopoeias.9

Why ReOrient? The term follows economic historian Andre Gunder Frank who in his 1998 book, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age called for the need to ReOrient our views away from Eurocentrism, challenging received historiography in order to rethink the place of Asia in global economic history. Similarly, within a

Introduction

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more global approach to the history of medicine, this book argues that we ought to take Asia as an integral and connected part of the picture. This lost piece of the puzzle of the Eurasian history of medicine is reconstructed here through an analysis and contextualization of medical manuscripts from both of these collections, many of which have not yet been translated into English. The extent to which the world has been connected by knowledge for a very long time has been – until fairly recently – generally underestimated.10 Agriculture, language, architecture, writing and calculating, may have been part of long-term and global processes since very early times and can only be properly understood from a more comprehensive perspective.11 Such cross-cultural interactions come and go, often leaving behind them only some ‘traces’ or ‘fossils’. Some of the material ‘fossilized’ in the manuscripts found on the Silk Road provide a fresh view into some of the interactions, exchanges and influences which were, in one way or another, later written out of printed sources. The emerging new focus on ‘exchanges’ rather than ‘cultures’ necessarily brings to the fore knowledge stemming from beyond cultural elites, with a greater focus on locations where knowledge is more easily subject to change. Antonio Gramsci spoke about historical processes which ‘deposit traces’ without necessarily leaving clear lists or ‘inventories’ of things and documents essential to our understanding of the past. Commenting on Gramsci’s notion of ‘traces’, Edward Said has pointed out that by their nature, cultural ‘traces’ are easily ignored or marginalized.12 This book brings to the fore some of these traces of the medical sphere, trying to reconstruct precarious inventories and fossils, giving a voice to places, languages, people and narratives which were once prominent but have gone silent. Analysing cross-cultural transmissions, we can observe what travels fast and what travels slow: goods, tools, inventions, technical skills and ingenious solutions circulate among human groups typically faster than languages, values, traditional rituals, systems of ideas, religious frameworks, as well as administrative and political institutions.13 These fast and slow transfers are also observable in the sphere of transmissions of medical knowledge: materia medica and its prescriptions travelled easily – as has been demonstrated for musk and rhubarb and discussed here with regards to myrobalans. What travelled slow or not at all are theories behind the practicalities. In the case of materia medica: the medical theory which explains why a particular drug is effective against a particular ailment or systems of classifications of drugs travelled slow or not at all.

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The book looks at some traces of Eurasian encounters, as found in mediating languages, locations or periods of time. The two main primary sources for this book are the Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang, and the Hebrew Book of Asaf, neither of which has been translated into any European language to date.14 All translations from these manuscripts are my own, unless otherwise specified. The purpose of this book is to put what I have learned from these manuscripts in a broader context of Eurasian transmissions of knowledge. The book analyses a number of themes which make a contribution towards the question: how did knowledge move between cultures? What are the narratives, languages, people and collections which can help us think about the history of medicine in a more Eurasian way? Some of these narratives are origin narratives discussed in Chapter 1. These ‘proto-historiographies’, as found in the Hebrew Book of Asaf and a number of Tibetan accounts, call on us to question the clear-cut distinction of ‘Asian’ and ‘European’. But they also raise broader questions like: when and why does a culture/religion/state ideology choose to present/construct itself as multicultural? Are there correspondences between being multicultural and of declaring a culture as such? When thinking about the historiography of medicine, we think about why and how we have the sources we have. When reflecting about medicine along the Silk Roads, we ought to reflect on how and why the sources in question were ‘found’. An important chapter of Silk Roads ‘discoveries’ is discussed in Chapter 2 – the acquisition of a text, known as the ‘Bower Manuscript’. Dating from the first half of the sixth century, the so-called Bower Manuscript is one of the earliest known medical manuscripts from the Silk Road. Chapter 2 looks at various aspects of the Bower Manuscript through the notion of the ‘contact zone’, a concept which has emerged out of the work of Mary Louise Pratt and which has been informing some of the new global approaches to the history of science.15 This text, or rather, collection of texts, offers an opportunity for a micro-history of an object through a number of ‘contact zones’ of different historical layers: the time and place of its composition; the conditions leading to its discovery; and the various aspects of ‘medicine’ which it discusses. Another prism through which we can look at movement of knowledge across Eurasian contexts is by focusing on a particular substance. Anna Akasoy and I have previously discussed musk in this context, and indeed argued for the usefulness of the term ‘Musk Route’ to discuss the multitude of interactions

Introduction

5

between Tibet and the Islamic world.16 Another revealing substance in this regard is myrobalan. Its long Eurasian history can be traced through notions of India as a source of wondrous drugs and of medical knowledge, literature on the travels of Alexander the Great, narratives on the Medicine Buddha, as well as the medical and trade documents from the Cairo Genizah, reflecting Maimonides’ links with India – all the way to modern Tibetan pharmaceutical history. The Eurasian itineraries of myrobalan are reconstructed in Chapter 3 by looking at its simultaneous and intersecting trails: the linguistic trail, the tale trail, the trade trail and the pharmacological trail. Among the aspects which travel easily are practices, particularly quick and easy ones like the moxibustion practices, which are discussed in Chapter 4. The simple instructions found in the Tibetan and Chinese moxibustion texts from Dunhuang, as well as an intriguing Uighur example from Turfan, exemplify how such a useful practice was easily transmittable. These texts, significantly, also go hand in hand with illustrations of the human body – some of the very first drawn on paper. Certain points in time and geography have brought together a number of key elements for fruitful Eurasian cultural interactions. One such case is the Mongol era and the medical encounters that it enabled, as discussed in Chapter 5. While in popular perception the Mongol era is often conceived as a period of much death and destruction, we now know that the Mongols were also active promoters of Eurasian exchanges of knowledge. Chapter 5 analyses the role of Ilkhanid Buddhism in the transmission of medical knowledge, discusses an intriguing Persian presentation of Chinese medicine, and what appears to be an Asian-inspired European account of medical alchemy. First, however, we need to clarify some of the terminology used here: what do we mean by the term ‘Silk Road’ or ‘Silk Roads’? Is it a useful term at all? Should we actually be talking about the ‘Musk Route’? Or perhaps the ‘Paper Trail’? And what should we count as ‘medicine’ in the contexts under discussion?

‘Silk Road/s’: The term/the metaphor The term ‘Silk Road’ both in the singular and plural was coined by the German geographer and traveller Ferdinand von Richthofen at the end of the nineteenth century.17 The term, in von Richthofen’s usage, referred to the routes along

Map 0.1  Map of the Silk Roads.

Introduction

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which Chinese silk moved from the Han Empire to Central Asia. Richthofen himself was interested not only in geography but also in the greater historical and cultural importance of these trade routes. Since Richthofen’s day the term has evolved to refer to the many ways and exchanges which connect China and Europe, along which people, stuff and ideas were moved and exchanged. The people were traders, missionaries, brides, soldiers, artists, diplomats, as well as various combinations of these. The stuff they carried was much more varied than just silk and included things like horses, paper, musk, musical instruments and dumplings – among many more. Genes, germs and immunities were also carried on the way.18 The ideas included the many religions which travelled across Asia: Buddhism, Islam, Eastern Christianity, Manichaeism, and also some Judaism; medicine and other fields of knowledge which we might term as scientific; stories; arts and technology – including papermaking, printing and the production of gunpowder (Map 0.1). When thinking, researching and writing about the Silk Road, scholars were initially focused primarily on its two extremes: China and Europe. This focus on terminus points is quite understandable considering the sources at hand. That is – the sources which were on hand until the twentieth century. All this changed when, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the great finds along the Silk Roads were excavated: particularly thanks to the manuscript discoveries, scholarship gradually shifted to the great expanse in between,19 slowly uncovering traces of cultural exchanges. These traces, which were buried for more than a thousand years, are now slowly being studied. Archaeology of the Silk Road has been relatively slow too, due to a combination of political and environmental reasons. But as archaeological research on the Silk Roads progressed, it has become clear that the exchanges mediated by the Silk Roads are much older and more extensive than had been thought in the past.20 The term ‘Silk Road/s’ is not without problems, and has indeed been criticized, particularly eloquently by Khodadad Rezakhani in his essay ‘The Road that Never Was’.21 While I take Rezakhani’s point on the overuse, misuse and abuse of the term, I would argue that by dismissing the entire historiography of the Silk Road and the term itself, we end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Indeed, within the huge bulk of literature dealing with the Silk Road, one can find problems of various sorts, as Rezakhani ably demonstrates. However, there have recently been some game changers in this respect, most notably Valerie Hansen’s Silk Road: A New History (2012), which came out after Rezakhani’s article and addresses most, if not all, of the problems which Rezakhani raised.

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Valerie Hansen, in her illuminating account of the history of the Silk Road, has demonstrated how trade on the Silk Roads was not on a grand scale either geographically or economically. Unlike popular perceptions of vast amounts of silk and other precious items going from China to Rome, sufficient to bring down the Roman Empire, the nature of trade as it emerges from the documents unearthed in the oases around the Taklamakan Desert is much smaller and more local. The interactions of trade, as of knowledge, happened at the points in between: between Gandhara and Kucha; between Kucha and Turfan; between Turfan and Dunhuang; between Dunhuang and Chang’an. And of course, among the vast variety of peoples who dwelled and moved among these sites. While the Silk Road as a concept could be criticized for being a portmanteau22 for anything from a dark website selling illicit drugs to the catchphrase behind China’s new global development strategy, known as The Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the Maritime Silk Road (MSR), the analysis of the Silk Road has become central to Global History23 as well as in the emerging approach of Big History.24 This book argues that it also has a place in the history of medicine. Through an analysis of a number of case studies of medical interactions, this book wishes to amend the overemphasis on the Silk Road’s terminus points, and shift the focus to what the great expanse in between can contribute to the history of medicine.

What is ‘medicine’? ‘Medicine’ and its borderlands Within an attempt to tell a more globalized history of medicine comes also the onus of reflecting on what we mean by ‘medicine’.25 Crossing Eurasian cultural borders of both space and time brings to the fore aspects of the field which have been relegated beyond our present Eurocentric perceptions of what medicine is. It therefore presents ample opportunities to explore the processes by which these borders have been – and continue to be – formulated. As ever, what happens in the borderlands defines what happens in the heartland. These ‘borderlands’ as discussed in this book are of several types: one is the ‘borderland’ of the practice of medicine. Key issues are the fuzziness between what we might term ‘medicine’, ‘ritual’, ‘alchemy’, ‘divination’ and ‘magic’. Reflecting on these in faraway contexts – both of space and of time – can also bring a reflection on these in their closer manifestations. The boundaries between ‘medicine’ and ‘ritual’/‘magic’ have been a key issue in the history of medicine. This dichotomy stands at the heart of how the

Introduction

9

history of pre-modern medicine has been narrated. On the one hand we have what has been termed ‘rational’ medicine, tracing its origins in Hippocrates; and on the other, what has been termed ‘magical’, ‘religious’, ‘ritualistic’, the origins of which have been traced to Babylonian medicine. More recent accounts have revealed more of a continuum than a dichotomy. One of the most important historians of medicine who has been at the forefront of this revised thinking, the Babylonian medicine scholar Mark Geller, argues that the use of our terms ‘magic’ and ‘medicine’ is misleading, and that we should treat them both as forms of therapy.26 Geller also reminds us of the importance of considering the role of the patient in the healing process, a point which is found in much anthropological work as well.27 Reports on efficacy – historical and contemporary – often have more to do with biases originating in cultural affiliations or, more bluntly, in what can be seen as ‘trade union’ battles, and so we ought to be careful how we interpret them. One hugely important topic, in which much progress has been made in the last few years, and which is not discussed in this book, is the Eurasian transmission of germs, immunities and genes.28

Technologies of knowledge: The paper trail While Foucault made us think about how knowledge is constructed, the work of historian of science Pamela Smith calls on us more specifically to reflect on the materiality of knowledge production: in the cases discussed here – many media before Marshall MacLuhan – how the medium, paper, affected the message. Intertwined with the history of Eurasian knowledge transfers is the Eurasian history of technologies which enabled knowledge transfers, namely papermaking and print. There is no question that the transmission of these two technologies has been revolutionary in world history – indeed, it has been suggested that the Silk Road should really be called the Paper Road.29 In the context of the present study, it is important to consider the way paper transformed the transmission of medical knowledge along the Silk Roads. The case of paper reminds us too of the centrality of Central Asia. The invention of paper is traced back to China, with the year 105 CE often cited as the date for the inception of paper technology, but both archaeological and literary sources point to an even earlier date.30 Literary sources suggest paper was already being used in China in the first century BCE, interestingly enough as a means to cover a deformed nose.31 Another aspect linking early

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uses of paper and medicine is the mention found in the Chinese bamboo tablets dating to 217 BCE, where boiling paper along with a hemp shoe is recommended for dispelling evil air.32 Archaeological finds have located Chinese paper in the second century BCE. Paper specimens from the western Han have been found in various sites in what is today Northwest China. Some of the paper fragments from an ancient site of a postal station near Dunhuang bear names of medicines in black writing, apparently used for the wrapping of those medicines.33 An often recounted narrative locates the transmission of papermaking technology from China to the Islamic world to the Battle of Talas in 751, the famous and momentous Chinese military defeat at the hands of the Abbasid army. One result of this Chinese defeat, so the story goes, was that 20,000 Chinese prisoners were taken by the Arabs, with papermaking artisans among them. They settled in Samarqand, and hence began the production of the famous Samarqandi paper. The Arabs learned the craft from them and soon after began manufacturing paper in Baghdad. This account appears to be an oversimplification of the story: paper was known and made in Central Asia for centuries before the Battle of Talas, and the spread of its technology west of the Pamirs was more of a gradual transmission over several routes than due to one event.34 What archaeology of the Silk Road has taught us is that paper and the knowledge of papermaking spread from China with Buddhism both eastwards to Korea and Japan and westwards along the Silk Roads to Central Asia. Buddhists were instrumental in transmitting paper technology across Eurasia: papermaking was developed in these regions by Buddhist monks who were copying and translating vast numbers of religious texts. Hemp paper from the first century BCE was found in the Lop Nor region (Xinjiang). Paper manuscripts found in Silk Roads sites – in Gaochang, Loulan, Kucha, Khotan, Dunhuang and Turfan – date to as early as the third century.35 The Central Asian finds reveal not only a spread of locations but also of time: the Dunhuang manuscripts present a succession of paper manuscripts from the fourth to the tenth centuries.36 The numerous paper finds from the oases around the Taklamakan Desert suggest that paper was rather plentiful in this area during the early Tang. Among the documents found in Turfan, one dated to the year 620 bears the name of a papermaker.37 A book of accounts found by Aurel Stein in a monastery in Mazar Tagh near the Khotan River records the cost of paper at the time: ‘One set of paper to be used for calendars cost 60 pieces of money.’38

Introduction

11

Paper as a mobile communication device was used not only by long-distance Buddhist pilgrim monks but also by long-distance traders. A vivid exemplar of paper usage from the fourth century was found by Aurel Stein next to a watchtower, not far from the Dunhuang caves. These are a group of letters in a lost postbag, written in Sogdian, dating most probably from the first decades of the fourth century. These ‘Ancient Letters’, as they are known, were written by Sogdians situated in the eastern part of the Silk Road and addressed to their compatriots in Sogdiana.39 Letters in Arabic on Chinese paper dating from the eighth century, which were found in Sanjar-Shah (Tajikistan), appear to be the earliest-known Arabic documents written on paper. Indeed, as Haim, Shenkar and Kurbanov point out, the use of paper by Arabs in Central Asia was much more common and earlier than has been previously assumed.40 Soon enough Samarqand became so well known for papermaking that the tenth-century Persian geography book Ḥudūd al-ʻālam (Boundaries of the World) reports as a matter of fact that ‘Samarqand produces paper which is exported all over the world’.41 This reputation is perhaps what is behind an intriguing mention of paper in one of the Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang, dating to the ninth or tenth century, which states: ‘If there is a bleeding from the nose, use paper from Persia’,42 with ‘Persia’ referring here to Islamic Central Asia as well.43 What we learn from this mention is not only that paper was used in multiple ways but also that its author was aware of different types of paper and their properties – the thin Chinese one not so handy in the case of a nosebleed. Evidence that by the tenth century paper was widely used for writing in China and in Central Asia is found in the account by Ibn al-Nadīm (932?–990?), owner of a large bookshop in Baghdad in the tenth century, a man with an unusually extensive education, whose shop appears to have been a popular meeting place for scholars.44 Ibn al-Nadīm composed the Fihrist, a kind of catalogue of all books, lecture notebooks and the like available in Arabic at the time, which is not only a sort of compendium of the knowledge possessed by a learned Muslim in the tenth century but also contains rare pieces of information.45 Ibn al-Nadīm’s near-contemporary account of the origins of paper, associates it with Khurasan: ‘Then there is the Khurasani paper made of flax, which some say appeared in the days of the Umayyads, while others say it was during the Abbasid regime.’46 Paper, however, remained a Chinese speciality even during the Mongol era. Rashīd al-Dīn, the thirteenth-century Ilkhanid court physician turned powerful minister, tells us that paper is used in China more than elsewhere because of

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its high quality: that in China only one side of the paper is used for writing, whereas in other places both sides are used, and that in China paper is used also for wrapping and money.47 Rashīd al-Dīn’s fascination with Chinese paper is no mere anecdote: it needs to be viewed in conjunction with his innovative illustrated Persian exposition of Chinese medicine, the Tanksūqnāma, discussed in Chapter 5.

The impact of paper The effects of the diffusion of paper and papermaking – usually hidden by the shadow of printing – can be observed in revolutionary changes to a great variety of realms of human knowledge production. An important one is how paper enabled the development of systems of notation, and new graphic modes of thinking and documenting knowledge.48 While these have been discussed within the context of mathematics, astronomy, cartography, commerce and the arts, their importance with medical knowledge has, perhaps, not been sufficiently recognized. Texts written on paper enabled the transformation of knowledge production. The early paper manuscript collections of the Silk Roads and the Genizah reflect adaptations to local cultures, which went hand in hand with the vernacularization of knowledge: translations to local vernaculars, transliterations, line by line translations, and the writing of one language in the script of another. We need, however, to use the term ‘translations’ with caution: very often we are facing a wide range of adaptations, pseudo-translations or ‘transcreations’, as Salguero has termed them.49 Other aspects of transformations enabled by paper are exemplified in the traces of the transmission of moxibustion techniques, using a combination of text and images, which can be traced as they moved from Chinese to Tibetan, then to Uighur contexts, discussed in Chapter 4.50 It is then not a huge leap from the Uighur to similar images which appear shortly after in Anatolia, though there is still more work to be done to trace the exact transmission line there (see Chapter 5).

Discarded histories of Dunhuang and the Genizah: Precious time capsules These two almost contemporaneous images, which have become iconic in their respective fields of study: Figure 0.1 showing Paul Pelliot in front of a heap of

Introduction

13

Dunhuang manuscripts; Figure 0.2 showing Solomon Schechter in front of a heap of Genizah manuscripts, represent the two most spectacular collections of medieval paper – the Dunhuang and Genizah collections – two collections which serve as the basis for much of the material discussed in this book. Their extraordinary contribution, being discarded or hidden histories, is in the lesser-known stories they tell: recounting a history of everyday lives – from abandoned wives to children’s first writing attempts and doodles; lives of women who would not be bossed around, and apologies for being too drunk and of misbehaving.51 These collections represent two time capsules of two hugely important Eurasian nodes, Dunhuang and Fustat, painting a picture of life on the ground in these locations. Those lives on the ground were inevitably concerned with illness and health in multiple ways. Being multinational nodes of transit and exchange, we find concentrations of medical knowledge – physicians, texts – and, in Dunhuang, also places of medical training. Being such important Eurasian medieval nodes, here is also where we find medical exchanges of various kinds, as well as the ever-present link between trade in materia medica and the production of knowledge about it. Analysing the medical material from Dunhuang allows us to observe several continuities: between ‘elite’ and ‘popular’; between the different realms of medicine and between centre and periphery. Although the Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang are singular manuscripts found on the outskirts of both the Tibetan and Chinese empires, we do find continuities with later printed texts. Analysing medical manuscripts in and around Dunhuang can help us reconstruct processes of transmission. Based on an analysis of the locations and numbers of Sanskrit medical manuscripts excavated in Kashmir, Haḍḍa, Kucha, Kyzil, Tuyuk and Dunhuang, Chen Ming has reached the conclusion that the route which Indian medicine followed was predominantly from Kashmir via the Turfan area to Dunhuang.52 Two revealing case studies in this respect are the collection of texts known as the Bower Manuscript (discussed in Chapter 2) and the Siddhasāra.53 While Shelomo Dov Goitein, the famed scholar of the Cairo Genizah, is mostly known for his monumental Mediterranean Society,54 it was the links to India of the Genizah material which ‘electrified’ him from the very start of his work. Most of this India material has been published posthumously by his former student Mordechai Akiva Friedman.55 The world of medicine as revealed by the Genizah material is intertwined with that of trade.56 We now know much more about the trade links between Fatimid Egypt and India at this period thanks to the recent studies of the Book of Curiosities and its maps, written in Egypt in the

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Figure 0.1  Paul Pelliot examining Dunhuang manuscripts. © RMN-Grand Palais (MNAAG, Paris) / François Vizzavona / reproduction RMN.

Figure 0.2  Solomon Schechter examining Genizah manuscripts. © Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

Introduction

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Map 0.2  Map of the Indus River from the Book of Curiosities. Incomplete late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century copy, probably made in Egypt of an anonymous work compiled in Egypt between 1020 CE and 1050 CE. This map mentions the Gate to China, the Mountain of Tibet and what appears to be the City of Lhasa. Bodleian MS. Arab.c.90, fol. 43b. © The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

eleventh century.57 Especially important for this context are its three Asian maps, depicting India, Central Asia and China, drawn and explained in a surprisingly detailed manner: a map of the Indian Ocean, a map of the River Oxus, and a map of the Indus (Map 0.2).

The Musk Routes When looking at Arabic and Tibetan medical uses of musk, a luxury substance by which Tibet was known in Islamic sources from the ninth century onwards, my work with Anna Akasoy has shown that alongside trade there were also exchanges of ideas between Tibet and the Islamic world.58 When mapping the broader context of these cultural interactions, we chose to call them the ‘Musk Routes’.59 Following medical substances with multifaceted Eurasian history like musk or myrobalans helps us to connect cultural zones which previously seemed unconnected, like the Dunhuang Collection and the Genizah, as I discuss in Chapter 3.

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A useful approach to help us think about these connections is derived from the writings of the ‘new thalassology’.60 The term, deriving from the ancient Greek word thalassa (sea), arose at first from thinking in broader, cross-cultural terms about the Mediterranean Sea, in an approach pioneered by Fernand Braudel. The approach has been extended to other seas and oceans, as well as metaphorically about other spaces of danger such as vast deserts, which can be thought of as virtual seas.61 One of these is the Indian Ocean World (IOW), an area which came rather late into the new thalassology thinking.62 The Indian Ocean routes which connected India, the Persian Gulf, Africa and the Mediterranean are also part of what is known as the ‘Maritime Silk Roads’, sometimes referred to as the ‘Porcelain Road’.63 How can the new thalassology help us to think about medical interactions along the Silk Roads? Shifting focuses to less familiar seas, metaphorical or otherwise, helps us to subvert repeated historical narratives. David Abulafia, distinguishing between the ‘Mediterranean’ and the ‘Mediterranean Sea’, proposed that we ought to talk about ‘Mediterranean’ simply in its literal sense: that which is between the surrounding lands. Hence the term becomes not only a place of human encounters but also lends itself to thinking about the way ‘Mediterraneans’ flowed into each other, both literally and figuratively, and how that flow carried with it people, goods and ideas. One aspect of this broad view of the new thalassologies is what Nicola Di Cosmo has termed ‘Amphibian History’, looking at the Black Sea and its role as the nerve centre of international trade during the Mongol era as a node connecting continental Asia with the Mediterranean networks, and an important case study discussed here in Chapter 5. These new thalassologies have also ushered in new approaches to medical history, such as that which looks at the Indian Ocean World as an interconnected zone.64 Looking at the IOW within the context of histories of medicine of the prePortuguese era, still very much a rarity, is an approach enabled by the Genizah material and is the focus of Chapter 3. In the Silk Roads case, the new thalassology provides an opportunity to look at Eurasia as one continuous expanse; subverting imperial hierarchies, and focusing on little-known Central Asian languages and cultures, as well as on Buddhism as a vehicle for the transmission of medical knowledge. Indeed there is, in particular, much to be gained from taking a longue durée global approach to the analysis of the role Buddhism has played in the circulation of medical ideas and practices ‘across a huge swathe of territory, from Persia to Japan and from Siberia to Java, in the premodern world’.65

Introduction

17

Multilingualism and the multicultural aspects of Dunhuang The oasis of Dunhuang, where the northern and southern branches of the overland routes around the Taklamakan Desert met, was an important nexus of international trade routes in the ancient world. For most of its history, Dunhuang was a Chinese town. During the eighth century it became part of the Tibetan Empire and remained under Tibetan rule for about seventy years (781–848). The changing ethnicity of the rulers of Dunhuang had linguistic and cultural implications. While the study of multiculturalism on the Silk Roads has not yet received the attention it deserves, the last few years have seen an immense increase. My discussion within the sphere of the history of medicine follows explorations of multiculturalism as they are studied in other Dunhuang and Silk Road areas of study, such as history of art, history of religions, literature, numismatics, economic history, history of ideas and genetics.66 Although nowadays it might be difficult to imagine, in the second half of the first millennium, the cities of the Taklamakan oases were cosmopolitan seats of sophisticated cultures. Understanding the cosmopolitan nature of medieval Central Asia, where East, South, Central and Western Asia interacted in multiple ways, is important not only for understanding the history of Asian medicine but for the history of medicine and science at large due primarily to the input of west Asian medicine – exemplified in the works of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) and al-Rāzī (Rhazes) – into Europe. The fascinating letter exchange between al-Bīrūnī (973–1048, born near the Aral Sea) and the slightly younger Ibn Sīnā (980–1037, from Bukhara) reflects the existence of a large, competent and interconnected community of scientists and thinkers.67 Bukhara at this time was an important centre of learning and culture.68 Central Asia more generally was home not only to an assemblage of scientists and thinkers but also religious scholars, poets, artists and musicians. This was truly an ‘Age of Enlightenment’ which lasted several centuries, when Central Asia was the intellectual hub of the world.69 The search for Eurasian cultural interactions was one of the initial main driving forces for the expeditions of Hungarian-born British archaeologist Aurel Stein. In the application for financial support from the British Government in India which Stein made in 1897, he promised to supply tangible evidence of cultural exchange in ancient times.70 Reaching the ‘library cave’ which Wang Yuanlu had stumbled upon several years earlier, came as a result. Indeed its ‘polyglot’ nature, as Stein put it, supplied some of the evidence he was seeking. Stein himself realized the importance of this ‘polyglot’ nature of

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the Dunhuang collection. Although Chinese is the most important language of the collection, there are also many documents in multiple languages: Tibetan, Sogdian, Khotanese, Sanskrit, Uighur and Judaeo-Persian.71 Other languages from nearby sites include Tocharian A and B (Agnean and Kuchean), Syriac, Turkish, Arabic and others.72 Sogdian, Khotanese and Tocharian A and B (Agnean and Kuchean) were unknown at the time of their discovery, and were only deciphered following the Silk Road finds. These languages – and the cultures that they represent – reflect both peoples who resided in Dunhuang and peoples who passed through, such as traders, diplomats and missionaries. However, does multiplicity also mean interaction? With the advance of research in the various languages of the manuscripts of Dunhuang, we are able to ascertain that the different cultures represented in the manuscripts found in the caves of Dunhuang and of other Silk Roads sites are not only present in the same locations but have also interacted in multiple ways. The Dunhuang collection, more than being simply a ‘polyglot’ library, mirrors some of this multiculturalism. It includes translations, transliterations, bilingual texts, glossaries, as well as ‘Berlitz style’ phrasebooks for travellers – all pointing to active cross-cultural exchanges. Further evidence for crosscultural interactions can be derived from evidence of diplomatic embassies, documentation of travelling monks and of itinerant merchants.

Tibetan as a mediating language and culture Tibet was an important point on the trade route between India and China, not only for Buddhist missionaries,73 but also for Arab and Jewish traders.74 The main attraction of Tibet was its commercial goods – many of them lucrative to the point of being legendary, such as gold and musk. The case of Tibet as a cultural mediator stems from its key position and size during the time of the Tibetan Empire (seventh to ninth centuries), bordering with Tang China in the east and the Abbasid Caliphate in the west, as well as from the role of Tibetan as a lingua franca in and around Dunhuang. As a result of the Tibetan domination, the use of Tibetan prevailed among Tibetans and non-Tibetans and many of them became bi- or multilingual. Tibetan apparently remained the most widely used second language among various local ethnic groups in and around Dunhuang, including Han-Chinese, Khotanese and Uighurs, until the early eleventh century.75 We now know that mediating cultures whose languages were once lingue franche of multicultural empires or spoken by long-distance travellers are as

Introduction

19

important for our understanding of history as the better-known cultures of the terminus points. Lingue franche in this context refers to languages that are ‘contact languages’ which ‘facilitate communication among people who do not share the same mother tongue’.76 Another significant point regarding lingue franche is that they are transitory and unstable, intertwined with transitory and unstable power and prestige. Lingue franche are useful as foci since they are, as Jocelyne Dakhlia has pointed out, languages for communication rather than languages of identification.77 And so, when we attempt to study the history of Eurasia, sources in lesserknown languages such as Tibetan, Sogdian, Uighur, Tocharian (A and B), Bactrian, Hebrew, Khotanese and Syriac, as well as – certainly – those in Persian and Arabic, can help us fill the huge gaps in the puzzle that is Eurasian history. In some of these cases entire languages and cultures were buried in the Taklamakan Desert for more than a thousand years, with no followers or scholars to speak their words. Our knowledge of them now relies on a small and precarious group of scholars who are scattered around the world. With the increasing penetration of the Tibetan script and language in the Han-Chinese society of Dunhuang during the period of Tibetan rule, a practice gradually developed among some local Chinese inhabitants of using the Tibetan script rather than Chinese characters to write Chinese. The influence of the Tibetan rule culminated in the creation of bilingual Tibeto-Chinese communities. Among the Han-Chinese of Dunhuang, there seem to have been some who were fluent not only in their native Chinese but also in speaking, reading and writing Tibetan. There is also evidence that these ‘Tibetanized’ Chinese formed associations or communities and the practice of writing Chinese using Tibetan script was carried out not only during the Tibetan rule but was being maintained in the tenth century under the Return-to-Allegiance Army.78 This has resulted in the survival of various kinds of Chinese texts transcribed in Tibetan. Broadly speaking, these consist of Buddhist scriptures, Buddhist eulogies, songs and poems, primers and a multiplication table. Within the vast enterprise of sutra copying which took place in Dunhuang during the Tibetan rule, the majority of those responsible for copying the Tibetan texts were in fact Chinese. This would have required sufficient knowledge of Tibetan, or at least of the Tibetan script. The copyists were not simply copying Tibetan graphs mechanically, but had considerable knowledge of the Tibetan language as well. These Sino-Tibetan aspects bring us to reflect on the nature of the Tibetan medical texts from Dunhuang too. Rolf Stein, the Sinologist and Tibetologist who studied the Tibetan texts of Confucian maxims from

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Dunhuang, has pointed out that they are not straightforward ‘translations’ but rather ‘variations’. It is impossible, Stein noted, to know whether the texts we have at hand were composed by Tibetans or whether they translated or paraphrased a Chinese text. We are faced with a similar problem regarding the Tibetan moxibustion texts from Dunhuang. Are they ‘Tibetan medicine’? Or ‘Chinese medicine in Tibetan’? Or should we regard them as ‘Sino-Tibetan medicine’ or perhaps simply ‘Dunhuang medicine’?

Syriac as a mediating language Another important language in the transmission of medical knowledge in Asia is Syriac. Syriac became the vehicle for the spread of Christianity in vast areas of Asia, including India, Central Asia and China. Evidence of the presence of Nestorian Christians – or rather, members of the Church of the East79 – has been found in Central and East Asia from at least the eighth century.80 Following the persecution of the Christians of the Church of the East in Persia, many of them fled to Central Asia. We know, for example, that Kashgar and Samarqand were important centres of the Church of the East from the eighth to the tenth centuries.81 In the Turfan expeditions carried out by Grünwedel and von Le Coq in the early twentieth century, many Christian texts in Syriac and in Sogdian were found. Recent studies have provided extensive detail on Eastern Christianity in Tang China, in Dunhuang and in Turfan.82 According to Chinese, Arabic, Syriac and Latin sources, members of the Church of the East were active in China predominantly in two waves – the first was during the Tang Dynasty. A strong re-emergence came in the thirteenth century during the Mongol period. In Dunhuang, the extensive evidence for Christian presence comes from Tang Dynasty Chinese sources.83 Some 1,100 Christian manuscripts dating from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries were found in Turfan, along with wall paintings dated to the seventh or eighth century from a church building in Kocho.84 Evidence which connects the Church of the East with Tibet includes Syriac letters from the Patriarch Timothy I referring to Tibet,85 as well as Eastern Church monuments from peripheral Tibet.86 There are also two East Christian references in the Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang, including a mention of ‘Jesus, the messiah’ and a drawing which appears to be an Eastern Christian cross,87 although we probably need to be cautious not to read too much into this particular visual depiction.

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Did these Eastern Christians bring any medical knowledge with them to Central Asia? While much of the scholarship on Syriac medicine has focused on its role as a transmitter of Galenic medicine and as a bridge between Greek and Arabic,88 the significance of medical texts composed by members of the Church of the East, based in Persia, is increasingly coming to light. Medical texts in Syriac from the ninth to tenth centuries have been found at Turfan.89 Nicholas Sims-Williams has been able to demonstrate that the medical fragments from Turfan reflect medical knowledge which is also attested to in the so-called Syriac Book of Medicines.90 Although the date of the final compilation of the Syriac Book of Medicines is still unclear, the text contains much material dating to the sixth and seventh centuries,91 and very possibly from earlier periods too.92 Although these texts were influenced by Greek medicine, they also reflect significant differences.93 Some of the transmission paths of loanwords discussed in this book, remind us that Syriac was also an important language in lesser studied, but not less important transmission paths in which medical knowledge moved across Eurasia: the Sanskrit-Middle Persian-Syriac-Hebrew path discussed in Chapter 3, or Syriac-Sogdian-Mongolian-Tibetan transmission path discussed in Chapter 5. Hebrew, like Syriac, has been mostly treated in their auxiliary roles in this main path – primarily as intermediaries to and from Arabic and useful especially when the Arabic or Greek are not extant.94 Hebrew medical literature has been viewed predominantly as part of a ‘Western’ translation movement, whose main trajectory has been seen to be the Greek-Arabic-Latin path. A text like the Book of Asaf, however, discussed in Chapter 1, demonstrates the importance of Hebrew for uncovering some of these lesser-known transmission paths. For a variety of reasons, many important Syriac medical texts are not available to us, but some of their important traces have been preserved elsewhere. As the Book of Asaf demonstrates, Hebrew served as an effective vehicle for crosscultural transmissions.95 One recurring reason is its accessibility to other effective bridging languages: Syriac, Aramaic and Arabic.96

Towards a Eurasian approach in the history of science and history of medicine The notion of ‘globalized medicine’ is usually associated with modernity. The study of medieval medicine teaches us, however, that earlier periods of medical history need to be treated in a more interconnected way than was previously

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assumed. Treating pre-modern medicine in this way, is still a rarity in medical history. Just as the treatment of 5,000 years of world systems presented in collaborative global history projects such as The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand Years? has been, as its authors call it, an ‘enlargement of scale’97 of the more common treatments of 500 years of world systems, it is also high time for an equivalent ‘enlargement of scale’ in the history of medicine. At the core of these endeavours is the idea that methods and perspectives of ‘global history’, which have been very fruitful in historical research dealing with the last 500 years, can also be just as fruitful when dealing with the medieval and ancient world. As in the context of the 5,000 years world systems, the terms ‘global’ or ‘world’ need to be aptly qualified. We are obviously not speaking of the ‘globe’ or even the ‘world’ as we know it today, but of the ‘known world’, perhaps even the ‘significant known world’ as it is relevant within the specific contexts in question. One of the important contributions of this perspective, as discussed in the work of Gunder Frank, Gills and others, has been in showing the limitations of the focus on ‘civilizations’, and bringing to the fore a more united ‘Eurasian’ history and an inquiry into historical connections between peoples, places and ideas. Rethinking dichotomies of ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ is key for the way we approach the history of pre-modern medicine.98 We have been gaining more and more evidence which allows us to question the constructed dichotomy between ‘eastern medicine’ and ‘western medicine’, or ‘Asian Medicine’ and ‘European Medicine’. It is high time for cross-cultural approaches to pre-modern medicine, in line with current approaches in global history, in the history of science and the history of ideas. Analysing the dynamics of cross-cultural transmissions and adaptations along the land and sea routes that traversed Asia is important not only for a better understanding of the global history of medicine and the history of Buddhism but also within the emergent global approaches to the history of science. Following the influential work of Bruno Latour, the idea of networks has had a great impact on the study of global science in recent years. As Sujit Sivasundaram has pointed out, scholars utilizing the idea of a network of knowledge, have articulated the need to ‘see beyond fixed centres and peripheries’. Rather, he points out, each locality has the capacity to become central, to act as a node. ‘Tied to this recognition is the growing interest in mediators who cross localities and who keep knowledge flowing through the network.’99 These ‘in-betweeners’ include travellers, missionaries, mixed ancestry observers and local assistants.100 As Sivasundaram puts it, ‘For science to be successful it has to travel, and it

Introduction

23

must rely on mediators to take it to other places.’ But Sivasundaram also reminds us that while we ought to be thinking about mobility, we must not also forget immobility, disjuncture and resistance. *** In 2006, in the International Conference of Tibetan Studies, I presented a paper discussing close similarities between Ibn Sīnā’s Canon of Medicine and an early text of Tibetan medicine, the Lunar King (Zla ba’i rgyal po). Many people (including myself … ) were astonished to discover that there were such close similarities.101 Today, after much collaborative work,102 I am more astonished that we were astonished. In Central Asia during the second half of the first millennium cross-cultural transmissions and melanges were happening everywhere and were more of the norm than the exception. So, alongside our delving into the multiple ways of cross-cultural transmissions, we ought to also reflect on why we were astonished. Victor Mair, in his brilliant introduction to Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World,103 provides an illuminating discussion of what he terms the ‘academic pathology’ of ‘extreme indigenousness’: the profound academic bias to disregard the plethora of data indicating contact and change among early people. He regards this bias as the result of two factors, one political and the other disciplinary. The political, he points out, is particularly true of the second half of the twentieth century, the outgrowth of a surge in nationalistic consciousness, when ‘it became impolitic to assert that any significant element of culture needed to be borrowed’.104 Although he locates this political factor within the twentieth century nation state, we can also see it at work in accounts of the history of knowledge, analysed in Chapter 1. Although many, perhaps the majority, or even all cultures in different periods regularly adopted and adapted knowledge, these foreign influences were not acknowledged in most cases. As Arun Bala has argued, when well-developed cultures undergo intellectual change through knowledge transmission from outside, they often deny the significance of the external culture by ascribing the changes to their own traditions.105 What the analysis of origin narratives shows is that what matters more than the adoption of knowledge itself, is whether a culture – at a particular time and place – also cares to acknowledge foreign borrowings. Similarly, when we look at early histories of medicine and analyse the correspondence, if any, of being multicultural and of declaring yourself as such, we find that in some cultural contexts, foreign knowledge is absorbed into

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the main culture without any reference to its origins while in other cases we find elaborate descriptions of the sources of foreign medical knowledge. The Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang reveal the value of looking at sources in the ‘bridging’ languages of the Silk Roads, such as Tibetan, Sogdian, Uighur, Tocharian (A and B), Bactrian, Khotanese, Syriac and Persian. Through focusing on mediating cultures and languages, multicultural locations and collections as well as specific key texts and figures, we can begin to address the great puzzle of the Eurasian history of science. A variety of processes have contributed to the way a globalized history of knowledge has evolved. Some of these, which will come up in this book, stem from relationships between the local and ‘global’; between homogenization and universalization; and from tensions between unification and growing complexities.106 In this context, under the general roof of what might be termed ‘Buddhist medicine’, we can observe processes of cultural differentiation, as medical knowledge moved with Buddhism from India, to Central Asia, to China, to Tibet and to Ilkhanid Iran. Two main methodologies are engaged when analysing Eurasian continuities: one is looking at European and Asian material in a comparative way, another is trying to uncover specific interactions. Although studying interactions is a complex and difficult matter, particularly due to the nascent state of research into so many relevant areas of exploration, I believe this endeavour is a worthwhile one. There is no pretence to provide a Eurasian history of medicine here – but rather to bring to the fore a few vignettes of Eurasian encounters, and try to unravel their historical significance. Beyond the vignettes offered in this book, there still lies a vast ocean of entangled histories, waiting to be explored.

1

Narrating Eurasian origins of medical knowledge

When cultural prestige is at stake, nations are not interested in historical truth.1 One angle which can help us think about a more Eurasian approach to the history of medicine is an analysis of narratives which tell a Eurasian account of the history of medicine.2 Such narratives are found as part of medical texts, recounting their origins in some way, or as part of a separate genre of origin narratives. Narratives alluding specifically to Eurasian origins of medical knowledge raise the complicated question of whether – and to what extent – such accounts actually reflect the nature of the knowledge they describe. In other words, they raise questions like: when and why does a culture/religion/ state ideology choose to present/construct itself as multicultural? Are there correspondences between being multicultural and of declaring a culture as such? Narratives on the origins and history of medicine have a long and illustrious history.3 Origin narratives recount the origin/s of a field of knowledge, the motivation for ‘inventing’ or ‘establishing’ that kind of knowledge and the field’s subsequent development. They can reveal important political, religious, economic and cultural factors at play at the time of their construction. Such narratives have also had a lingering effect on the historiography of medicine and on roads taken – or not – in the study of the history of medicine. One reason that these narratives have not yet made the impact they deserve in the historiography of medicine, is the way they appear to intertwine what is conventionally termed ‘mythical’ and ‘historical’. While we cannot read hagiographies and mythical accounts as straightforward historical narratives, we can – and should – take some cues from such texts as they often serve as pointers to strata otherwise forgotten or else rewritten by later historical accounts.

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Celebrating foreignness: Narrating Eurasian origins of medicine in the Hebrew Book of Asaf The Hebrew text referred to as Sefer Refu’ot (Book of Remedies) or Sefer Asaf (Book of Asaf) is a very important text not only in the history of the Hebrew medical sciences but also in the history of medicine as a whole.4 The text is an extensive medical compendium – its longest version runs to 277 folios – containing a kind of ‘medical history’, sections on anatomy, embryology, pulse and urine diagnosis, seasonal regimen, a medical oath and a long materia medica section. The text has long been a great enigma with regards to fundamental questions such as the date and place of its composition. Recent research has located at least the core part of the text as deriving from Syriac material of the Church of the East deriving from a Persian cultural milieu.5 As such, it belongs to a small group of science writings which were composed in Hebrew somewhere around the eighth to ninth centuries in the Middle East.6 Sefer Asaf subsequently arrived in southern Italy, where apparently more sections were added to it.7 Beyond Italy, it then circulated in central and northern Europe, locations where we now find its many extant manuscripts.8 There are also two fragments which appear to be quotes from Sefer Asaf from the Cairo Genizah, and which may help us to construct the older, Middle Eastern core of the text: two folios which have been dated to the tenth to twelfth centuries from the Solomon Schechter Collection of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which probably came from the Cairo Genizah (JTS 10160), and a Cairo Genizah rotolus which contains a number of recipes from Sefer Asaf, identified by Emunah Levy (JTS ENA 957.8).9 Sefer Asaf was widely used in Ashkenaz, and known both to Jewish and nonJewish European medieval authors.10 Deriving from a Persian cultural milieu, from circa eighth century and transmitted to Hebrew via Syriac, the Hebrew Book of Asaf is thus an important ‘bridge of knowledge’ in the transmission of medical knowledge. Its compiler/s were in conversation with a breadth of foreign ideas, situating its knowledge as deriving from the medical systems of the Indians, the Greeks, the Syrians and the Persians. One of the most intriguing aspects of this text is its mentions of India as a source of medical knowledge. Indeed, in the introduction of the text, the  compiler/s of the Book of Asaf situate/s its knowledge as a Eurasian enterprise, deriving from the medical systems of the Indians, the Greeks and the Persians:

Narrating Eurasian origins (fol. 1v) This is the Book of Medicine translated by the first sages from the Book of Shem son of Noah, which was given to Noah at the Luvar Mountain, one of the Ararat Mountains11 after the flood. Since in those days and in that time, the evil spirits began to torment the sons of Noah, to deviate and terrorise and blow with illnesses and pain and all sorts of destructive and deadly ailments. Then all the sons of Noah came together with their offspring and told their father Noah about all their ailments. And they told him about the sicknesses visible in their offspring. And Noah was terrified and he knew that it is due to human iniquity and the path of misconduct that they would contrive all sickness and ailments. Then Noah blessed his sons and their offspring [and his household?] together. And he went to the altar and brought sacrifice and prayed to God. And he granted his wish and sent him one of the Angels of Presence (‫)אחד ממלאכי הפנים‬, of the holy ones, and his name – Rafa’el, to extinguish the evil spirits under the heaven, so as not to harm humans any longer. And the angel did so. And he locked them up in the house of justice. But one out of ten – he let go in the land before the Prince of Animosity (‫)שר המשטמה‬ to reign them, the evil ones, to cause illness and pain. And the angel told Noah about the remedies for human ailments and all sorts of ailments – how to heal with the trees of the land and the plants (fol. 2r) of the earth and its roots (‫)ועיקריה‬. And he sent the remaining Princes of Spirits (‫ )שרי הרוחות‬to show Noah and instruct him regarding the trees of medicine along with their grass and their herbs and their vegetables and their seeds and their roots – the reason for their creation, and to teach him every detail of their healing properties. And Noah wrote all these things in a book, and gave it to Shem, his older son. And from this book, the early sages translated and wrote many books, each one in his own language. And the knowledge of medicine increased in the land, amongst all the peoples who studied the books of medicines – [i.e.] amongst the sages of India and the sages of Macedonia12 and the sages of Egypt.13 The sages of India took to wandering in order to find the trees of medicines and perfumes, and the sages of Aram discovered the herbs – [i.e.] all their kinds and their seeds  – in order to cure. And they translated the meaning of the books into Aramaic [i.e. Syriac]. And the sages of Macedonia were the first to cure in the land, and the sages of Egypt began to calculate14

27

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ReOrienting Histories of Medicine and perform divinations with the stars and constellations, to teach15 the book of Babylonian wisdom, copied by Kangar son of Ur son of Kesed16 as well as all the deeds of the magicians (khartumim).17 And their wisdom grew until Asclepius came, one of the Macedonian sages and forty men with him among the magicians (khartumim), learned in the translated books and they went in the land, passing beyond India to a land (fol. 2v) east of Eden to find some of the trees of life in order to increase their glory among the sages. And when they came to that place, they found the healing trees and the trees of the tree of life. And they stretched their hand to take them and God thrust upon them the flame of the swirling sword.18 And they all burnt in the sparks of lightning and no one escaped. And medicine was deserted by the doctors. And the wisdom of doctors ceased for 630 years, until the reign of Artaxšaçā (Artakhshashtah, ‫ארתחששתא‬, Greek: Artaxerxes) the King. And in the days of Artaxšaçā the King, there rose a clever and wise man, who studied the knowledge of the books of medicines and his name: Ippocrat (Hippocrates) the Macedonian and the rest of the gentiles’ sages, and Asaf the Jew and Dioscorides of Ba‘al19 and Galenos of Caphtor20 and many other sages and they renewed the glory of medicine, and it is living till this day …21

Universality The introduction to Sefer Asaf is in conversation with narratives concerning ancient Jewish sciences, such as the apocryphal texts Jubilees and Enoch, as well as with Sasanian and the Abbasid empire-building narratives on universal knowledge.22 The text also appears to be in conversation with the broader spectrum of Syriac Introduction texts, as well as narratives of chains of transmission, and the genre of philosophical histories.23 The universality it constructs is created through the superimposition of the notion of a universal antediluvian knowledge predating language and culture divisions, together with concrete references to the known world. The theme of translation from divine antediluvian knowledge into human languages constructs a direct link between what is represented as universal knowledge and the Book of Asaf: Asaf ’s medical knowledge is presented as a renewal of a lost universal knowledge. Claims that before the flood humankind possessed precious knowledge, then lost in the flood and subsequently available only to some fortunate few, have fascinated humankind for as long as flood narratives existed in ancient

Narrating Eurasian origins

29

Babylonia. The king of Assyria wrote in the seventh century BCE: ‘I studied inscriptions from before the flood’.24 Alien to our own notion of the progression of science and knowledge, origin narratives such as these reveal an emphasis on priority. The Babylonian scholar Berossus, writing in Greek about Babylonian culture in the late fourth or early third century BCE, claims to have ‘found’ the ancient writings hidden before the flood on Cronos’ order to Xisutros (the ‘Sumerian Noah’).25 In the Hellenistic period claims of priority played a major role in the cultural battle between nations on the origins of the arts and sciences. There is also a Hermetic topos of stelae containing primordial wisdom, inscribed in a sacred language from before the flood which was translated after the flood.26 The motif of a stela or book in which a legendary or pre-historian figure inscribes some form of human science to preserve the world’s ancient wisdom and to withstand future world destructions by water or fire is a common topos in many Jewish and Christian sources of the first centuries CE.27 Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, speaks about a stela which preserves ancient knowledge, located in a mysterious place in the East, probably China:28 And they discovered the science with regard to the heavenly bodies and their orderly arrangement. And in order that humanity might not lose their discoveries or perish before they came to be known, Adamos having predicted that there would be an extermination of the universe, at one time by a violent fire and at another time by a force with an abundance of water, they made two pillars, one of brick and the other of stones and inscribed their findings on both, in order that if the one of brick should be lost owing to the flood the one of stone should remain and offer an opportunity to teach men what had been written on it and to reveal that also one of brick had been set up by them. And it remains until today in the land of Seiris.29

Knowledge from the East The view of the Orient as a source of knowledge was a well-known topos in a variety of cultural contexts of the classical and medieval world – in Persian, Greek, Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic.30 This notion of oriental knowledge concerns different fields of knowledge with varying emphases in different cultures and periods of time. Travel to the Orient as a major means of learning was an important topos in ancient Greek sources on the sciences. The notion of India as a source

30

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of knowledge appears in the text by Palladius, the fifth-century Bishop of Helenopolis, titled On the Peoples of India and the Brahmans. Looking specifically at medicine, India appears as a source of superior medical knowledge, as a place where wondrous materia medica grow and a place where people live very long lives. Significantly, however, unlike the Hebrew Sefer Asaf, in Greek sources Greek medicine is not presented as being a synthesis of many traditions, nor is India regarded as a source of medical knowledge.31 While Indian physicians were known in Greek general literature, Greek classical works on medicine do not mention them.32 Herodotus, for example, notes that certain Indians make no attempt at any cure and have no medical skill at all.33 The text by Palladius is interpolated in some of the Hebrew versions of the Alexander Romance, narratives which became a focal point through which notions concerning India entered into Jewish literature during the Hellenistic period and the Middle Ages.34 Hebrew versions of the Alexander Romance include the well-known dialogue between Alexander the Great and the sages of India.35 In this episode the Indian sages are described as ‘very wise’ and ‘having books’.36 Some of the wisdom associated with the Indian sages in the Alexander Romance is the knowledge of wondrous drugs, particularly myrobalan (see Chapter 3). A version of this episode is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Tamid. In this version, the sages with whom Alexander has a similar dialogue are identified as the ‘sages of the south’ (‫)חכמי הנגב‬,37 rather than of India. India features prominently in Hebrew sources discussing the origins of the astral sciences (i.e. astronomy and astrology).38 The references to India as a source of knowledge are also found in the works of Hebrew medical authors, such as Donnolo and Maimonides. These references reflect a move from a more legendary perception of the sages of India, as found in the Alexander Romance and related sources, to a more concrete acquaintance with knowledge coming from India – either mediated, or direct.39 In Sefer Asaf India as a source of medical knowledge is emphasized in several ways. First, India is mentioned as one of the three great cultures which developed medicine: And Noah wrote all these things in a book, and gave it to Shem, his older son. And from this book, the early sages translated and wrote many books, each one in his own language. And the knowledge of medicine increased in the land, amongst all the peoples who studied the books of medicines – [i.e.] amongst the sages of India and the sages of Macedonia and the sages of Egypt.40

Narrating Eurasian origins

31

Within the great cultures of knowledge, India appears here as the first. Within specialities of each culture, India is featured as the exploring one, finding ‘trees of medicines and perfumes’. These are no armchair scholars, but sages that ‘took to wandering’. This characteristic might be alluding to medicine in India deriving primarily from so-called heterodox wanderers, primarily Buddhist, who formulated and developed Sanskrit medical lore. India is also described as the land at the very eastern confines of the known world. More specifically, in the detailed materia medica section of Sefer Asaf, India is mentioned as where the best types of particular substances come from: primarily nard, and also a particular type of salt. A number of recipes are also ascribed to the ‘sages of India’. The way in which India is specified as a source of knowledge in the introduction of Sefer Asaf is reminiscent of Sasanian texts on the origins and transmission of knowledge.41 One such important text is the account on the history of the sciences by Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht (fl. ca 770–809), studied by Kevin van Bladel.42 Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht was an astrologer in the early Abbasid court. He is mentioned by al-Nadīm as a translator from Persian into Arabic. As van Bladel has shown, this account of the history of the sciences, the earliest extant history of science in Arabic, is based on pre-Islamic Persian sources. His account preserves a claim that the peoples of India, Babylonia and Egypt already possessed scientific knowledge in a prehistoric era, a claim similar to that found in the introduction to Sefer Asaf. Indeed, the entire overall structure of Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht’s account is very similar to that of Asaf: they both discuss a prehistoric flourishing of knowledge; the Macedonians coming and finding (or stealing) ancient knowledge; the disappearance of knowledge due to moral decline, followed by a revival of knowledge at the time of the Sasanian Empire which involves collecting knowledge from Babylonian, Syriac, Greek and Indian sources.43 Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht’s account appears to be based on an older variation from the Dēnkard, a tenth-century Pahlavi summary of knowledge of the Mazdean religion based on earlier sources, in which we can already find many of these themes within the context of the Sasanian Empire: Shapur, the King of Kings, son of Ardašīr, further collected nonreligious writings on medicine, astronomy, movement, time, space, substance, accident, becoming, decay, transformation, logic, and other crafts and skills, that were scattered among the Indians and in Rome (and) other lands, and collated them with the Avesta.44

32

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Lost, and found in translation The loss of some form of primordial indigenous knowledge, only to find it again through translation is a recurring topos in narratives of origins of medical knowledge, which would have been constructed for varying purposes. The organization of knowledge from and about different peoples has been a powerful tool for articulating claims of empire, uniting multiplicities of locales in harmonious singularity, mirrored by a claim for comprehensiveness.45 Dimitri Gutas has demonstrated how narratives of lost knowledge that is then ‘found again’ serve as empire-building tools.46 Gutas showed that these narratives were a part of each Persian empire’s attempts to construct itself as continuing its predecessors: the Sasanian texts continuing the Achaemenid Empire; then the Abbasids as continuing the Sasanian Empire. Each era introduced variations in these narratives, revealing key issues of importance to historians. One such key issue is the presentation, or construction rather, of the cause of decline. In the Asaf narrative, the loss of knowledge derives from an ethical fault: the desire to find some of the trees of life situated ‘beyond India’ stems from a desire to ‘increase their glory among the sages’. The focus of this excessive pride, leading to the destruction of all medical knowledge, is Asclepius, who is seen as ‘one of the Macedonian sages’ along with forty men with him, who are among the magicians (khartumim). The fault, this narrative tells us, is Greek and it is – through the help of the text which follows – a Jewish mission to fix this fall.47 So many important texts do not get lost for nothing. Getting lost and then found in translation, or rather the topos of lost and found in translation, has been a powerful device of legitimation, creating an opportunity to present new ideas, while still linking the texts to former, established authorities. In the Book of Asaf case, the narrative is linked to the Talmudic narrative of King Hezekiah’s hidden Book of Remedies.48 The Talmud considers King Hezekiah to have been completely righteous to the point that God was considering whether to appoint him as the Messiah. The Talmud tells us that King Hezekiah did six acts without the prior consent of the sages – three of which they approved, and three of which they disapproved.49 One of the acts which received the approval of the sages was the concealment of the Book of Remedies. What was this Book of Remedies? Why would King Hezekiah hide such a book? And why was this seen as a positive act? Many commentators have been busying themselves with these questions.50 The underlying issue of these lengthy discussions is the relationship between Judaism and medicine: should

Narrating Eurasian origins

33

a person simply have trust in God or is medical intervention permissible from a religious point of view? Different people at different periods obviously gave different responses. In any case, this variety of viewpoints is an important remnant of the widespread objections to medicine, and hence the need to justify its study and practice.51 Narratives of lost knowledge often also have a linguistic aspect. They present – implicitly or explicitly – a particular language as a language of knowledge. The Asaf narrative, just like the Dēnkard and Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht’s account, is promoting a culture of translation, presenting translation as a cultural good. Indeed, we know that Hebrew served as an effective vehicle for cross-cultural transmissions in different periods of time. One recurring reason is its accessibility to other effective bridging languages: Syriac, Aramaic and Arabic.52 The introduction to the Book of Asaf presents two types of translation: one is ‘translation’ from a universal, antediluvian, divine knowledge into human languages – of the Indians, the Macedonians and the Egyptians. The second type of translation is the one we are more familiar with – the translation of the ‘meaning of the books’, referring to the ‘many books, each in his own language’ – into Syriac, and then, implied but not stated, into the Hebrew text of the Book of Asaf.53

Lost and found in Tibet Many similar patterns are also found in origin narratives of medicine in the Indo-Tibetan world. The debate on the origins of the Four Tantras (T: rgyud bzhi, pronounced Gyushi), which has been a heated topic for centuries among scholars in Tibet, focused on whether the text is ‘word of the Buddha’ or a composition by a historically identifiable figure.54 The Gyushi itself, which modern scholarship has dated to the twelfth century, presents its origins as deriving from an emanation of the Medicine Buddha. Some Tibetan origin narratives recount that, after this initial teaching, the text was transmitted through various Indian masters until being brought to Tibet by the great translator Vairocana. Vairocana offered it to the founding father of the Tibetan Empire, Trisong Detsen (742–797), who concealed it inside a pillar in the Samye Monastery, in order to save human life in the future. The Gyushi was then discovered 150 years later, and came into the hands of the physician and scholar Yuthog Yonten Gonpo.

34

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This common version of the narrative constructs the Gyushi within the more general genre of terma (gter ma) texts, or treasure texts. The two main modes of treasure discovery texts are either: unearthing of what is usually a fragmentary text buried in the ground, statue or monastery wall; or, finding a text buried in one’s mind.55

Galen in Lhasa? Narratives presenting medical history as a Eurasian enterprise, in a similar fashion to that found in the Book of Asaf, are also found in Tibetan.56 These medical histories portray the origins of Tibetan medicine as deriving from Eurasian medical traditions. The multicultural character of Tibetan medicine is emphasized in Tibetan medical histories starting from the earliest extant exemplars of this genre in its fully fledged format, the Tibetan medical history by Che rje zhang ston zhig po, dated to the early thirteenth century, as well as its numerous variations thereafter. Che rje sets medical knowledge within what he terms ‘The Seven Schools’ (lugs bdun), referring to both divine and human realms.57 Within the human realm, the list refers to medical systems from India, Kashmir, U rgyan (in present-day Pakistan), Nepal (bal po), Arabo-Persian (stag gzig), Dol po, Uighur (hor), Tangut/Xixia (me nyag); Khotanese (li); Byzantine (phrom); Chinese and Tibetan.58 Variations of this list become practically standard in subsequent Tibetan medical histories. An intriguing account found in a number of Tibetan medical histories from the sixteenth century onwards tells of a famed physician from the west by the name of Galenos, who was invited by the first King of Tibet to Lhasa, along with other famed doctors from China and India. In the version found in the Mirror of Beryl, an account of the history of Tibetan medicine composed by Sangye Gyatso (Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho, 1653–1705), regent of the Fifth Dalai Lama and author of several seminal texts on Tibetan medicine, we find the following: Once when the king was ill, the Indian doctor Bharadhaja, the Chinese doctor Hsüan Yüan Huang, and the Taksik or Phrom doctor Galenos were invited to Tibet to cure him … They held many discussions and jointly composed a medical text in seven chapters called Weapons of Fearlessness, which they offered to the king … Therefore, all medical science was compiled into these three main systems and propagated by them. The king gave gifts to the Indian and Chinese doctors, and they travelled back to their own lands. Galenos stayed on as royal physician. It is said that he mostly resided in Lhasa, where he composed many texts. He married and had three sons.59

Narrating Eurasian origins

35

This captivating narrative has led to many accounts found in secondary literature stating that Greek medicine was adopted in Tibet in the eighth century. We should be careful not to jump to such hasty conclusions but rather try to understand the significance of this narrative. This account, along with other similar ones found in Tibetan medical histories, raises many intriguing questions. The first is: where is this Galenos coming from? The Tibetan delineation mentioned here, Phrom or Khrom, is derived from Rum or Rome, and usually refers to Byzantium. The second option which the text raises is Tazig. Early Tibetan geographies are in agreement that Tazig60 is a large kingdom to the west of Tibet: it could refer to Persia; or to the Abbasid Empire.61 We also find the term referring more generally to Muslims, Arabs or Persians. That both of these options appear here as the possible origin of the Galenos who shows up in Lhasa is not terribly surprising, since from a Tibetan perspective it is hard to know where the exact delineation between Tazig and Khrom stands, and as Dan Martin has pointed out, they often fall into the same place on the map.62 Are such links between Tibet and Muslims to the west even a possibility? Tibet is usually perceived as remote and isolated, but that has not always been the case. Picturing a map of Asia as it was more or less at the time this account

Map 1.1  Map of the Tibetan Empire.

36

ReOrienting Histories of Medicine

is presumably taking place, we see three major empires abutting each other: the Abbasid Empire, founded in 750; the Tibetan Empire (Map 1.1), which reached its height in the early ninth century; and Tang China (618–907). The close proximity of the Abbasid and Tibetan Empires of the time explain what people often find surprising, but is not: from the eighth century onwards, we can observe ongoing cultural and other connections between Tibet and the Islamic world.63 Furthermore, Tibet’s mediating position has been significant in terms of Asian medical knowledge during and after the time of the Tibetan Empire as well as during the Mongol era.64 Another important question that this account raises is: who are the ‘colleagues’ of Galenos mentioned here? In terms of the Chinese one, it is the Yellow Emperor, the figure who is known in Chinese tradition as the source of Chinese medicine.65 Bharadhvāja, the other ‘colleague’, has a similar place in Indian medicine: in the opening chapter of the Ayurvedic classic, the Carakasamhitā,66 Bharadhvāja is described as the member of the assembly of sages who approaches the God Indra requesting his help in removing illnesses which had befallen humankind. Bharadhvāja’s request is granted by Indra, who transmits medical knowledge to him. Bharadhvāja then disseminates this knowledge to other sages. Bharadhvāja is also mentioned in other Indian medical treatises, as well as in the Vedic literature, the epics and the Purāṇas.67 Both the Chinese Yellow Emperor and the Indian Bharadhvāja are mythical figures, a point to keep in mind when we try to make sense of Galen’s place in this narrative. Another key question is: what is the text claiming with respect to any time frame? Sangye Gyatso’s narrative, as do similar narratives which followed his, locates this episode at the time of the Tibetan King Songtsen Gampo of the seventh century whose reign marks the beginning of recorded history in Tibet, and indeed Tibetan culture at large. These narratives thus present a history of Tibetan medicine which was formulated in its initial stages as a synthesis of Greek, Indian and Chinese medical systems. Our earliest extant Tibetan medical sources are the Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang. Do they have anything to say about this? In the colophon of the Dunhuang manuscript Pelliot tibétain 127, a scroll containing a text about moxibustion (a technique of heating particular points on the body for healing purposes) as well as a number of divination texts, we find not quite an origin narrative, yet presenting a similar approach: This text (yig) on medical practice (dpyad) is not even [to be found] at the archives (phyag sbal).68 It is a compilation of all traditions of medical practice (dpyad yig thams cad), in addition to being compiled according to the indigenous (?phugs pa) medical practice69 of Zhang Zhung.70

Narrating Eurasian origins

37

The way this Dunhuang manuscript colophon speaks about ‘a compilation of all traditions of medical practice’, in addition to being based on the medical practice of Zhang Zhung, can be viewed as an early precursor of later accounts from Tibetan medical histories emphasizing the multicultural nature of early Tibetan medicine. Acquiring medical knowledge from different cultures appears to be celebrated in the PT 127 colophon, making it even superior to what might be found ‘at the archives’. Pelliot tibétain 1044, another Tibetan Dunhuang manuscript dealing with moxibustion, also contains several references to foreign knowledge (see Chapter 4). The references to foreign knowledge in PT 1044 and PT 127 are indicative precursors of two distinct points which are key to Tibetan medical history: the influence of foreign knowledge and the acknowledgement of it. This is quite different from what we can gather from the Chinese Dunhuang material. Illuminating in this respect is the preface to a Chinese medical document from Dunhuang, Pelliot chinois 2675. As analysed by Vivienne Lo, Pelliot chinois 2675 is a text about moxibustion/cautery. This text is an abridgement of moxibustion/cautery techniques from a number of teaching lineages.71 It was produced in the Chinese capital with the purpose of providing a practical text for those who live in the ‘outlying regions’ and cannot get hold of sophisticated drugs. The text situates itself as disseminating a simplified, practice-oriented knowledge from the capital to the provinces. Here, the knowledge of the ‘outlying regions’ is situated as inferior to that of the centre. In PT 127, on the other hand, the location of Dunhuang, and the availability of a variety of medical traditions which it entailed, appears to be regarded as advantageous for its author. In similar later accounts this position vis-à-vis foreign medical knowledge seems to be continuous. Looking critically at this notion of early Tibetan medicine, two key issues need to be pointed out. The first is that when we look at the early history of Tibetan medicine, the two main influences we can detect in medical texts are Indian and Chinese. There is also some input coming from Graeco-Arab influence, primarily in the diagnostic method of urine analysis. Urine analysis as a key diagnostic tool does not feature either in Ayurvedic, or in Chinese medicine, but is central to Tibetan diagnosis. Comparing the urine analysis sections in an early Tibetan medical text, the Medical Method of the Lunar King (Zla ba’i rgyal po) and in Ibn-Sīnā’s Canon of Medicine (Qānūn fī al-ṭibb), we find remarkable similarities not only in content but also in the structure of the text.72 This input, along with input detectable in materia medica,73 however, does not quite add up to a ‘metanarrative’ in which Galenos is the preferred one; the one who stays as court physician and establishes a local lineage, while the

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Yellow Emperor and Bharadhvāja are sent back to China and India respectively. The nature of Tibetan medical literature itself brings us to the conclusion that, both in the formative and the mature/classical periods of Tibetan medicine, the Galenic influence is clearly secondary to that deriving from India and China. Another issue worth considering here, is that in earlier exemplars of the genre of Tibetan medical histories, from the thirteenth century onwards, although we do have references to influences coming from the west, we do not have any mentions of Galenos, nor do the accounts present the Graeco-Arab teachings as in any way superior in the way implied by Sangye Gyatso.74 How then should we understand the primary position given to Galenos in Sangye Gyatso’s account? What all the above points to is that the accounts of Galen coming to Tibet at this time reflect more the period in which they were written (sixteenth century onwards) than the period which they supposedly refer to (seventh to eighth centuries). Knowledge of Galen as representing the origin of Western – here meaning Islamic – medicine came to Tibet most probably via Mughal India, with which Tibet maintained close political and cultural ties. Indeed, in his autobiography, the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682) tells us how in 1675 he brought to his court a physician from India known for his expertise in cataract operations.75 This physician, named as Manaho, is accredited with a work on ophthalmology preserved in the Tibetan Tanjur (bstan ’gyur), the part of the Tibetan Buddhist canon composed primarily of various commentarial works. The Tibetan title of this short work on the treatment of eye diseases, translated in the Potala by Lhun grub, is Opening the Eyes to See (Mig ’byed mthong ba). The preface to the text says the author was a physician of the Indian Emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) and that he came from the country of Paripura. It is not entirely clear what this location refers to.76 The Fifth Dalai Lama tells us that Manaho taught the art of cataract operating technique to a local Tibetan physician, who later performed it successfully on the Fifth Dalai Lama himself.77 More generally, we need to see this episode within the context of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s active efforts to seek out medical experts from abroad, not only for his own well-being but also with a view to broadening Tibetan medicine’s repertoire of diagnostic, therapeutic, surgical and pharmacological tools.78 The person who most likely oversaw the invitation of this foreign physician, along with other physicians from neighbouring countries, was the Fifth Dalai Lama’s regent, Sangye Gyatso, the author of the Galenos narrative discussed above. Sangye Gyatso also had a crucial role in systematizing Tibetan medicine. We therefore need to see these different aspects in conjunction: Sangye Gyatso’s

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composition of a seminal text on the history of Tibetan medicine from which the quote on Galen is taken; his systemization of Tibetan medicine; and his own connections with foreign physicians. Considering these three aspects together we see that to a great extent the significance Sangye Gyatso gives to Galen reflects his own connections with Islamic medicine, as found at this time in Mughal India, projected back to the origins of Tibetan medicine. The Tibetan material exemplifies similar devices we have found in the Persian and Asaf texts, constructing all knowledge as linked with the Avesta in the Persian text, or with the Jewish tradition in the Asaf text. What perhaps unites these narratives is the way these medical traditions construct themselves as a mainstream medical tradition. It could also be seen as a way of seeking legitimation for new ideas. One way or another, these narratives embody traces of medical history which are important to unpick. Narratives on the origins and history of medicine – and the history of knowledge more generally – exemplify different ways of managing relationships between foreign and local knowledge, and of negotiating cultural differences. Acknowledging the significance of these local cultures of historiographies would be a step towards developing a more poly-vocal history of medicine and provide us with tools to write histories of medicine rather than the history of medicine. Such attempts require taking local diversities in historiography seriously, and translating local differences into a meaningful common conversation.79 In order to explore the Eurasian case it is particularly instructive to look at narratives in or deriving from ‘bridging languages’ (see Introduction), such as the one found in the Hebrew Sefer Asaf and those found in Tibetan narratives on the origins of medicine, narratives which establish themselves as syntheses of the great traditions of their time.80

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Of dice and medicine: Interactions in Central Asian ‘contact zones’

Dating from the first half of the sixth century, the so-called Bower Manuscript is one of the earliest known medical manuscripts from the Silk Road. Not really a manuscript as such, but a collection of medical and divinatory texts written in Sanskrit, it belonged to a senior Buddhist monk by the name of Yaśomitra who lived in the rock-cut monastery of Kumtura near Kucha. The Bower Manuscript is an incomplete composite manuscript, totalling fifty-one leaves of birch bark of two sizes. The larger part consists of six separate manuscripts, so in total this is a collection of seven distinct manuscripts. The first three parts are medical texts, the fourth and fifth texts are dice divination texts, and the last two texts are incantation texts against snakebites.1 The texts appear to be both copies of lost texts and what are believed to be original compilations. This can be seen in some sections where dots appear mid-text, presumably indicating missing syllables which the scribe was unable to read in the original.2 The language in which the treatises of the Bower Manuscript are written is a mixture of literary Sanskrit and Prakrit, a vernacular Indic language. The influence of Prakrit is more pronounced in the treatises on divination and incantations of parts 4–7 than in the more medical sections of parts 1–3.3 The series of events in the nineteenth century which led to the acquisition of the Bower Manuscript are an important chapter in the history of Silk Road collecting practices. The sensation that arose as a result of the publication of this manuscript led to the race to acquire Silk Roads artefacts and the great finds of the Silk Road. The Bower Manuscript offers an opportunity for a micro-history of an object in a variety of ‘contact zones’, allowing us to chart a multilayered history in which commercial ventures, military expeditions, diplomatic initiatives and archaeology were implicated in, and superimposed upon its various historical layers.4 One layer is sixth-century Kucha, with its particular historical

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and multicultural context as an important Buddhist centre in which goods, knowledge, skills and capital were accumulated. Superimposed on that is the layer of nineteenth-century Kucha, with its own political and cultural contexts, creating the particular conditions which brought about the ownership by Lieutenant Hamilton Bower – followed by that of Oxford’s Bodleian Library – of Yaśomitra’s texts.5 The Bower Manuscript also presents an opportunity to extend the notion of the ‘contact zone’ to include a ‘conceptual contact zone’. The Bower Manuscript incorporates sections which are defined as medical, such as: medicinal uses of garlic, elixirs for eternal life, treatment of eye diseases, herbal medicines, aphrodisiacs, the care of children, along with an extensive section on dice divinations, and spells against snakebites.6 It hence brings into consideration the fuzzy borders of what we tend to call ‘medicine’, ‘ritual’, ‘religion’, ‘divination’ and ‘magic’ – as well as between ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ medicine. This chapter discusses the Bower Manuscript as an artefact, a moving object of medical knowledge, observing through it the ways in which medical knowledge, language, technology, religion and politics have been intertwined in the story of the transmissions of medical knowledge along the Silk Roads. This chapter also contextualizes the Bower Manuscript’s dice divination texts within the broader context of similar texts from other Silk Road sites, and reflects on the complicated question of their transmission.

Discovery: Kucha as a ‘contact zone’ in the nineteenth century In April 1888, a Scotsman by the name of Andrew Dalgleish was murdered as he was passing through the Karakorum Mountains.7 This was the heyday of the ‘Great Game’, the political rivalry between Britain and Russia in High Asia throughout most of the nineteenth century,8 and so the British Government in India sent Lieutenant Hamilton Bower to Kucha to investigate the murder. It was this investigation expedition which led to Bower’s acquiring of the manuscripts which were to bear his name. Dalgleish’s mere presence in the area needs to be seen within the context of how global politics played out in that region at the time. Andrew Dalgleish was working for the Central Asian Trading Company, set up by Thomas Russell, on the model of the East India Trading Company. The British Government in India, keen to increase its influence in Eastern Turkistan, granted its support to this company, seeking commercial gains as a means towards political ones vis-à-vis the Russians.9

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Documents from the Secret Branch of the Foreign Department studied by Bir Good Gill, show that by 1876 the British Government of India were pleased with the presence of Dalgleish in Eastern Turkistan.10 Dalgleish was sufficiently important to the British Government in India, therefore, that when he was murdered it was decided that someone should be sent to investigate. In 1890, Lieutenant Hamilton Bower was appointed to find the criminal and bring him to justice. In his lively and strikingly undiplomatic 1895 account of that journey, the by now Captain, later to become Major General, Hamilton Bower recounts: At Kuchar, where I halted for several days, a Turki who had been in India used to come and sit with me (in my room in the strai.) One day in conversation he told me about an ancient city he knew of built underground in the desert. I thought at first that he meant one of the ordinary buried cities of the Gobi Desert; but he insisted that it was something quite different, and explained that it was underground by the wish of the people that made it, not by reason of a sandstorm. He told me also, that he and one of his friends had gone there and dug for buried treasure, but had found nothing except a book. I asked to see it, and, going away, he returned in about an hour, bringing some sheets of birch bark covered with writing in a Sanscritic character and held together by two boards. I bought them from him, and it was fortunate I did so, as they have since excited a considerable amount of interest in the learned world; they are believed, by those best qualified to judge, to be the most ancient Asiatic manuscripts in existence.11

Upon his return to India, Bower took the manuscript to Colonel J. Waterhouse, who was the President of the Asiatic Society of Bengal at the time, and who reported this discovery to the scholarly world.12 In February 1891 the manuscript reached the hands of Rudolf Hoernle (1841–1918), who was serving as the Honorary Philological Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, based in Calcutta. Hoernle immediately recognized the importance of this manuscript, and ended up spending twenty-one years editing and translating its texts.13 The results of that ‘considerable amount of interest in the learned world’ as Bower put it, ended up transforming the field of Asian history. Hoernle recounts that it was the very initial publication about the Bower Manuscript by Professor G. Bühler in an 1891 issue of the Vienna Oriental Journal that led to the Russian Archæological Society’s request to Nikolai Petrovsky, the Russian Consul General in Kashgar, to ‘endeavour to collect similar manuscript treasures’.14 Petrovsky had actually already started collecting Central Asian manuscripts in the 1880s, but the ‘manuscript race’ was greatly intensified as a result of the purchase and publication of the Bower Manuscript. As Hoernle’s own account shows, every

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expedition was closely watched by all nations with an interest in the region. If the Russians were after such treasures, the British could not lag behind. Hoernle further recounts that it was at his own instigation that ‘the Government of India issued instructions to their Political Agents in Kashmir, Ladakh, and Kāshgar, to make enquiries for ancient manuscripts, and secure all that might come in their way’.15 Moreover, as Hoernle put it: It was the discovery of the Bower Manuscript and its publication in Calcutta which started the whole modern movement of the archaeological exploration of Eastern Turkestan.16

The race was on. Britain and Russia embarked on the great manuscript race, ignited by – or perhaps one aspect of – the so-called Great Game. News of the Bower Manuscript also made a profound impression on Hungarian-born British archaeologist Aurel Stein, as he later recounted: Ever since 1891, when the famous birch-bark codex acquired by Colonel Bower from Kuchā became known to Indologists, my eyes had been turned towards East Turkestān as a field for archaeological enterprise.17

Indeed, in 1900 Stein set out on his first expedition to Khotan. Stein and his Russian counterparts were soon joined by German, French and Japanese expeditions, all seeking to unearth more manuscripts and archaeological finds in Chinese Turkestan. This race led to the great Silk Road archaeological finds from Dunhuang, Turfan and other Silk Road sites by Stein, Grünwedel, von Le Coq, Pelliot, Hedin and Otani – discoveries which have revolutionized what we know about the history of Eurasia.18

Kucha as a ‘contact zone’ in the sixth century One main cause of excitement in the scholarly community was that here was what appeared to be one of the earliest extant Sanskrit manuscripts. Hoernle, who had little to go by, initially dated the Bower Manuscript to the fourth century. Since its discovery, many other birch bark manuscripts have been discovered in Central Asia, including some which are considerably older.19 One result of the research which then followed these finds, was that there were many other Sanskrit manuscripts with which the Bower Manuscript could be compared. This has allowed a reconstruction of the process of transmission of Buddhism and its allied fields of knowledge into Central Asia and beyond. The study of

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other Sanskrit manuscripts found in and around the Kizil caves, along with the study of rock inscriptions from the Upper Indus Valley, has firmly placed the Bower Manuscript as an artefact of travelling knowledge. In 1987 Lore Sander, who conducted much palaeographical work on the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Prussian Turfan finds, reached the conclusion that the Bower Manuscript is somewhat younger than Hoernle suggested, and dated it to between the beginning and middle of the sixth century. Around the same time, Dani reached the same conclusion.20 Sander’s palaeographical study of the Sanskrit manuscripts of the German Turfan Collection has led to her conclusion that Kashmir was the original home of the scribes of the Bower Manuscript. She has placed it within a category of ‘Special’ manuscripts: ‘Special’ in the sense that although it was found in the Northern Silk Road, it is written in a script that does not fit in the relative chronological order of scripts of the region. Like Hoernle, she identified two distinct styles: parts one to three are written in a style containing elements typical of manuscripts from Ancient Kashmir, while parts five to seven are more cursive – and more specifically an indigenous type of cursive, also attested in inscriptions of the Upper Indus. These two distinct styles are important in reconstructing the process of transmission of this knowledge.

Who wrote the Bower Manuscript? Hoernle suggested that the Bower Manuscript was copied by four different scribes who were Buddhist monks living with Yaśomitra in Kumtura. Hoernle’s assumption, also supported by later palaeographical research deriving from the Turfan finds, is that the scribes – either all four, or only three of them – had travelled from Kashmir to Kucha, carrying with them the material object for knowledge-making: that is, the birch bark as well as the instrument(s) of writing. Birch bark was available across the Himalayas and was favoured by the Kashmiris as a writing material.21 The four scribes also carried with them their embodied knowledge: the language, the religion and their knowledge of medicine, divination and incantations. Lore Sander suggested that other Buddhist texts of Kucha from this time were most probably copied or written down by natives with the help of specialists who knew those texts by heart. It may well be that the same is applicable to the Bower Manuscript as well, though we will probably never know for sure.

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Why was it there? Since the Bower Manuscript was found, many more Buddhist texts have been discovered in nearby Silk Road sites, very many of them having been buried in similar fashion to that of the Bower Manuscript. Why did Central Asian Buddhists of the first centuries of the Common Era bury their manuscripts? Several hypotheses have been raised over the years, as more of these important manuscripts were unearthed in northern Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan and Eastern Xinjiang. The overall conclusion reached by Richard Salomon, one of the key researchers of these manuscripts, is that they ‘were not casually discarded, but were carefully deposited in a way that was designed to sanctify, preserve and protect them’.22 But why? There is no solid data to determine the motivation for this, but Salomon has proposed a number of hypotheses. In some of the cases, Salomon proposed, we are dealing with deceased monks who were buried together with their personal manuscripts, a practice which is well attested in later Tibetan tradition. The Bower bundle of manuscripts was contained in the relic chamber of the memorial stupa built in honour of Yaśomitra in the rock-cut monastery of Kumtura. Indeed, this has led scholars to assume that Yaśomitra was the owner of this collection of texts, and that he had a prominent position in the Kumtura monastery.23 The other possible motivation discussed by Salomon, is what he calls ‘Dharma insurance’: burial of texts in order to ensure that the Dharma would survive into the far future. Such practices are attested in later periods in Tibet, China and Japan. The previous chapter discussed some of the narratives on hidden knowledge that exist alongside these practices. One thing to be said about this insurance policy: it worked.

What do we know about the place where it was found? The Bower Manuscript was found by treasure seekers in a stupa close to the Ming-Öi (the Thousand Houses) of Kumtura, about thirteen miles from Kucha. Kucha was one of the largest and most prosperous settlements on the Northern Silk Road for several centuries. Buddhism flourished in Kucha from at least the third century CE, but very possibly even earlier. Kucha was renowned as a major Buddhist centre of learning, and a key gateway for Indic transmissions – both of Buddhist teachings and the medical knowledge that came with it. As Valerie Hansen has pointed out, the residents of the prosperous oasis of Kucha enjoyed an advantage over other language learners on the Silk Road when it came to

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Sanskrit, since their native language of Kuchean belonged to the same IndoEuropean language family as Sanskrit.24 This is where Kumārajīva, perhaps the most important and prolific translator of the Buddhist world, came from. From Kumārajīva’s biography we learn that in the fourth century CE there were very active links between Kashmir and Kucha, as well as between Kucha and China. In c. 630, when the renowned Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang reached Kucha on his way to India, Kucha was a Buddhist metropolis. Xuanzang’s accounts give us a sense of just how important Kucha was in the Buddhist world at this time. Xuanzang recounts that when he arrived in Kucha and the King of Kucha came to greet him, there were ‘several thousand monks from various other countries’ with him.25 Later on, he was told by Mokṣagupta, a Kuchean noble monk who had studied Buddhism in India for more than twenty years and was the master of the Buddhist temple where Xuanzang was staying, that he need not travel any further to find the texts he was looking for in India, since all he is after could be found right there in Kucha.26 Xuanzang reports that there are about 100 monasteries in Kucha, that the ‘bhikṣus (monks) are widely learned and highly talented’ and that ‘capable and superior people longing for the meaning [of the Dharma] come here from far away’.27 Xuanzang was not the only Buddhist monk to have come from afar: graffiti from the Tang era reveals that monks from the Chinese capital Ch’angan came to study in Kumtura.28 In addition to medicine, Buddhism brought with it also other forms of knowledge such as art and architecture. It has been noted, for example, that the construction and paintings at the Kumtura and Kizil caves follow the know-how exemplified at the Ajanta caves, near modern-day Mumbai.29 Buddhist knowledge transmission in the area also went hand in hand with the advancement of paper technology. Lore Sander, who has conducted extensive palaeographical work on the Kucha manuscripts, has noted that at the end of the fifth, and beginning of the sixth centuries, there was a sudden surge in translation activities in Kucha and in Khotan. Manuscripts written on paper found in Kucha date to as early as the third century. The paper pothi book format, the most common Tibetan book format, imitating Indian palm leaves, was adopted in Kucha as early as the fourth century CE.30 Was it the introduction of an indigenous paper industry that paved the way for a more intensive literary production? Or was it the other way around, that Buddhism and the knowledge that came with it became so popular that widespread interest enhanced the development of production of cheap paper?31 While these questions remain open at this stage of research, we ought to note

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the importance of this technological aspect also with respect to the production, translations and dissemination of medical knowledge within and beyond these Silk Road sites around this period. Soon after the Bower Manuscript found its way to the scholarly world, another group of manuscripts, which apparently came from the same place, were bought by the Reverend F. Weber, a Moravian missionary in Leh (Ladakh). Besides Sanskrit manuscripts, this group of manuscripts also included one in a previously unknown language. As Hoernle had by then earned his reputation for deciphering ancient Indic texts through his work on the Bower Manuscript and the Bakhshālī manuscript, the Weber manuscripts were sent to him.32 When trying to decipher this unknown language, Hoernle recognized numerous Sanskrit medical terms. He first thought that the language might be Mongolian, or a Turkic language written in Brāhmī script.33 It took several more years till this language was ultimately deciphered by Emil Sieg and Wilhelm Siegling in 1908, and named – to begin with – Tocharian. Some confusion arose with this name, as Tocharian is not the name of the language used in Tokharistan (Bactria), which is called Bactrian (see Chapter 3). The two types of Tocharian, Tocharian A and Tocharian B, were later renamed respectively Agnean and Kuchean, but the name Tocharian stuck. Agnean and Kuchean (Tocharian A and B) have much more in common with German, Greek, Latin and Celtic than with any Sanskritic or Iranian language.34 Indeed, linguistically, these languages are considered to be an early spinoff of Proto-Indo-European (PIE).35 Interestingly, it is not only the local language that reveals traces of links with places further west. Visual depictions of donors from the Kizil caves suggest that they were physically Caucasoid: the men have moustaches, high-bridged noses and brown or red hair.36 We do not know how and when they arrived in this area, but some scholars have traced their origins to the prehistoric Caucasoid mummies which were found in the Tarim basin.37 The deciphering of Tocharian A (Agnean) and Tocharian B (Kuchean) has allowed us to trace the fascinating process of transmission of knowledge from India into Kucha. Most of the c. 10,000 manuscript fragments in Tocharian B, and c. 2,000 fragments of Tocharian A, are Buddhist texts.38 The Agnean and Kuchean fragments have been found mostly in Kucha, in the Kizil caves and in Šorčuq near Qarašahr, east of Kucha. The number of Sanskrit medical texts in the Turfan region among Sanskrit texts in general in that area, is relatively small: to date only twenty-one Sanskrit texts or fragments in the Turfan Collection have been identified as dealing with medicine. This is against the backdrop of around 7,000 Sanskrit texts from that collection, most of them Buddhist texts. Yet still, their influence has been

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very important.39 Since this medical literature was meant for practical usage, it was necessary to translate these texts into the local languages. Hence, when considering translations into local languages, such as Tocharian or Uighur, the bigger picture of the impact of medical knowledge which travelled with Buddhism becomes clearer.40 Agnean was more the language of learning whereas Kuchean was that of speaking. Buddhist translations into Kuchean were most probably made in order to teach laypeople. Quite a similar picture is also found in the medical texts which were found in this area.

Tocharian medicine There are still many Kuchean (Tocharian B) medical manuscripts kept in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, at the Oxford Bodleian Library, the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France which have not been studied, so the tracing of these Central Asian transmissions of medical knowledge is still quite preliminary,41 but from the ones which have been studied so far we know that while medicine practised in this area was largely based on knowledge coming from India, there was also a local tradition, focused more on practice than theory. This practical strand has been traced through medical texts found in the Kucha area, written in Kuchean (Tocharian B), the local spoken language.42 Gerd Carling, who has analysed the additions in Tocharian made to texts translated from Sanskrit, has concluded that the monks of Kucha developed a tradition of their own, which was more practical than theoretical. Analysing the Tocharian medical vocabulary, she has suggested that while the Tocharian terms show a close link with the Sanskrit sources, we are able to conclude that there was also an oral tradition, where local practices played an important role.43

The Yogaśataka One excellent demonstration of how Indic medical knowledge was being integrated into local culture comes from a particularly instructive manuscript which Paul Pelliot brought from Kucha: a bilingual Sanskrit-Tocharian version of the Yogaśataka. The Yogaśataka is a text of medical recipes, which was originally written in Sanskrit. It was translated into Tibetan and is included in the Tibetan Tanjur. Gerd Carling has shown that the so-called bilingual Tocharian manuscript of this text (Pelliot Koutchéen Ancienne Série 2A, 2B and 2C) is not an exact translation of the Sanskrit original, but more of an adaptation. At the beginning of each verse we find the Sanskrit text, followed by the Tocharian

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translation. The Tocharian text often contains more information, in the form of commentaries and glosses. The content of the additions suggests these were added by someone knowledgeable in the practice of medicine.44 Carling has also made a similar observation about a Tocharian B practical medical text from Dunhuang (IOL Toch 306). Her analysis has shown that this Tocharian B medical text is only loosely based on a Sanskrit text, often adding independent comments and commentaries, suggesting innovation in relation to its Sanskrit sources.45

How many humours? Comparisons of European and Ayurvedic systems of medicine will normally explain that the basic theoretical difference between Graeco-Arab medicine and Indo-Tibetan medicine, is their views on the humours: that GraecoArab medicine is based on the idea of four humours – phlegm, yellow bile, black bile and blood – and that Indo-Tibetan notions are based on the idea of three humours, or doṣas – wind (T: rlung, S: vāyu or vāta), bile (T: mkhris pa, S: pitta) and phlegm (T: bad kan, S: kapha). Leaving aside for now the problematic translation of the Sanskrit doṣas and the Tibetan nyes pas, into humours, the Bower Manuscript reminds us that this seemingly stark ‘cultural meridian’, was not always so clear-cut an example of a time and place of overlap.46 While in some parts of the Bower Manuscript we find the idea of the triad of doṣas as causes of illness,47 as indeed codified in Ayurveda and Tibetan medicine, in other parts we also find the idea that diseases in general can be ‘caused by any of these: wind, blood, bile, phlegm and their combination’.48 Here blood is clearly added as the fourth fault, or cause of illness, though the combination is not quite the four humours as they are known further west. This combination of bile, blood, phlegm and wind is also found in the Persian biography of Burzūyah, the physician of the Sasanian court who was sent to India by King Khusraw and who is known as the person who brought back with him the Kalīla wa-Dimna. The Kalīla wa-Dimna, an adaptation of the Indian Pañcatantra, which migrated via many Persian, Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew versions to Europe, is a text which documents the way Persian ‘mediated the diffusion of knowledge between the Indian subcontinent and the Mediterranean’.49 This popular Indian story cycle has a frame-tale which incorporates historical figures. François de Blois, who has studied these frame stories, has reached the conclusion that the authorship of the text by Burzūyah,

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the Persian king’s physician, is historically possible, and can be neither proved nor falsified.50 What is important here is a key element of the frame story: a Persian physician of the Persian king travels to India in search of knowledge. An apocryphal tale specifically links his voyage to India with a search for the plant of immortality.51 In the fourth chapter of the Kalīla wa-Dimna, known as the ‘autobiographic chapter of the physician Burzōy’, Burzūyah lists the ‘four enemies’, which are the four antagonistic elements forming the body. These entities, which recall the doṣas and nyes pas, are defined as: bile (P: mirrah), blood (P: dam), phlegm (P: balgham) and wind (P: rīḥ).52

Dice and medicine on the Silk Road In the two dice divination texts of the Bower Manuscript (text nos. 4 and 5), a die with four numbers is employed. The text presents readings for three throws, from which we can deduce that a die is either thrown three times, or that three of these dice are used together. Each of the readings is titled with a certain numerical combination, for example: 3 1 3, 2 4 1, etc., bringing the total number of possible combinations to 64 (43). Both of the dice divination texts are, however, incomplete and do not have all of these combinations.53 While many of the sections have nothing to do with medicine – dealing with issues like business, love, journeys and friends – quite a few of the divinations do deal with aspects which we might call ‘medical’. These include issues like predicting one’s life span, chances of recovering from an illness and choosing which medicines one should be taking. Similar dice divination texts have been found in a number of other Silk Road sites, written in a variety of languages: there are Tibetan texts from Dunhuang, Turfan and Mazar Tagh (Khotan) which have been published and studied by Francke, Thomas, Taube, Dotson, Nishida, Iwao, van Schaik and Takeuchi;54 Chinese texts from Dunhuang published by Kalinowski and his team;55 a number of Turkic texts – including the lavish Irk Bitig (Figure 2.2) – a ninthcentury Old Turkic manuscript written in Runic script which was found by Aurel Stein in Dunhuang;56 a Turkic Christian dice divination text published by von Le Coq;57 and a Christian Sogdian dice divination text from Dunhuang published by Nicholas Sims-Williams.58 While the method of conducting the dice divination is not explained in the Bower dice divination texts, we are able to learn more about the practice and its Silk Road transmissions from those other later dice divination texts. In all these cases, dice with four numbers are

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employed, in the same way that the Bower Manuscript dice divination texts (Figure 2.1) appear to have been used. The Tibetan dice divination codex from Dunhuang, IOL Tib J 739 dated to the tenth century, for example, begins with a description of the ritual preceding the practice, as well as an elucidation of the method of performing the dice divinations which follow.59 The dice divination texts from Dunhuang and Turfan have similar connections with aspects which we could term as ‘medical’ as those found in the Bower Manuscript. Tibetan sources often refer to China as the origin of knowledge of divination. Pawo Tsuglag (Dpa’ bo gtsug lag, 1504–1566), for example, recounts that Songtsen Gampo, the seventh-century Tibetan king, founder of the Tibetan Empire to whom the great civilizing innovations of Tibet are attributed, is said to have brought to Tibet knowledge from its four great surrounding countries. Within those: ‘In the east, from China and Minyak, he took books of technology and of divinatory calculation (others say: medicine and calculations) of the five elements.’60 The main figures who are predominantly mentioned as transmitters of this knowledge into Tibet are Confucius, usually rendered in Tibetan as Kongtse (Kong tse or Kong tshe), and the two Chinese princesses married to Tibetan kings at the time of the Tibetan Empire, Princess Wencheng and Princess Jincheng.61 In the Dunhuang manuscript IOL Tib J 742, Kongtse is mentioned as the author of a divination text.62 These references to Kongtse were later repeated and adapted in different forms within Tibetan sources. In the Bonpo tradition, a related figure named Kongtse Trulgyi Gyalpo (Kong tse ’phrul gyi rgyal po), appears as a Chinese king possessing an ability to predict the future.63 In Buddhist sources, Kongtse Trulgyi Gyalpo is linked not only to Confucius but also to Mañjuśrī.64 Several Tibetan divination texts from Dunhuang refer to Confucius as their author, rendering him as Kongtse. Among the Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang we also find Tibetan translations of Confucian maxims.65 Indeed, according to Chinese sources from Dunhuang, we know that Confucian doctrines were taught in the prefectural Dunhuang school and that special rites for his worship were conducted twice a year, at the time of the equinoxes, in which the physicians of Dunhuang participated.66 Chinese divination material from Dunhuang provides various indications regarding the wide provenance and use of this type of literature. Notes added at the beginnings and ends of texts, bookmarks glued to the manuscripts, and the provenance of these types of texts in a distribution list of books all point towards the wide dissemination of various kinds of divination texts and practices (C: shushu) among the population of Dunhuang.67

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Buddhist institutions in Dunhuang were involved in shushu practices in various ways, including deriving part of their income from them. Shushu was extremely popular in Dunhuang and indeed formed a fundamental part of popular religion. While certain manuals were reserved for use by experienced diviners, others were accessible for all. What is also evident in the transmission and propagation of these traditions is a multilayered stratification, combining various measures of learned and popular culture.68 That these traditions were widespread is similarly reflected in their appearance as part of the educational materials used in schools, copied by pupils as simple writing exercises.69 Prognostication was frequently accompanied by exorcisms and various invocations. The complementarity between exorcism and divination is especially visible in the context of treatment of diseases. There are numerous nature deities and gods mentioned in these texts, as well as countless malevolent spirits, who are considered the cause of diseases, all bearing witness to the strong involvement of the shushu culture in popular religion.70 We also know from Chinese sources that doctors were versed in the astro-calendrical arts and were in charge of the redaction and diffusion of the annotated calendar.71 These Dunhuang Chinese texts were copied during the ninth and tenth centuries, that is, the period of Tibetan domination and under the successive administration of the Army of the Return to Duty. Some of the Tibetan divination texts from Dunhuang might be referring to the Yijing (I Ching).72 Elements from the Yijing, most notably the reference to the eight trigrams, later became fully integrated into medical divination as delineated, for example, in the Tibetan White Beryl (Bai dūrya dkar po), a work on astral knowledge by Sangye Gyatso, Regent of the Fifth Dalai Lama. Such an early point in time in which these divinatory ideas were brought into Tibetan culture, as evidenced in the Dunhuang manuscripts, is further corroborated by two other types of evidence. The first are Tibetan narratives ascribing the transmission to the Chinese princesses, Princess Wencheng and Princess Jincheng, who married Tibetan kings. The second comes from linguistic data, analysed by Berthold Laufer. Based on the form of the names of the trigrams as they appear in Tibetan in comparison with the Chinese, Laufer has shown that the Tibetan transcriptions have partially preserved the ancient initial consonants and the ancient finals of the Chinese, hence concluding that the transmission occurred during the Tang period.73 Among the texts which are part of the Pelliot tibétain 127 scroll, is what is believed to be the earliest Tibetan delineation of the sexagenary cycle, used in PT 127 (verso, lines 1–9) not for calendrical purposes, but for divinatory/

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Figure 2.1  Dice divination text of the Bower Manuscript. Reproduced from A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, The Bower Manuscript: Facsimile Leaves, Nagari Transcript, Romanised transliteration and English translation with notes (Calcutta: Archeological Survey of India, 1893–1912). © Public domain.

Figure 2.2  (bottom left): Irk Bitig (British Library Or. 8212). © The British Library Board. Figure 2.3  (bottom right): Tibetan dice divination from Dunhuang. Pelliot tibétain 1043, Bibliothèque nationale de France. The structure of the text in each of these is the same and clearly observable: each section begins with a reading of three numbers from one to four, in the form of dots or lines. © BnF, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

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astrological purposes.74 The reverse side of this manuscript contains two texts: the first is a divination text (recto, lines 1–77) and the second is a medical text on moxibustion (see Chapter 4). The divination text begins with the words: Formerly, the gifted man of magical faculties (’phrul gyi myis) established this text of divination (astrology, sciences/ gtsug lag) as a model (dpe) for future generations. It deals with the positive and negative [aspects] of the level of prosperity (dbang btang che chung), years of life (lo srog) and power (mthun).75

These categories are very similar to the ones we know from later sources in Tibetan divination, such as, vitality (srog), body (lus), destiny (dbang thang), and luck (rlung rta). The vitality aspect is the life-essence present in the heart of beings; the body element determines physical health; the destiny element governs personal spheres of influence, wealth, property, food, clothing and, descendants; the luck refers to good fortune and good reputation. The reference to the ‘gifted man of magical faculties’ (’phrul gyi myis) probably refers to Kongtse.76 This section of Pelliot tibétain 127 is very similar to IOL Tib J 748, another Tibetan divination text from Dunhuang, ending with what appears to be either a very early Tibetan reference to the Yijing or to divination in general.77 The two texts are probably two copies of the same original.78 Brandon Dotson, who studied Tibetan dice divination texts from Dunhuang (Figure 2.3), has demonstrated that dice divination texts were also used to settle legal matters, a practice which has also been observed by anthropologists in the modern era, where the recourse to dice was believed to reveal the will of the gods, or more generally ‘a mechanism through which figures of authority legitimate their decisions by means of placing agency outside themselves’.79 The use of the dice was no desperate measure, ‘but a standard practice codified by legal manuals’.80 Dotson’s analysis has shown that the roles of ritualist, healer and administrator overlapped in the Tibetan context, and that the methodology of the diviner – whether in making a medical or other prognosis, or settling a legal case – was virtually identical in form and content.81

The (non?)-religious aspect While we can observe close links with Buddhism – many of these texts were produced in Buddhist monasteries and practised by Buddhist monks – the dice divination texts easily transferred to other religious contexts. The examples from Dunhuang and Turfan stem not only from Buddhist circles but also from Daoist, Christian and possibly Manichaean ones too.82 As noted by Strickmann,

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‘The oracles furnish a clear example of ritual transcending any particular “religious” context: they are sponsored by all religions, but unique to none.’83 The Old Turkic ninth-century Irk Bitig, for example, shares both structure and layout of the dice divination texts of the Bower Manuscript and the Tibetan dice divination texts from Dunhuang: each section begins with the threedice combination, followed by the reading of that throw. The Irk Bitig has a colophon which provides a location for its composition. Hamilton has identified the location given in the colophon (Taygüntan) as a Turkic transcription of the Chinese Dayun Tang and linked it with the name of the great Buddhist monastery Dayun si (Great Cloud Monastery), a monastery which is attested in Dunhuang from 694 to 959, and where, most probably both Buddhist and Manichaean monks lived.84 Indeed, the vocabulary used in this text links it with a Manichaean context, but it is impossible to say for sure whether the scribe or author was a Manichaean as the content of the text itself is non-religious.

Artefacts The type of dice which would have been used for these divination texts was marked with the four numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4 (Figure 2.4). Aurel Stein found such dice

Figure 2.4  Oblong dice from Sirkap made of ivory (left) and bone (right), marked one to four. After: John Marshall, Taxila: An Illustrated Account of Archaeological Excavations Carried out at Taxila under the Orders of the Government of India between the Years 1913 and 1934 (3 vols, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1951), vol. 3, plate 200, no. 92 and no. 93. © Public domain.

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Figure 2.5  Die found near Termez. After: Uzbek die, Lazarʹ Izrailevich Albaum, Balalyk-tepe (Tashkent: Izd-vo Akademii Nauk UzSSR, 1960), Figure 33. © Public domain.

Figure 2.6  Central Asian oblong dice. On the left: a wooden die from Mount Mugh; on the right a die from Panjakent. The middle die is from the Kastalski Collection and is of unknown provenance. © The State Hermitage Museum.

made of ivory in Niya and Loulan.85 Similar dice have been found in Khotan, Endere and Ladakh.86 In the 1960s such a die (Figure 2.5) was also found in Khayrabad Tepe, a few miles north of Termez in Uzbekistan,87 near Kara Tepe, a large scale Buddhist complex which is believed to have been in operation between the second and fourth centuries CE, and where the Tokyo Rissho excavation team has found some Bactrian writing as well as second- to thirdcentury brightly coloured Buddhist murals, in 2015 and 2016 respectively.88

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Four-sided oblong dice have also been found in the Islamic world, with exemplars dating roughly from the ninth till the eleventh century.89 Although the number arrangement is different from the exemplars found on the Silk Roads, their overall design appears remarkably similar (Figure 2.6).90 ***

Between medicine and divination: Managing the unknown The view that the three types of texts found in the Bower Manuscript – the medical, divination and incantation ones – need to be seen within one context and on a par with one another is expressed in the opening verses of the fourth Bower text. These verses state: The efficacy of magical formulas and medical herbs and prognostics … is far from untruth.91

Within the Indian Buddhist context, we know that in monastic learning in India, astronomy, astrology and divination were taught as ancillary to medicine. Xuanzang reported that both medicine and divination were part of the curriculum at Nālanda, the renowned Buddhist institution of high learning, founded in north-east India in the fifth century: ‘They studied Mahayana teachings and the doctrines of the 18 schools, as well as worldly books such as the Vedas. They also learned about works on logic, grammar, medicine, and divination.’92 Tibetan Buddhist accounts maintain that medicine as well as astrology were taught by Buddha Śākyamuni, the founder of Buddhism. Both medicine and astrology have been categorized as Buddhist classical sciences or rigne (rig gnas).93 Among the Buddhist classical sciences, medicine is traditionally categorized under the five major sciences (rig gnas che ba),94 and astrology and divination under the five minor sciences (rig gnas chung ba).95 From a Buddhist-Mahayanic point of view, the study of these ten ‘fields of knowledge’ has been described as essential in the path of the bodhisattva’s striving towards omniscience. This omniscience is considered in Buddhist literature both as a means of helping others and as a way of knowing oneself.96 Links between medicine and divination are found across Eurasia.97 In the origin narratives discussed in Chapter 1, divination appears as a part of medicine, with Tibetan narratives of medical history pointing towards China as the land of divination, and the Hebrew Book of Asaf, pointing towards Mesopotamia and Egypt.98 Looking at the connections between medicine and divination from a

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cross-cultural perspective, one finds that the inherent links between the two begin perhaps with the overlap in addressing humans’ most pressing questions, namely, will I get better? Will I die? Analysing from signs and clues, Carlo Ginzburg reminds us, is a method shared between medicine and divination: ‘just think of the importance of conjecture (the term itself originates in divination) in medicine or in philology, and in divining’.99 Divination allows for, what Ginzburg has termed: ‘flexible rigor’.100 Dealing with the European context, Ginzburg has noted that a close look into so-called rational Europe, calls the perceived distance between medicine and divination into question. Ginzburg reminds us that European medicine has always been based on conjecture, on guesswork, with very close affinities to divination.101 Throughout the history of medicine – both in Europe and in Asia – we see that there was a very small distance, if any, between prognosis and divination. Both allowed humans to, as Strickmann put it ‘manage the unknown’: they provided rules and pathways to read elusive signs and give them meaning, offering explanations for unexplained illnesses, helping with diagnosis and analysing invisible causes. Strickmann, in his breathtakingly wide sweep of Eurasian dice divination texts, has found many similarities all the way from Graeco-Roman antiquity, via India, the Islamic world, the Turks and Sogdians of Central Asia along with medieval Tibetan and Chinese texts, and all the way to Medieval and Renaissance Europe.102 How baffled should we be when we find that our Dunhuang Tibetan and Chinese dice divination texts are remarkably similar to temple oracles from fifteenth-century Germany? While such grand transmission histories are very difficult to trace, observing the trans-lingual transmissions from around the Taklamakan Desert is instructive. Looking at dice divination texts from around the Taklamakan we come to similar conclusions to those reached by Valerie Hansen in her analysis of the Silk Road trade: rather than long-distance trade or transmissions, what we actually have on the ground is an oasis-by-oasis movement of stuff, of people, of words and of ideas. Beyond the pan-human need to provide a response and a method to manage the unknown – central to medicine, as to love or business – the dice divination texts and artefacts from Kucha, Dunhuang, Niya, Loulan and Termez remind us that we also need to consider (another word derived from divination) two mundane aspects of the transportability of this type of knowledge: the materiality of its transmission and its adaptability. The materiality of its mobility is demonstrated by the format of the Turkic textual exemplar from Dunhuang: at 13.1cm by 8.1cm and dating from the ninth century, the Irk Bitig is one of the first exemplars of a paper pocketbook. Just as the Bower Manuscript exemplifies the intrinsic link

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between transmission of knowledge and the medium used for it – birch bark from India travelling to Central Asia – so does this ninth-century paper pocketbook: it provides a key for understanding the transmission of this popular type of knowledge into a vast array of languages and cultures within and beyond the Silk Roads. The materiality of its mobility is further demonstrated by the artefacts of the practice – the dice found in Niya, Loulan and Kharabad Tepe (Termez), and further west in the Islamic world, which would have accompanied these texts. Some of the earliest exemplars of divination texts from the Islamic world are those found in the Cairo Genizah.103 Among them, the lot books (H: goralot), both in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic bear close resemblances to the dice divination texts from around the Taklamakan Desert. Some of them begin with a prayer of invocation, followed by answers to questions posed by the client. There is a variety of methods by which a specific answer is chosen. Some of the answers are listed based on three numbers, represented by letters. The numbers, however, are not 1–4 as our Silk Roads dice divination one. Interestingly, oblong dice have been found in Fustat, Egypt (Figure 2.7) which bear a remarkable similarity to the dice found on the Silk Road. These

Figure 2.7  Ivory oblong die from Fustat, ninth to eleventh century. 6.1cm x 1cm x 0.9cm. Ashmolean Museum Acc. No. EA 1974-64. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

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dice, however, have different numbers inscribed on them. Did these dice come from India? Perhaps with the India trade? How much of an influence did they have on the practice as documented in the Genizah? We are unable to state anything for sure at this stage, but these highly mobile, easily transportable artefacts may help to explain the wide proliferation of dice divination practices throughout Eurasia.

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3

Myrobalans: The making of a Eurasian panacea

The history of myrobalan as a wondrous drug intersects realms of pharmacology, of trade, of the imagination and of religion. Its long Eurasian history can be traced through the notions of India as a source of wondrous drugs and medical knowledge, Buddhist narratives on the Medicine Buddha, the medical and trade documents from the Cairo Genizah, Maimonides’ links with India – and all the way to modern Tibetan pharmaceuticals, where myrobalan features as the most widely used symbol for Tibetan medicine.1 The analysis of special Asian materia medica – such as Indic myrobalans, Tibetan musk or Chinese rhubarb – allows us to look at such substances not necessarily as stable things, but as ‘nexuses in knowledge systems around which meaning and practice cohere and agglomerate’.2 In a similar way to that in which musk came to represent Tibet in Islamic literature as the ‘land of musk’, myrobalans came to represent India.3 Thus we find several Arabic texts from the ninth century, titled Book of Myrobalan (Kitāb al-ihlīlaja).4 One of these, analysed by Mushegh Asatryan, features a debate between an Imam and an Indian doctor. The dialogue between the two takes place while the Indian physician is grinding myrobalans (ihlīlaj) to make medicine. While the Indian physician is preparing his medicine, the Imam is using it metaphorically in his attempts to refute the Indian physician’s positions: every now and then he evokes myrobalans as a metaphor for something perfect.5 As Asatryan has argued, this text appears to echo theological debates that took place in Hārūn al-Rashīd’s court. While the use of myrobalans here is simply a literary device, the choice of it as a metaphor for an Indian context – and for perfection – is telling. We mostly find three types of myrobalan, which as a triad are known in Sanskrit as triphalā; literally, the ‘three fruits’: yellow myrobalan (Terminalia chebula, S: harītakī), Beleric myrobalan (Terminalia bellirica, S: vibhitaka) and emblic myrobalan (Phyllanthus emblica, S: amalika).

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The three myrobalans appear as very important substances in the earliest Sanskrit medical sources, the Caraka, the Suśruta and the Bower Manuscript (see Chapter 2). As discussed in Chapter 1, in the vast literature of the ‘marvels of the East’ India played a key role as a place where wonderful drugs and spices grow.6 These ‘emissaries from a fabled world’7 coming from the borders of paradise enjoyed magical prestige merely by virtue of their Eastern origin. Trying to reconstruct the many Eurasian travels of myrobalan, we need to look at simultaneous and intersecting trails: the linguistic trail, the trade trail and the tale trail. Tracing the Eurasian biography of myrobalans calls on us to move between the real and the constructed; between the object, the plant itself, its chemical composition and natural traits, and the constructions which define it; the stories, its trade practicalities and the pharmacological texts which discuss it. These different planes intersect, inform and construct each other. While in scholarship a ‘cultural meridian’ was constructed between Persian medicine and Indic medicine, the first seen as part of the Graeco-Arab-European family, and the second as part of the Asian medical traditions family, transmitted through Asia along with Buddhism, pharmacology is one area where this divide is much more fluid than generally perceived. As Levey has pointed out, in the area of pharmacology, it is geography which plays a major role. There is thus nothing surprising when we find plenty of Indic materia medica in texts deriving from areas of Persian/Iranian cultural milieu, whether in Arabic, Syriac or in Hebrew, as well as in Central Asian languages: in Khotanese, Tocharian and Sogdian. Indeed, as Laufer has pointed out in his analysis of Abū Manṣūr’s tenthcentury pharmacological text, Persio-Indic pharmacology should be treated as a unified field.8 The plum-like fruit of the Terminalia Chebula tree was a useful and cheap substitute for gall or oakapples and was already being used in antiquity for extracting tannic acid and as medicine. The classical and early Byzantine use of the term myrobalanos,9 which seems to be synonymous with balanos myrepsikē,10 referred to the nut of the Ben tree Moringa11 or the Egyptian myrobalan, Balanites aegyptiaca.12 The term myrobalanos was used in the late Byzantine period by authors such as Nicholas Myrepsos and John Zacharias Aktouarios in reference to the five types of Indic myrobalans: emblic, Indian, Chebulic, belleric and yellow.13 While Indic myrobalans are not found in Galen or Dioscorides, they do seem to have been around in abundance during the Roman Empire. Archaeological evidence shows that belleric and emblic myrobalans were already being traded in the early Roman period – in the first to early third centuries CE.14 The archaeological remains suggest that during the Roman period myrobalan,

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along with other Asian spices, passed through Red Sea ports on their way to Alexandria, Rome and beyond, but were not used for local consumption.15 When Indic myrobalans began to be imported from India by Muslim and Jewish traders in the medieval period, the myrobalanos of Dioscorides was confounded with the Indic ones, in spite of their completely different medical effect.16 The field of Arabic pharmacology is one which clearly conveys the idea that we should not treat it as a case of simply ‘preserving’ or ‘translating’ Greek knowledge: an abundance of Asian materia medica made its way to pharmacological texts composed in Islamic lands. A clear indication that the inclusion of Asian materia medica in Islamic works was no minor phenomenon is provided by the treatises devoted to precisely this topic by Ibn Juljul, Ibn Rushd, al-Idrīsī and Ibn Jumay‘.17 According to Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʻa, in 948/9 the Umayyad Caliph of Cordoba, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān received from the Byzantine emperor Romanus the gift of an illustrated Greek manuscript of Dioscorides. This manuscript was the basis for a new translation of the text into Arabic, made by a team of local physicians, working with a Greek monk sent for this purpose from Constantinople, at the Caliph’s request. One of these translators was Ibn Juljul, born in Cordova 944, who composed an appendix to the translation, entitled, ‘List of Medicinal Substances not Mentioned by Dioscorides’.18 A similar list was composed by Ibn Rushd (b. Cordova 1126, d. Marrakesh 1198), the great polymath known in the west as Averroes. Indeed, Ibn Rushd begins his discussion of the drugs not mentioned by Galen, but used in Islamic medicine, with the five types of myrobalans. Myrobalans also feature prominently in the other three lists.19

The linguistic trail: What’s in a name? Names are half geography.20 Towards the end of the long and detailed entry on myrobalans, Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell in their Anglo-Indic linguistic masterpiece Hobson-Jobson, completed in 1886, which has been deemed ‘a cabinet of linguistic curiosities’,21 commented on the linguistic similarity between the Sanskrit triphala and the name found among ‘[s]ome of the Arabian and Medieval Greek authors’: Tryphera or Tryphala.22 The similarity between the Sanskrit and the Arabic and Medieval Greek authors, they note, is ‘a fact of great interest’. Yule and Burnell leave, however, this ‘fact of great interest’ unexplained. Not because they were

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not meticulous: the book is still considered a linguistic treasure trove, as the Introduction to its new (2013) edition demonstrates. This fact of great interest was left unexplained because the manuscripts that allow us now to delineate the entangled itineraries of the Eurasian linguistic trails of triphala were only about to be discovered at the time Yule and Burnell published their phenomenal linguistic tome in 1886: the Genizah documents, and the manuscript discoveries of the Silk Roads.23

Halilag: Sanskrit into Middle Persian, Syriac and Hebrew One linguistic path of terms referring to myrobalans can be traced as going from Sanskrit into Middle Persian and then into Syriac and Hebrew. The Sanskrit harītakī is the source for the Middle Persian halīlag, from which the Syriac names of myrobalans derive. As the work of Gignoux has shown, these Syriac terms, alongside a great number of other words relating to medicine, botany and pharmacopoeia, have preserved Middle Persian terms.24 These Syriac forms also appear in Hebrew texts. One interesting case is the Sefer Halakhot Gedolot, a work on Jewish law from the Ge’onic period composed around the ninth century, which has preserved Babylonian Aramaic forms. The term halilaki (‫ )הלילקי‬appears in the Sefer Halakhot Gedolot in a discussion on what blessing should be made on this substance.25 The Hebrew Book of Asaf also includes a few variations of the name as derived from either Syriac or Persian: ‫( הלילג‬halylag); ‫( הילילג‬hylylag); ‫( חלילקים‬ḥalylkym) and ‫( חלילקום‬ḥalylkum),26 as befitting a Hebrew medical text which appears to be the result of a Persian-Syriac-Hebrew transmission line, where the Persian reflects some Indic input.27

Indo-Iranian links: Myrobalans in Khotanese and Sogdian One of the Khotanese texts found in Dunhuang by Aurel Stein is the socalled Jivaka Pustaka. This collection of medical prescriptions in Sanskrit and Khotanese includes many recipes involving myrobalans. The Sanskrit of a formula in the Jivaka Pustaka featuring the three myrobalans states that it cures ‘all troubles’. The Khotanese version also holds it in high esteem, but not quite as much as the Sanskrit, saying that it would ‘overcome the eighty diseases due to air humour’.28 Sogdian was yet another language deciphered as a result of the Silk Roads explorations of the early twentieth century.29 The Sogdians were an Iranian

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people  who inhabited the Transoxiana region (present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) and who dominated the trans-Asia trade. The Sogdian language was a very important Silk Road language due to the importance of trans-Asian Sogdian trade. Sogdian trade with China was well established by the fourth century as attested by the ‘Ancient Letters’, found by Stein near Dunhuang. As traders, they were conversant in many languages and this may be why they functioned so easily as translators too. Most of the extant Sogdian texts are Buddhist texts. Indeed, Sogdians are accredited with being important translators of Buddhist as well as Manichaean and Christian texts into Chinese. A Sanskrit-Sogdian bilingual text which was found in Turfan, shows the influence of Ayurvedic medicine among Sogdians in this region.30 In this text we also find myrobalans (Sogdian: ārire)31 as well as the three myrobalans (Sogdian: tripāl),32 as part of eye ointment.

Sanskrit into Arabic: The Central Asian path ʻAlī b. Sahl Rabban al-Ṭabarī (fl. ca 830–850) a Christian court physician of the caliphs who later converted to Islam, and who had a great influence on al-Rāzī (b. 864 or 865, d. c. 925), was a native of Marw (Merv) in Central Asia.33 Merv was one of the world’s most cosmopolitan centres of learning at the time and its libraries so famous that we are told that the Middle Eastern scholar Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī travelled halfway through Eurasia to access them, spending three years in its libraries.34 Al-Ṭabarī wrote an encyclopaedic work on medicine, the Firdaus al-ḥikma (Paradise of Wisdom), which is a compilation of Greek and Indian medicine showing an influx of Persian drugs.35 Al-Ṭabarī’s discourse on Indian medicine reflects knowledge of the main Ayurvedic classics, the Caraka, Suśruta, and the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya saṃhitā of Vāghbhaṭa. These were translated from Sanskrit either directly to Arabic or via Persian during the early Abbasid period.36 The Paradise of Wisdom includes twenty new plants and substances which were not known to the Greeks, with the myrobalans – balīlaj, amlaj and halīlaj – featuring as some of the most often mentioned drugs.37 The last chapter of this text gives many prescriptions which begin with triphala, the three myrobalans.38 However, as Oliver Kahl has noted, while in Ayurvedic pharmacology triphala means nothing more than ‘the three myrobalans’, in Arabic pharmacology soon after its adoption in the mid-ninth century, the term iṭrīfal became a generic drug name of different compound preparations which were considered to be ‘based’ on myrobalans.39

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Thanks to recent research we are beginning to know something about this Sanskrit into Arabic transmission path. A very important breakthrough came in the 1990s when more than 100 Bactrian documents were found in northern Afghanistan. Bactrian is a Middle-Iranian language whose writing system is based on the Greek alphabet, a remnant of Alexander’s conquests in Central Asia. The documents revealed not only an important Indo-European language, about which little was known, but also provided evidence for Bactrian Buddhism.40 These sources paint a picture of the upper Oxus as an area where Buddhism and its related Sanskrit sciences flourished at the time the Arabs arrived there in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. So, for example, in an eighth-century Bactrian estate sale contract, the building of a Buddhist monastery (vihāra) was a sufficiently likely possibility that it is mentioned as a clause.41 This material indicates that the common narrative of Islam replacing Buddhism should be reformulated into a more nuanced one where several centuries of co-existence and cultural interactions took place. The Bactrian sources are supported by other sources: the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, for example, describes the Buddhism in the area around the city of Balkh in the first half of the seventh century as very active.42 About a century after Xuanzang visited the area, around the year 726, Huichāo, a monk from Silla (present-day Korea) provided a description of Tokharistan having been conquered by the Arabs, yet noting at the same time that ‘The king, the nobles, and the people revere the Three Jewels [i.e. practise Buddhism]. There are many monasteries and monks; they practise the Lesser Vehicle teachings … No one practises heretical teachings’.43 It is in this context that we find Barmak, the father of the Barmakid family, an educated Buddhist official from the city of Balkh in Tokharistan, in the valley around the upper Oxus. It was well known for quite some time that the Barmak family became highly influential in the Abbasid court in Baghdad and that Barmak’s grandson, Yaḥyā, became the tutor and then the powerful minister of the caliph, Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 786–809). But the importance of the study by Kevin van Bladel has been to demonstrate how, as a result of Yaḥyā’s Buddhist roots and his family ties with Tokharistan and Kashmir, about which we now know much more thanks to the Bactrian documents, Yaḥyā facilitated a substantial translation enterprise from Sanskrit to Arabic in the Caliph’s court.44 A major outcome of this enterprise was the monumental translation of the Indian medical classics into Arabic: the Suśruta, the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya saṃhitā of Vāghbhaṭa and the Siddhasāra of Ravigupta.

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Sanskrit into Arabic: Al-Bīrūnī Another path of Sanskrit-into-Arabic knowledge transmission took place through the work of the great Islamic polymath Abū Rayḥan al-Bīrūnī (b. 973, d. after 1050). While Mahmud of Ghazna is mostly known in histories of Buddhism as the figure whose military campaigns brought destruction to Buddhism in India, here too we now know that this was only part of the picture: throughout those upheavals – or perhaps even because of them – Buddhism survived.45 Furthermore, Mahmud of Ghazna should also be remembered as an example of how military campaigns may bring not only destruction but also knowledge exchanges. One important result of al-Bīrūnī convoying with Mahmud of Ghazna’s military campaigns was the first in-depth study of India by an Islamic scholar. Al-Bīrūnī, who has made important contributions to the fields of mathematics, astronomy, geography, pharmacology, chronology and history, is perhaps most famous for his in-depth studies of India, based on his long stay there during which he seems to have acquired knowledge of both a local vernacular and Sanskrit. His engagement with Indic knowledge was, therefore, based not only on textual sources but also on his lengthy conversations with Indian pandits. Towards the end of his life, al-Bīrūnī wrote his pharmacological work, Ṣaydana.46 The work represents his lifelong interest in plants and their medicinal uses. This work is particularly interesting due to his multidisciplinary approach – he cites botanists, pharmacologists, physicians, philosophers, grammarians and poets – as well as his profound, first-hand knowledge of India and its culture. Al-Bīrūnī appears to rely on both written and oral sources, evident primarily in the vernacular names which he provides. When discussing myrobalans in this work, his diverse linguistic erudition allowed al-Bīrūnī to provide explanations like: ‘Amlaj- It is the Arabicized version of the Persian āmlah. It is called anūlah in Hindi and amlak in Syriac’,47 or on halīlaj, ‘it is halīlqūn in Roman and halīqī in Syriac’. He then adds that in the local language in India it is called hawzbad and harayn.48 Reading al-Bīrūnī’s entry on amlaj, we can observe an important factor in the transmission of pharmacological knowledge: even when a drug moves across different cultural spheres as the myrobalans do, there will be some aspects of knowledge of that drug which would move easily, and some aspects of knowledge which would not. Take for example the case of musk: a substance from Tibet which gained huge prestige in the Islamic world: while the specific indications of what this super-drug was considered good for, the

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underlying theoretical classifications and explanations did not.49 Similarly here with myrobalans: even at the very basic level of pharmacological classification – the distinction of whether a drug is cooling or warming – we find a blatant disagreement. When al-Bīrūnī discusses amlaj, he says: ‘And the Jew [referring to Māsarjawaih] regards it as a hot drug, whilst many of the other [Jewish physicians] regard it as a coolant. According to sh-r-k [Caraka] it is warming.’50 Moving among ruling circles as al-Bīrūnī did, allowed him also to know about the role halīlaj had as a stately gift. In his entry on halīlaj, al-Bīrūnī recounts: When the caliph Ma’ mūn ‘was in Khurāsān after the conquest of Kābul, the king of that country embraced Islām and submitted himself (to the suzerainty of the caliph). When the governor of the caliph accompanied by an officer of the postal department went there, the king gave (the representative) scabrous chebulic myrobalans to be presented to the Caliph.’51 By the time we come to thirteenth-century Central Asia, it is no surprise that we not only find the Arabized version of the Sanskrit, but that it is also explained. As al-Samarqandī, who lived and worked in Herat and died in 1222, explains in his Kitāb al-qarābādhīn ʻala tartīb al-ʻilal (Book of the Medical Formulary on Compounding for Diseases): iṭrifl, ‘is arabized from the Indian language in which it applies to Kabul, belleric, and emblic myrobalans’.52

Persian-Tocharian-Chinese The central role which Persian culture exerted on the lore of the myrobalans, was also evident in China, where in spite of their Indic origins and strong roots in Buddhist literature, myrobalans were known to arrive in China from Persia and not from India.53 This link manifests itself linguistically too: he li le, the Chinese term for Terminalia chebula is derived from the Middle Persian halīlag rather than the Sanskrit harītāki. The three classical myrobalans of India, collectively called triphalā (the ‘Three Fruits’ in Sanskrit), were known in Chinese as the ‘Three Fruits’ or as the ‘Three raks’ – rak (transliterated in Chinese as ‘leʼ) being the final syllable of their names in Tocharian.54 Indeed we also find an abundance of myrobalan recipes in a bilingual SanskritTocharian version of the Yogaśataka, a text of medical recipes, originally written in Sanskrit, which was also translated into Tibetan and is included in the Tibetan Tanjur.55

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The trade trail: Myrobalans in the Genizah Of all the many groundbreaking aspects of Genizah research, it was the India aspect that this cache had revealed that got Goitein, the Genizah pioneer researcher, ‘electrified’, as he put it. The realization of its significance for understanding the early India trade came following his reconstruction of a legal dossier against a merchant who traded with India and lost all goods entrusted to him by other merchants when his ship was wrecked.56 As Goitein recounts on the instigation of his lifetime fascination with the India material: The India trade was the backbone of medieval international economy. America was discovered because Columbus was seeking a direct route to India. But no documents about the subject had been known thus far in any language prior the Portuguese.57

From the end of the tenth century, the rise of the Fatimids in Egypt brought about major shifts in political, religious and artistic traditions, as the longdistance trade shifted away from Baghdad and Damascus to Aden and Fustat.58 As reflected by the map of the Indus River, along with the detailed itinerary which accompanies it in the Egyptian eleventh-century Book of Curiosities (Figure 0.3) during this period there were religious, political and economic links between Egypt and Sind.59 The Genizah trade documents demonstrate the extensive trade links between India and Egypt, going via Aden in Yemen, through the port of Ghadhab, and onwards to Fustat. Fustat became the node of commerce, linking the Indian Ocean trade (Figure 3.1) with the Mediterranean one. In the words of al-Muqaddasī, the tenth-century Jerusalemite traveller/ geographer: Al-Fustat is a metropolis in every sense of the word … It is situated midway between the Occident and the main country of the Arabs … it has effaced Baghdad and is the glory of Islam and the centre of the world’s commerce. The City of Peace [Baghdad] cannot compare with it in greatness. It is the treasurehouse of the West and the Emporium of the East.60

Jews were involved in this Eurasian trade from very early times.61 Trade between the Near and Middle East and Asia became particularly lucrative and common among Jews already in the eighth to tenth centuries, leading Rabbi Sa’adiah Ga’on (882–942), head of the Jewish academy in Sura (Babylonia), to comment in his Book of Beliefs and Opinions that only fools believe that all those who go to India become rich.62

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Figure 3.1  Arab ship on the Indian Ocean, BnF Ms Arabe 5847, fol. 61r. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

The picture of the Indic materia medica trade of the eleventh to twelfth centuries has been uncovered in Genizah documents through different types of sources: letters from traders, lawsuits, prescriptions, medical texts and lists of books put on auction.63 Goitein’s lifelong work on this material, not only revolutionized ideas on trans-continental trade of the time, but has also been

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crucial for understanding Middle Eastern and European trade and usage of Indic materia medica of this period. Materia medica and spices were the most important imports from India: out of seventy-seven items which appear in the India related documents in the Genizah, thirty-six are spices, aromatics, medicinal herbs and dyeing and varnishing plants.64 This group outranks all the others not only in number but also in frequency of occurrence and in value. As Goitein and Friedman explain, this prominence was partly due to the fact that the professions of perfumer, druggist, apothecary and dyer were extremely popular among the Jews in the countries of Islam.65 This material is important not only for the history of trade per se but also as it reveals implications for the development of the medical profession in Egypt at this time. Furthermore, Goitein suggested that the efflorescence of the trade with India and the Far East probably contributed to the popularity of the medical professions among the Jews at this period.66 The period covered by the Genizah documents reflects a flourishing of the medical profession among the Jewish population. The documents show that there was at least one Jewish doctor, often more than one, in many small towns  of Egypt in this period. Many of the Fatimid rulers had Jewish physicians, and these court physicians were often leaders of the Jewish community too. The  most famous of these is of course, Maimonides, to whom we shall soon return. The prescriptions of the Genizah indicate that people consulted physicians even for minor problems, like constipation. And it was not only the rich who were able to seek medical advice – there are Genizah documents which show that often people paid for medical advice with their last Dirhams. The Genizah also reflects movement of knowledge and expertise at the time: a physician from Egypt could practise his art in Byzantium. Book lists of libraries of doctors put on auction also show us the speed at which knowledge travelled across the Mediterranean: a physician’s library auctioned on March 7 1223, comprised works by the Spanish Muslim Ibn Rushd (Averroes), who died only a short time earlier, in 1198.67 Amongst the Indic materia medica, myrobalans are the most frequent substances mentioned in the medical prescriptions of the Cairo Genizah.68 From Egypt myrobalans were then exported to Sicily and Qayrawan (North Africa).69 Evidence from Sicily allows us to follow the further routes of myrobalans into Europe: embelic myrobalan, for example, is attested in the twelfth century Cartolare (Car 154.6) of the Genovese merchant Giovanni Scriba as being imported into Palermo.70

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A trans-continental shopping list The Genizah material reflects the importance of myrobalans as a transcontinental commodity. Thus, for example, we find myrobalan in a twelfthcentury memorandum for sales and purchases in Egypt sent by a well-to-do Jewish Yemenite merchant from Aden.71 The shipment is sent by boat from Aden to ‘Aydhāb, from where it travels overland to Fustat. This memorandum is a kind of intercontinental shopping list of the twelfth century, requested most likely for the occasion of a wedding. There is no involvement of money here, only the exchange of goods: in return for the long list of luxury goods from all over the Mediterranean, the Yemenite merchant is sending some goods to cover the costs. These goods are mostly embelic myrobalans (A: amlaj) and Kabuli myrobalan (A: halīlaj)72 – which are to pay for the bulk of the purchase he is ordering from Egypt.73 The Genizah material reveals business worlds that span all the way from India to Spain, such as the spread of the business world of twelfth-century Halfon Ha’Levi bar-Netan’el, one of the greatest Jewish merchants involved with the India trade.74 Halfon, it should be noted, was not only known as a great trader but also as a very learned man in a number of fields, medicine among them.75 The Genizah documents reveal the key role of myrobalans beyond the Indian Ocean trade. The network of Jewish traders active in this trade was also prominent in European trading spots – primarily in Sicily and Spain – where myrobalans appear as easily transportable goods, and used as a form of payment, sometimes as a part of monthly wages.76 The Halfon letter exchange gives us a sense of the abundance of Asian goods, many of them materia medica and spices, traded in Fustat. Trading in myrobalans was a risky business, as prices fluctuated enormously. In a letter written by Abu Zikri Cohen in Fustat on 9 January 1133 to Halfon, who is in Aden (Yemen), we learn much about which Asian goods were traded in Egypt at the time. These include musk, lac, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, camphor, turmeric, nard, galangal and cinnamon. But the trade in these, Abu Zikri complains, is not going very well, as ‘trade in the land is frozen, as hardly anyone from the Maghreb or Rum [i.e. Byzantium] has arrived this year’.77 With trade frozen, Abu Zikri suggests, ‘buy whatever God directs you towards, and go home’.78 Abu Zikri believes that Halfon, an experienced trans-continental trader does not need advice, ‘and you do not need me to tell you what to buy, as you know the place well’.79 Yet, Abu Zikri does make a point of recommending myrobalans: ‘And make an effort to obtain some shir amlaj, as it is precious.

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And the Indian type is worth 20 for 100 Mann80 … and the yellow amlaj – for seven for a kintar (100 rutals)’.81 The extent to which prices of myrobalan fluctuated in Egypt can also be gleaned from an interesting mention in the eleventh-century Egyptian guide to the universe, the Book of Curiosities.82 This extraordinary text has two parts: one dealing with the heavens, and one dealing with the world. Its discussion of the heavens includes a description of a nasty comet and its effects: ‘Its appearance indicates a widespread evil, soaring prices, rotting of fruits, and the destruction of lowly people … ’. The utter chaos which it creates will cause ‘men and women to fall in love … the demise of cattle’ and also: ‘Minerals and medicaments, such as the myrobalans and the like, will become expensive.’83 In another letter sent to Halfon from Izhak Ben-Baruch in Almaria, Spain, amlaj is revealed as a high value, easily transportable good.84 The letter discusses the arrival of funds from North Africa, which the author of the letter was due to pass on to the Rabbi of Granada. The Rabbi of Granada was then due to pass the funds on to the well-known author and poet, Rabbi Yehuda Ha’Levi. Ben-Baruch reports that he offered his amlaj in an auction and sold half a rutal for half a mitkal. Apparently, he possessed more that he was going to sell, but as he received a letter from Halfon which specified that the amlaj should be sold for three time as much, he kept the rest and did not sell it.85 More data on the Eurasian trade in myrobalans has also come from archaeological evidence recently excavated at the ancient Red Sea port of Quseir al-Qadim, one of the key ports of the ancient and medieval Indian Ocean trade.86 Excavations have revealed that belleric myrobalan, along with the two other myrobalans – embelic and black – was traded through these Red Sea ports during the medieval period (eleventh to thirteenth centuries and fourteenth to fifteenth centuries).87 It was not only the medical uses that made myrobalans such popular Eurasian commodities at this time. The fruits of myrobalan were used for ink production, dyeing and tanning, both of paper and of textiles,88 a use of myrobalan which had a long history in Asia.89 This usage needs to be seen against the backdrop of this period’s transmission of Asian bookmaking knowledge and the increased need to investigate which inks suit the new Asian medium that was moving west and gaining much popularity: paper.90 Ink which was good for vellum or papyrus was not always as good for paper. Hence we find myrobalans featuring in one of the earliest descriptions in Arabic of paper and ink-making, in a text composed by al-Muʻizz ibn Bādīs c. 1025 CE. His discussion of soot black inks includes instructions for the preparation of Chinese, Indian and Persian inks.

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Maimonides and the India trade One of the most dramatic documents of the Genizah is a letter written by David, the merchant brother of Maimonides, sent to the latter shortly before David drowned in the Indian Ocean.91 In this letter David describes how he survived the danger-filled journey from the Nile port of Qūṣ to the Red Sea port of ‘Aydhāb, en route to India. But having miraculously made it to ‘Aydhāb, Maimonides’ brother realized that ‘no imports had come here … at all’ and that there was ‘nothing to buy except indigo’. He hence decided to ‘embark on a sea voyage’. Moving on to describe the shipwrecks that some of the brothers’ acquaintances have endured on their way to India, he then besieges his brother, ‘despite all of this, do not [worry]. He who has saved me from the desert with its … will save me while on sea … ’, explaining: ‘I am doing all of this out of my continuous efforts for your material well-being, although you have never imposed on me anything of the kind.’92 Shortly after this letter was sent, David met his death in a shipwreck en route to India. This tragedy plunged Maimonides into both (presumably interrelated) emotional and financial distress.93 In a letter written c. 1170, about eight years after his brother David drowned in the Indian Ocean, Maimonides wrote, ‘The greatest misfortune that has befallen me during my entire life – worse than anything else – was the demise of the saint, (may his) m(emory) be b(lessed), who drowned in the Indian sea, carrying much money belonging to me, to him, and to others, and left with me a little daughter and a widow.’94 The emotional, financial and physical are clearly connected in Maimonides’ view, as he goes on to explain: ‘On the day I received that terrible news I fell ill and remained in bed for about a year, suffering from a sore boil, fever, and depression, and was almost given up.’ As Maimonides clearly states, the loss was not only emotional but also financial: About eight years have since passed, but I am still mourning and unable to accept consolation. And how should I console myself? He grew up on my knees, he was my brother, he was my student; he traded on the markets, and earned, and I could safely sit at home.95

Maimonides’ resort to the practice of medicine at the royal court in Cairo, as well as in Fustat, appears to have been a result of the brothers’ business consortium.96 Soon Maimonides’ life did indeed become excessively busy, and the difficulty of finding time for scholarship was great, as he testifies.97 Genizah documents show that Maimonides continued to invest in the India trade with the help of other traders after his brother perished. In a letter dated 21 October 1191, Maimonides wrote to his disciple Joseph b. Judah in Aleppo, Syria: ‘And when Ibn al-Mashshāṭ arrives from India (with our coreligionists), I

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shall settle the account with him as you mentioned’.98 Goitein and Friedman have reconstructed the history of this distinguished family, who were known both for their contacts with the India trade and for their contacts with Maimonides and his family. Members of the family were owners of a sugar factory, (perfumers and apothecaries), merchants, philanthropists, scholars and judges.99 Was Maimonides’ own involvement with the India trade part of the reason he prescribed such abundance of Indic materia medica? While it is difficult to give a definitive answer to this question, the Genizah material allows us to see that trade, pharmaceutics and the medical profession were intertwined, as Goitein has pointed out. What would have been Maimonides’ sources of knowledge on Indic materia medica? Happily, the Genizah material also allows us to reconstruct something of a ‘medical library’, which can help in answering this question. When a physician died without leaving a relative who had a claim on, or an interest in his library, it was sold at a public auction. We are lucky enough to have a number of Genizah documents which detail such sales. Normally a physician’s library would include both Hebrew and Arabic books, and the auctions would take place at two different events. In most cases it is only the Hebrew book lists which survived, as the Arabic lists would be mostly written in Arabic characters and therefore were not put in the Genizah. There are, however, a number of cases where we have the Arabic lists as well.100 The book lists give a sense of the core texts which were used by physicians in Fustat at the time: Ibn Sīnā, Galen, Hippocrates and al-Rāzī are the most frequent. But significantly, we also find the Paradise of Wisdom with its extensive input from Indian medical knowledge discussed above. We have, for example, one Genizah fragment which is an extract from it.101 Another Genizah document provides evidence that the Paradise of Wisdom was in circulation among physicians of the time: in a list of books left by someone with the title of al-Shaykh al-Ḥakīm whose name is unclear, al-Ṭabarī’s Paradise of Wisdom is mentioned alongside Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, Ibn Sīnā’s Kitāb al-ishārāt, Māsarjawaih, Ibn al-Jazzār, and al-Rāzī’s Kitāb al-Ḥāwī.102 Excerpts from the Paradise of Wisdom are also found quoted along with al-Rāzī and Galen in two other Genizah documents.103

The tale trail: Construction of a super-drug From its earliest mentions in its Indic context, myrobalan has been constructed as a wonder drug. Continuing slightly east on the Northern Silk Road from the area

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where the Barmaks came from, we arrive at Kucha, where the Bower Manuscript was found (see Chapter 2). The Bower Manuscript contains an early version of a narrative which is later found in a variety of other Sanskrit and Tibetan texts: Having heard the words of the Aśvin pair, Brahman spoke as follows: (921) ‘The points which you have asked me, I shall severally explain to you, one after the other, so that you may fully understand them. (922) There fell a drop on the earth, when Śakra (i.e. Indra) drank the ambrosia; thence that most excellent of medicinal plants, the chebulic myrobalan, took its origin’.104

This narrative and the sections that precede and follow it, do not adhere to the divide constructed by Western scholarship between ‘magical’ and ‘rational’ healing. The effectiveness of myrobalans is established in both realms at the same time: myrobalan originated from Indra’s ambrosia and is effective because it encompasses five tastes, and if you, ‘let a man eat two chebulic myrobalans well mixed with an equal quantity of molasses every day, he will then overcome every disease, and reach a thousand years’.105 This legendary healing power which is explained rationally through the analysis of its five tastes, was further developed in Tibetan sources, where myrobalans (T: a-ru-ra) are said to encapsulate all six tastes according to which Indo-Tibetan materia medica are classified. Hence, we find myrobalans appear in the opening scene of the Tibetan Gyushi (Four Tantras), the twelfth-century locus classicus of Tibetan medicine. Here, in the description of Tanaduk (literally: beautiful to behold), the ultimate realm of healing, where the scene of teaching the Tibetan Gyushi is said to have taken place, we find the realms of superpotent materia medica. In the south, one finds super-heating materia medica for treating diseases which are of a cold nature. In the north, on the Snow Mountain, the super-cooling drugs, which can cure illnesses of a cold nature. In the east: lies a mountain called Fragrant which is covered with a forest of a-ru-ra. The roots, trunks, branches, bark, leaves, flowers and fruits cure disorders of bone, muscle, ligaments, skin, vessels, sense organs and vital organs respectively. At the top of these trees ripen five kinds of a-ru-ra, which are fully enriched with the six tastes, eight potencies, three post-digestive tastes and seventeen qualities that cures all kinds of disorders. The medicine which grows there is fragrant, appealing and beautiful. Wherever their fragrance permeates, the four hundred and four disorders will not arise.106

Tibetan pharmacology classifies all materia medica according to six tastes, eight potencies, three post-digestive tastes and seventeen qualities. A-ru-ra is said to be endowed with them all, and therefore is a panacea, a cure-all.

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The mythic status of myrobalans is also found further west – in Persia. In a chapter dedicated to medicine in the third book of the Dēnkard, a tenth-century Pahlavi summary of knowledge of the Mazdean religion, we find: The number of species of remedies deriving from different species of plants is the same as the number of illnesses, and they come from the earth, so it is said. They have particular powers. They had been remedies in a previous time, and now, established as such, they continue to be remedies. Such is the myrobalan of Kābul, which used to be a terrible poison, and now, mixed with another remedy, is a good medicine, and later completely released from its poisonous aspect, it becomes a food for humans and animals, so it is said. In the same way, aconite (bēš) and the balādur nut and others become more and more powerful and effective for healing, finally attaining the highest efficacy in curing the body, so it is said.107

In the hands of the Medicine Buddha Myrobalan (S: harītakī) also features as the ultimate medicine in many Buddhist texts, representing blessings from unseen realms. Myrobalan is said to have been given as a healing fruit by the two bodhisattva brothers of healing in their act of devotion as depicted in the Sūtra on the Contemplation of the Two Bodhisattvas, King of Healing and Supreme Healer.108 Myrobalans feature prominently in the textual, visual and ritual traditions of the figure known as Medicine Buddha, also known as Bhaiṣajyaguru. The figure of the Medicine Buddha appears to have originated in Central Asia or Kashmir in the third century CE, and was already important in China in the fourth century CE. The sutra devoted to him became popular in Central Asia around the seventh century,109 and he is revered in Tibet and East Asia till this day. Many sixth- and seventh-century manuscripts of the sutra devoted to the Medicine Buddha were found in Dunhuang. Bhaiṣajyaguru is also widely depicted visually. In the seated images of the Medicine Buddha throughout the Buddhist world, he is usually depicted holding a myrobalan fruit or plant (Figure 3.2). Such images feature prominently for example in the Dunhuang caves, where Bhaiṣajyaguru was depicted between the sixth and thirteenth centuries, and especially between the eighth and tenth centuries.110 In the iconographic representation of the Medicine Buddha in Tibet too, the Medicine Buddha usually holds a bowl of nectar in his right hand and the myrobalan plant or its fruit in the left hand.111

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Figure 3.2  Medicine Buddha holding a myrobalan fruit. © Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0).

In rituals associated with the Medicine Buddha, the plant came to represent the ultimate medicine. In one of the rituals in which the practitioners are called to visualize themselves as Medicine Buddha, for the purpose of invoking its healing force, they visualize themselves holding ‘the plant which eliminates the diseases and sufferings caused by the three poisons’.112 While the Chinese

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version of this description leaves the identification of the plant vague, the Tibetan commentary identifies the plant as a-ru-ra (myrobalan), calling it the ‘king among medicines’.113 In the Vinaya, the Buddhist canonical texts dealing with the rules of the monastics, it is said that the Buddha allowed the otherwise largely possessionless monks and nuns to carry with them five medicines (bhesajja) and seven additional groups of materia medica items, which the Buddha specifically allowed sick monks and nuns to consume before sunrise and after midday, that is, outside of the ordinary mealtimes for monks and nuns, the only time when they normally consumed ‘solid foods’. The fruits of the three myrobalans feature prominently among these ‘food-medicines’.114 Yijing (635–713), the Chinese monk who travelled from China to India via Sumatra, and spent sixteen years of intense study in India between 673 and 689, wrote, among other things, about the differences between Chinese and Indian medicine. Yijing notes that the medicinal herbs of the West (i.e. India) are not like those of China: ‘Those existing here do not exist there and vice versa; there is no commonality’.115 Moving on to describe Indic materia medica Yijing says: ‘In the West, there is chebulic myrobalan in abundance’.116 Overall, his account is very meticulous and down to earth, but Yijing too was swayed by myrobalan (harītakī), reporting that: ‘if you can manage to chew one piece of harītakī a day and swallow its juice, your body will not become ill until the end of your life’.117

The Hebrew Alexander Romance The magical nature of myrobalans and their association with India is found also in Hebrew versions of the Alexander Romance. The Alexander Romance holds a remarkable place in the global history of literary works: for nearly a millennium and a half it was read, adopted, translated and rewritten throughout the Europe, the Near East and Asia.118 In the earliest Alexander Romance extant in Hebrew, written by a Greek-speaking Jew from sometime before the eleventh century, in the context of Alexander describing the marvels of India in a letter he is supposedly writing to his teacher Aristotle, we find: After this I conquered the city of Kaspiakin; it is a city in the kingdom of Hodu [India]. The inhabitants of the land said to me: ‘We can show you wonder and wisdom befitting your honour; come and see for yourself trees speaking like men’. They led me to a certain garden, and there was sun and moon; I saw there

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The magical lore associated with myrobalans is also found in the Hebrew Book of Asaf, where alongside recipes for myrobalans which we would categorize as ‘medical’ for ailments like fevers, ailments of the liver, spleen and stomach, mouth and teeth, or for cleaning the intestines, we also find a more ‘magical’ use: If a person is suffering from paralysis – you should lock him in a house in the dark, and put a myrobalan in his mouth on the right side, and a quadrangular nut on the left side; and he should hold a mirror and would look at it all day, for up till eight or ten days …120

The making of a Eurasian panacea: Forgetting chemistry Following art historian James Elkins, Tim Ingold has proposed that in order to understand the meaning of materials we need to take a ‘short course in forgetting chemistry’: The chemist thinks of matter in terms of its invariant atomic or molecular constitution. For the alchemist, by contrast, a material is known not by what it is but by what it does, specifically when mixed with other materials, treated in particular ways, or placed in particular situations.121

Drawing inspiration from an influential essay by Martin Heidegger, entitled ‘The Thing’,122 Ingold has suggested we ought to distinguish between object and thing.123 As Ingold explains, for Heidegger, every thing, is ‘a gathering of materials in movement – a particular knotting together of the matter-flow’.124 Moving away from the ‘objectness’ of things, to observing the ‘material flows and formative processes wherein they come into being’,125 Ingold has argued that it is pointless to distinguish between ‘properties’ and ‘qualities’ of materials, between the scientifically measurable and the subjective qualities, the ideas in people’s heads which they project onto the material in question.126 Maimonides, too, commented on this issue. Although an eminent rationalist, Maimonides was in favour of using remedies even when there is

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no pharmacological explanation of why they work. In cases like these, such remedies should be used, Maimonides says, since ‘experience has shown them to be valid even if reasoning does not require them’.127 In the Genizah prescriptions myrobalans appear as very useful drugs: they are used for various eye problems, migraines, a variety of stomach and digestion issues, for hallucinations and as an aphrodisiac.128 In most cases, however, they are prescribed for unknown indications.129 They also appear as good for everything – a panacea, a cure-all. Several of the Genizah prescriptions calling for myrobalans were penned by Maimonides himself. Indeed, Maimonides appears to think very highly of them. In his Regimen of Health (Fī tadbīr al-ṣiḥḥa), a treatise written for the son of Saladin, Maimonides recommends the ‘great iṭrīfal’, an Arabized version of the Sanskrit triphala, as an effective prophylactic.130 Made from the three myrobalans, along with other substances coming from India: cardamons, cloves, cinnamon, galangal, long peppers, ginger, nard – another manuscript has musk too – Maimonides says that it will ‘improve the three digestions, strengthen all the members in general and the heart and the stomach in particular. It will retard aging, dissolve the phlegm, prevent the vapors from ascending to the brain, strengthen all the senses and remove their lassitude, aid coitus, and dilate the soul’.131 How can we make sense of the construction of myrobalans as a panacea in the Genizah material? Did its reputation as a magical cure-all travel with the substance? It is possible that some of its special reputation may have travelled with Sufism. A somewhat later Genizah text, a thirteenth-century medical text replete with Sufi stories and psychoactive pharmaceuticals, demonstrates that chebulic myrobalan was considered a ‘soul cheerer’, which along with other substances can ‘cure the ailments of the heart’.132 This attribution appears as part of a text known as The Soul-Cheerer (Mufarriḥ al-nafs) by Badr al-Dīn Muẓaffar, Chief Medical Officer of the Ayyūbids in Damascus. Anthropology and the emerging field of placebo studies have taught us that there is more to a medicine than its active ingredients.133 It appears that it was not only the pharmacological knowledge about the myrobalans which travelled but also their magical lore. Was it their origin from India? Was it trader-induced PR? Did the Buddhist lore of myrobalans trickle deeper and further than the westernmost confines of medieval Buddhism of Iranian peoples? Should you drop this book and just run off to get some? (Myrobalans and triphala are widely available in health food shops and on the internet.)

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If the lines of materials and bodily movements create what Ingold has termed ‘meshwork’,134 how much more so in the case of materia medica – and especially of the extraordinary kind? Ingold’s work suggests that not only can we not pin any of these separate issues down, but that we should not even bother trying. What myrobalans and substances like it teach us is that their meshworked histories help us to observe them as things, reminding us that the complex ways in which ideas in people’s heads are projected onto materials, do matter.

4

Tibetan moxa-cautery from Dunhuang: Practices and images on the move

Moxibustion is a form of therapeutic practice which involves the use of different tools and substances to heat the body in various locations in order to treat and prevent illnesses. Although it is mostly associated with Chinese, Tibetan, Korean, Japanese and Mongolian medical systems, the practice of heating specific locations of the body to treat various ailments, through the use of heated-up iron, heated stones, or burning mugwort, were common throughout Eurasia. Moxa-cautery in both Tibet and China involved the burning of various qualities of mugwort (artemisia vulgaris, T: tshar bong) on the therapeutic location. In Tibetan cultural spheres, moxibustion has had a long history of being a quick and easy type of therapy, which can be performed at the household level, an aspect of Tibetan moxibustion which is attested to from the earliest extant Tibetan moxibustion manuscripts from Dunhuang, dating from the ninth to tenth centuries, till present-day testimonials.1 Contemporaneous evidence to that of Dunhuang shows that moxa-cautery was also practised further west, in Khorasan and Persia. In the ninth-century work of Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) we are told of a well-known Turkic physician from Khorasan who treated many illnesses – such as fever, meningitis, dropsy, paralysis – by means of cauterization.2 The Dēnkard, a tenth-century Pahlavi summary of knowledge from the Mazdean religion, also appears to allude to moxibustion.3 A Persian proverb, recorded in the tenth century by al-Karkhī (d. c. 956) reflects the prevalence of cautery in Persian lands at that time: ‘Not every smoke comes from cooking, often it is the smoke of cauterising.’4 Ibn-Sīnā (980–1037) discusses cauterization for preventing the spread of putrefaction; for strengthening a member which has become cold in temperament; for dispersing putrefactive matter and for stopping haemorrhage.5 Discussing different methods and instruments for cauterization, Ibn-Sīnā maintained that cauterizing instruments should be made of gold, if possible.6 The extensive

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twelfth-century Persian encyclopaedia of medical knowledge, the Ẕakhīra-i Khwarazmshāhī, includes a long section on cauterization, with twelve chapters dealing with different methods and suitable locations for treatment. This section appears in Book 7, devoted to diseases which are not specific to parts of the body.7 The author, Ismāʻīl Jurjānī discusses the benefits of cauterization especially for disorders such as chronic eye inflammation, asthma, leprosy, spleen disease, dropsy, sciatica and hernia.8 In early fourteenth-century Damascus, in a treatise by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīya, within a classification of physicians into specialities, a cauterizer (A: kawwā’) appears as one of the eight specialities.9 In Europe, the practice of cauterization had been a disputed, though never wholly abandoned, method of therapy. In ancient Greece cauterization was recommended against recurrent headaches. The texts dealing with cauterization which are preserved in the Hippocratic corpus, however, are very fragmentary, and it is impossible to form any coherent concept of the underlying principles which inform the practice.10 It was also suggested that a series of twelve cauterizations at different points of the body will stop the flow of harmful bile and phlegm around the body. Some doctors also used cauterization for eye problems and to help fix a dislocated shoulder.11 Cautery regained its authority in late medieval Europe following translations of Arabic medical texts.12 In the seventeenth century, moxibustion was introduced to Europe from Japan and Indonesia.13 Hermann Busschof, a Dutch minister in Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia), having found no resolve in western medicine to treat his gout, was horrified at first, but then amazed at the wonders of moxibustion, which was performed on him by a local ‘Indian doctress’, as he referred to her.14 Busschof then wrote a treatise on moxibustion and sent it to Utrecht, sparking a lively debate in Europe about moxibustion.15 Soon after, more information on moxibustion arrived from Japan from the Dutchman Ten Rhine.16 Some European physicians regarded this Asian knowledge as a reappearance of an ancient Mediterranean therapy.17 What appears to have happened, rather, is that these Asian traditions were confounded with the old Greek method which was quite different.18 The co-existence of moxa-cautery across Eurasia raises questions regarding similarities. These similarities in turn raise questions about possible connections and transmissions. How do we explain the existence of this practice in so many different places in the world? The prevalent use of cautery throughout Eurasia also raises the question of the relationships between practice and theory: to what extent do similar practices in different cultural contexts reflect transfers

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of knowledge? Which bits of medical knowledge actually travelled? Did medical theories travel with medical practice? While it is clear that Graeco-Arab cauterization and moxibustion from China, Tibet and Japan diverge in their medical doctrine and the herbs and devices used to perform it, of the anatomic locations of its application at least one study has suggested some possible early diffusion. Grmek, who conducted a comparative study of cauterization, has argued that moxibustion originated in China, from where it passed on to Babylonia and then to Egypt, where it underwent some modifications.19 Although we still cannot say much about the very early history of moxa-cautery and its possible diffusion, the Dunhuang material does provide an important missing piece of the history of Eurasian moxibustion in medieval times. This chapter focuses on the Tibetan moxibustion manuscripts from Dunhuang and contextualizes them within other contemporary moxa-cautery traditions as manifested in Dunhuang and Turfan. The Tibetan manuscripts reveal acquaintance with other moxa-cautery traditions of the time, thus allowing us to uncover possible connections and transmissions between Central, East and West Asian knowledge.

Tibetan moxibustion from Dunhuang Three of the Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang, dating from the ninth to tenth centuries – Pelliot tibétain 127, Pelliot tibétain 1058, Pelliot tibétain 1044 – focus on moxa-cautery. Of these, two are texts and one (PT 1058) is an illustration (Figure 4.1). Moxa-cautery is mentioned as a possible treatment in the other Tibetan medical manuscripts (IOL Tib J 1246, PT 1057, IOL Tib J 756) as well. Moxa-cautery is also mentioned in two of the horse treatment manuscripts from Dunhuang, which have been studied by AnneMarie Blondeau (PT 1062 and PT 1064).20 Pelliot tibétain 127 and Pelliot tibétain 1044 are practical manuals and contain no theory, although knowledge of some medical theory is implied in them. This characterizes the horse treatment texts as well. Although PT 127 and PT 1044 are focused on moxibustion, they also contain references to other practices such as: bloodletting;21 fumigation;22 administering medicines23 and prescribing specific foods.24 The medical text of PT 127 is but one text in the same manuscript, the other texts are calendrical and divination texts. Their positioning in the same manuscript is significant, illustrating the interdependence of moxibustion and various time reckoning and divination practices.

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The moxibustion text of PT 127 consists of 107 lines. The first ninety-two lines are arranged in forty-six sections, all structured in the same way: each section begins with the location where the moxas are to be placed, the number of moxas to be burned on that location, and a list of symptoms of the illness to be treated. The text is ordered according to locations – vertebrae points together, leg and feet points together, head points etc. The rest of this text (lines 171–182), contains the same type of information, but with no clear order. This type of structure also characterizes the veterinary material.25 In China moxibustion was practised predominantly by burning mugwort, though excavated manuscripts and other archaeological evidence from China from the late Warring States and early imperial times (fourth to first centuries BCE) testify to the usages of many tools and substances for cauterizing and warming the body as part of treating illness.26 The Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang do not describe the actual procedure of moxibustion and do not specify what is to be burnt or how. This omission perhaps suggests the lack of need to state the obvious. The Tibetan veterinary texts from Dunhuang, on the other hand, specify that cauterizations can be performed with instruments (thur ma) or with stones (rdo).27 At the time of the Tibetan rule in Dunhuang, when Buddhism was booming, monks played a crucial role in medical practice.28 But unlike the later Tibetan medicine as formalized in the Four Tantras (Gyushi), the Tibetan moxa-cautery manuscripts do not contain a direct link to Buddhism. Being manuals, rather than treatises, they are practical texts, and contain no theory, and no direct reference to Buddhism. A product of their time and place, though, they do reflect some medical theory as well as Buddhist notions. One Buddhist notion is that of the 101 illnesses.29 The notion of 101 illnesses, as well as its multiple of 404 illnesses, is well known in Buddhist Mahāyāna literature.30 There are a number of variants of the explanations of how one moves from 101 to 404. In the two Chinese versions of the Yogācārabhūmi there are two different explanations for this number: one claims that there are 101 illnesses for each doṣa and 101 for combination of doṣas. The other provides a focus on elements and states that there are 101 illnesses for each of the four elements – water, fire, wind and earth.31 This idea also appears in the early Tibetan medical text, the Yellow-Covered Volume of the Biji (Bi ci’i Pu ti Kha ser), which states that there are 404 illnesses, of which only 101 can be cured by physicians.32 This is also the number of illnesses referred to by the Gyushi, where we find for example the following:

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These precious gems cure 404 diseases resulting from wind disease, bile disease, phlegm disease, diseases of combination of two nyes pas and diseases of combination of three nyes pas.33

Transmissions and connections The Tibetan moxa-cautery texts from Dunhuang contain two significant references to foreign locations as sources of knowledge: a land of an Indian king and the Turks. The Dunhuang manuscript PT 1044 ends with something akin to a colophon, in which we find a curious statement. After describing in very practical, userfriendly terms, where to burn how many moxas for the very many symptoms described: from rumbling intestines, enlarged spleen, via yellow eyes, accumulation of yellow water in the nose, teeth affected by wind, inability to eat, speech impediment and deafness, to gynaecological symptoms such as disorders of the womb, post-partum fever and constant menstrual bleeding; a constant erection and urine retention as well as symptoms occurring in children, the text concludes: ‘This type of method comes from a land of the/ an Indian king’.34 The moxa-cautery practices which are described in PT 1044 – as in PT 127 – are not known, however, to have been used in classical Indian medicine. Indian cauterization practices are delineated, for example, in the chapter devoted to cauterization in the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya saṃhitā. Although the Tibetan term for moxa-cautery – me bsta’ – was used in the eleventh century by the translators of the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya saṃhitā to delineate the Sanskrit term for cauterization (agnikarman) in Tibetan,35 Indian cauterization practices are fundamentally different from the moxa-cautery practices found in PT 1044. The Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya saṃhitā includes a brief discussion of two types of burning: one is by placing an alkaline paste, for treating conditions like haemorrhoids or diseases of the eyelids, and the second is thermal cautery, used on the skin, muscles, veins, tendons, joints and bones, for treating ‘diseases like black mole, weakness of body parts, headache, adhimañtha (a disease of the eye), warts, cysts etc. burning of the skin should be done either with a lighted wick, tooth of a cow, rock crystal, arrowhead or others (such as pippalī, excreta of a goat, iron-rod, piece of bangles)’.36 Burning is also used for treating haemorrhoids, rectal fistula, tumours, various types of ulcers, illness of the eyelids, bleeding, blue mole or surgical wounds.

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With the practices described in the Tibetan moxibustion texts from Dunhuang not known to have come from India, how should we read this reference to a ‘land of the/an Indian king?’ The next line in the colophon provides an intriguing clue. It explains that this technique derives from Ha-ta-na-bye, a Tibetan transliteration of the old Khotanese name hvatana, referring to Khotan. This oasis kingdom on the southern branch of the Silk Road, was a major centre of Buddhist learning in the first millennium. Chinese and Tibetan accounts of the foundation of Khotan associate it with the son and ministers of Emperor Aśoka – hence ‘the Indian king’. The view of Khotan as an Indian colony endured, even until the tenth century when its rulers continued to bear Indian names.37 The population of Khotan was ethnically mixed, as was its culture, bringing together Indian, Chinese and Iranian elements.38 We can also trace Tibetan cultural input, primarily as a result of Tibetan rule of Khotan from the late eighth century till mid-ninth century. During the tenth century the contacts between the Chinese, Khotanese and Uighurs intensified as a result of marriage alliances.39 An instructive description of Khotan’s multicultural nature appears in the Tibetan History of Khotan (Li yul lung bstan pa), dating to the ninth or tenth century: Li (Khotan) being a country where Indians and Chinese met, the common language agrees with neither Indian nor China. The letters agree one by one with India. The customs of the people agree for the most part with China. The religious customs and the religious language agree for the most part with India.40

Khotanese manuscripts were found by Aurel Stein in Dunhuang and in the Khotan area. The language, an Iranian language contemporary with Middle Persian and Sogdian, written in Indian Brāhmī script, with an extensive vocabulary borrowed from Sanskrit, was unknown when Stein revealed these findings. Following Stein’s discoveries it was deciphered primarily by Hoernle. The Khotanese manuscripts and fragments date from the fifth to the tenth centuries, and they are mostly Buddhist texts. The Khotanese Buddhist texts include both translations from known texts (mostly from Sanskrit) as well as some local compositions.41 With a Buddhist culture based mostly on Sanskrit sources, it is not surprising that Khotanese medical texts predominantly reflect links with Ayurveda: these texts include a Khotanese version of Ravigupta’s Siddhasāra42 and the so-called Jivaka Pustaka, the title given by Harold Walter Bailey to a seventy-three folio long Khotanese and Sanskrit bilingual text.43 The text is incomplete and contains no colophon.44

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Some of the Khotanese medical texts correspond to the testimony of the Tibetan History of Khotan text quoted above, stating that the ‘customs of the people agree for the most part with China’. These are yet to be studied properly, but they include, for example, a number of fragments from the Crosby Collection which mention needles and cauterization.45 There are also a number of Khotanese texts within the sphere of popular ritual medicine, such as omen texts and divination texts based on the 12-year cycle, which appear to bear a resemblance to Chinese and Tibetan texts, some also including Chinese parallel text.46 Pelliot tibétain 127 too, in addition to its moxibustion text, includes a divination text using the 12-year cycle.47 All this explains how this text, said to be from the ‘land of a/the Indian king’ could be a Tibetan adaptation of a Khotanese medical text which preserved Chinese notions – or at least that this is how its author could have perceived it.

‘The Turkic method can also be used’ The Tibetan moxa-cautery texts from Dunhuang also reflect an acquaintance with Turkic medical knowledge. The mention of Turks (Dru gu) in the medical manuscripts refers to cauterization and possibly to bloodletting too, saying: The Turkic (Dru gu) method [using] iron for cautery (? sur phug) is also suitable.48

The designation ‘Turks’ includes a host of ethnic peoples and has a complicated history. In the Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts, the term drug gu refers either to ‘Turks’ in general or more specifically (particularly since the ninth century onwards), to Uighurs.49 During the period of our discussion here (ninth to tenth centuries), the designation ‘Turkic’ was used in reference to the Khazars (c. 650–965), a successor state that derived from the western Turkic empire, and who, by the tenth century had converted in large numbers to Judaism;50 and to Uighurs.51 For a long period of time the Turks achieved and maintained the political unification of a stretch of land which reached from the borders of China to those of Byzantium. They had an important role which is only beginning to be fully acknowledged in the exchange of knowledge between the Greek, Iranian, Indian, Chinese and Tibetan worlds.52 As evidenced in Uighur literature from Dunhuang and Turfan, Uighur culture during the period under discussion was very multicultural, synthesizing notions coming from the Indo-European context with Chinese, Iranian (mostly Sogdian) and Indian elements together with indigenous Turkic notions. This

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was due to both direct and indirect contacts with multiple cultures. There is also much evidence of significant Chinese influence: many of the Uighur royal family married Chinese princesses, and there is evidence of Chinese settlement in the Uighur Empire.53 The Uighurs also had an interest in Eastern Christianity. A Latin record states that in the eighth century (early 780s) ‘a Turkic king’ asked the Eastern Christian Patriarch Timothy I (728–823) ‘to set up an archbishop in his region’.54 Although primarily Manichaean, and then Buddhist, Christianity was also prevalent in the Uighur Kingdom in Turfan.55 In terms of science, the Uighurs of the Turfan area also had very developed science, particularly relating to time reckoning.56 During the Second Uighur Empire (744–840), Manichaeism was adopted as the state religion due to the strong influence of the Sogdians, resulting in ties with various Manichaean communities in Iran and beyond. The Uighurs also adopted Buddhism, along with its Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan sources. Chinese culture, including its cosmology, had a great influence on the Uighur kingdom. This syncretic and open civilization was to play an eminent role in Central Asia until its incorporation by the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century.57

Turkic medicine from Turfan and Dunhuang The medical manuscripts from Turfan and nearby sites come in a plethora of languages: Chinese, Tokharian, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Tibetan, Uighur and Syriac.58 Ancient Turkic medicine, as evidenced in the manuscripts found in the Turfan region, was multicultural.59 In addition to the profound influence of Indian medicine, there is also evidence of links with Syriac and Chinese medicine – and perhaps also Tibetan sources. As Rachmati has pointed out, there is an abundance of loanwords in the Uighur medical manuscripts, including in the works that appear to be ‘originally’ Uighur. Of those languages, the most prominent one is Sanskrit. The number of Sanskrit medical texts in the Turfan region among Sanskrit texts in general in that area, is relatively small: to date only twenty-one Sanskrit texts or fragments in the Turfan Collection have been identified as dealing with medicine. This is against the backdrop of around 7,000 Sanskrit texts from that collection, most of them Buddhist texts. Yet still, as Dieter Maue has explained, their influence has been very important. Since this medical literature was meant for practical usage, it was necessary to translate them into the local languages: Uighur and Tocharian.60 Hence, when considering Indian medical texts translated into Uighur, we find the

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proportion much more significant. Indeed, some of the Uighur medical texts are bilingual – they include their Sanskrit original. Another important point relevant here is the metallurgic reputation of the Turks. As has been pointed out by Denis Sinor, the Turks were famous for their iron implements from the fifth century onwards. When Xuanzang visited one of the rulers of the western Turks he noticed an iron bedstead in place of the usual wooden one. He found the object so unusual that he deemed it worthy of a mention in his travel account. If the reference in PT 127 quoted above indeed refers to both bloodletting and moxibustion, then in the context of moxibustion our Tibetan text would be alluding to both the more commonly used method at the period of time of discussion: the Chinese method of burning mugwort plant for heating as well as – what is alluded to as the ‘dru gu’ method – of using iron. In this method of cauterization, the iron is heated to a very high temperature and then brought near to the skin.

And China? In her studies of the Chinese moxa-cautery charts and texts from Dunhuang, Vivienne Lo has demonstrated that they form a distinctive popular moxibustion tradition within Chinese medicine.61 The Chinese moxa-cautery charts from Dunhuang reveal a much simpler and easily assimilated type of practice than that which is generally found in Chinese medical texts. Chinese moxa-cautery texts from Dunhuang describe treatments that bear no explicit relationship to the physiological concept of circulating qi through an integrated network of channels, to the pulse, to acupuncture or to pharmacological treatment.62 This distinct characteristic of the Dunhuang Chinese material is shared with the Tibetan moxa-cautery texts. As with the Chinese texts, the Tibetan ones can be described as ‘popular’ not in the sense of ‘folk’ contrasted with ‘learned’ but in the sense of easy to use/user-friendly texts. The Tibetan texts – like the Chinese ones – do not assume any previous knowledge and are easy to follow for any literate person. Furthermore, a comparison between the Tibetan and the Chinese material reveals striking similarities in form, content and context. Both the Tibetan and the Chinese texts are structured in a very similar way: they are divided into sections in which we find lists of symptoms, the location on which to apply moxa-cauteries and the number of moxas to be burnt. The categories

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of ailments which are to be treated by moxa-cautery are very similar. Both the Chinese and Tibetan material deal primarily with many wind (T: rlung, C: feng) related ailments; genito-urinary and reproductive disorders as well as digestive and abdominal illnesses. Some of the correspondences between the Chinese and Tibetan descriptions are almost literal. One of these, for example, is the description found in the entry for the second image of the Chinese ms. S6168 dealing with ‘wind in the face as if there are insects on the face’, bearing almost literal similarity to what we find in PT 1044: ‘[If] due to wind (rlung) illness swellings are forming on the face, and there is itching like a walking insect … ’.63 Several locations for moxa burning are recommended to treat these symptoms with one common location: one cun (C) / tshon (T) above the eyebrow. Another point of close similarity between the Chinese and Tibetan moxacautery texts is their relations with time reckoning and divination texts.64 The moxa-cautery texts on the verso of the Chinese P 2675 are found, just like the Tibetan PT 127, following several texts of divination. One important aspect in which the connections between time reckoning and moxa-cautery practices manifest, is the notion found both in the Chinese and Tibetan moxa-cautery texts of a vital force which flows around the body in accordance with the lunar cycle (C: renshen, T: brla/bla), and which determines various moxacautery prohibitions. This notion of a vital force travelling around the body in accordance with the lunar cycle, taking up lodging at knowable locations, was part of a shared Sino-Tibetan medical culture that was emerging in the cultural interactions around Dunhuang.65 Pelliot tibétain 1044 is the earliest extant Tibetan source to refer to such a cycle. As for the method of cauterization: The day of the month (tshes grangs) needs to be established and the location of the brla (bla) [needs to be] calculated. Apply accordingly [when] it [the bla] is not descending.66

We are left with the question of the omission of specific mentions of China in the Tibetan moxibustion texts from Dunhuang. One plausible explanation for this omission in the Dunhuang material is that of omission of the obvious. The medical culture of Dunhuang which transpires in these Tibetan texts can be best described as being of a Sino-Tibetan nature. Being a Chinese town since Han times, then briefly ruled by Tibetans (781–848), and subsequently controlled by the Chinese again, there are many aspects of the culture in Dunhuang which can be best described as Sino-Tibetan. These Sino-Tibetan aspects, which have been pointed out in various areas such as religion, history and others are also apparent

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in medicine.67 Indeed about two centuries later, the Gyushi points to China as the origin of moxibustion. In chapter 26 of the Fourth Tantra of the Gyushi, where the sources for its medical knowledge are described, we find the following: Through their manifestations, the Tathagatas taught, for the welfare of all sentient beings, medical compounds in India, moxibustion and vessel cleansing therapy in China, primarily venesection in the Dolpo area, pulse and urine diagnosis in Tibet …68

It is interesting to compare this ‘topography of knowledge’ to the one found in the Chinese Huang Di Nei Jing, as found in the Tai Su (The Grand Basic), volume 19 and the Su Wen (The Basic Question), chapter 12. According to this account bian shi (stone acupuncture needles) are from the East, ‘efficacious medicine’ is from the West, moxibustion is from the North, the ‘nine needles’ are from the South, and dao yin and massage are from the Centre.69 The shift between an entirely practice-oriented moxibustion as it is found in the Dunhuang manuscripts to a much more systematized method of moxibustion as is found in the Gyushi, bears some similarities with the process which has been described with regards to Chinese medicine’s move from specific points of acupuncture to their incorporation into the theoretical system of acupuncture, where an external theoretical structure ‘is suddenly imposed on a body of medical thought and practice’.70

Mapping the body: Illustrations without borders Moxibustion knowledge obviously lends itself to illustration (Figures 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3). In China, the earliest visual depictions which appear to be illustrating acu-moxa therapy were three-dimensional: two black lacquered figurines which have been found in Han dynasty tombs. The figurines depict lines which presumably are related to texts found alongside them dealing with normalizing the movement of qi in the body.71 Though it is hard to establish the date of the earliest illustrated acu-moxa texts with any accuracy, there are plenty of references to them in catalogues.72 Sixth-century illustrations appear to have been preserved in later Japanese versions.73 But even within the context of the rich Chinese tradition, the earliest extant moxibustion illustrations are those from Dunhuang.74 Interestingly, the Dunhuang Chinese moxa-cautery manuscript Pelliot chinois 2675, although itself a manuscript, states that it was hand-copied from a woodblock printed version, and provides the year of copying: 861.75

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Figure 4.1  PT 1058, Tibetan moxibustion chart, Dunhuang ninth to tenth century. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Along with the Chinese moxibustion charts from Dunhuang, and an Italian ninth-century exemplar, PT 1058, which has been dated to the ninth or tenth century, is one of the earliest examples in the history of illustrations of the human body, representing a new way of formulating therapeutic knowledge.76 Two figures are represented in PT 1058, one static on the left, and one in apparent movement, on the right.77 Judging by the legends on the left, a third image was illustrated, but the manuscript has been cut off. The third missing image was probably a back view, as the indications include quite a few referring to the vertebrae (T: tshigs). Visually depicting medical knowledge in this way, which facilitated the ‘quick and easy’ moxa-cautery practice, surfaced alongside the growing availability of paper. The black lines connecting black dots on the anatomical figures and the concise hands-on captions may seem almost trivial to our eyes, but in fact they are not: they are some of the earliest, if not the earliest, extant examples of indication lines in anatomical illustrations, linking a realistic depiction of a human body, along with didactic diagrammatic elements – the black dots and

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Figure 4.2  Or.8210/S. 6168, Chinese moxibustion chart, Dunhuang. © The British Library Board.

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the indication lines.78 They are thus important exemplars of both knowledge construction and knowledge transmission. These Tibetan and Chinese moxacautery illustrations, both crude and practical, exemplify the ease with which such illustrations lend themselves to usage beyond learned circles. Indeed we know that other illustrations from Dunhuang associated with divination, astrology or popular religious symbolism, were in regular use both among commoners and the elite throughout the medieval period.79

A Uighur moxibustion chart Among the material from the German Turfan expedition of 1902–1907, at the back of a Buddhist scroll, there is an intriguing Uighur medical text with three illustrations.80 This manuscript, Uighur ms. Mainz 725, measuring 72cm by 18.7cm, includes three drawings of human bodies, nine succinct descriptions of body locations and some pharmacological recipes. Of the human bodies illustrated, two are depicted sitting down, and the third is in a standing posture.81 A preliminary dating by Müller has placed the texts on this scroll in the eleventh to twelfth centuries, but according to Maue, this dating needs to be revised.82

Figure 4.3a  Uighur moxibustion chart from Turfan. Mainz 0725. © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung.

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Figure 4.3b  Uighur moxibustion chart from Turfan. Mainz 0725. © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung.

The first human figure (Figure 4.3a, left) is a very rare depiction of a woman. Going by the angle of her thigh, she appears to be seated cross-legged, and going by the angle of her arm, she might have had her hands in a particular mudra.83 The indicating lines mark bodily locations with round black dots on one side and their descriptions on the other side: ‘on the head’, ‘on the breast’, ‘on the hand’, ‘on the knee’ and ‘on the sole of the foot’. The second image (Figure 4.3a, right) appears to be male, clearly sitting in a lotus position, with the palms of his hands resting on his thighs. The collarbone and ribs on his right side are clearly demarcated, much like in the Tibetan and Chinese moxibustion charts. The image and text are intertwined, much like the Chinese moxa-cautery manuals from Dunhuang. The text, much like the Chinese or Tibetan moxacautery texts, describe the symptoms to be treated, then explain in words the location/s to be treated, though – unlike the Chinese or Tibetan texts and images  – this Uighur exemplar does not specify the number of moxas to be burned. The image is adorned with elongated earlobes, possibly inspired by Buddhist imagery. The hairstyle is remarkably similar to that found in the Tibetan chart.

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A particularly interesting loan-word links the three moxibustion traditions. The Tibetan measurement word tshon, a loanword from the Chinese cun, which is mentioned quite frequently in the Tibetan moxa-cautery texts, is also apparently present in the Uighur moxibustion text.84 This part of the manuscript also includes five recipes (col. 13–34), which have several mentions of myrobalans (see Chapter 3). In the third image (Figure 4.3b), while the image and indication points are clearly drawn, no descriptions of these locations have been added. *** Illustrations such as the Tibetan, Chinese and Uighur ones lend themselves to transmissions beyond a particular linguistic context.85 When thinking about a global approach to images of the body, the ‘Kuriyama Question’, which has been posed by Shigehisa Kuriyama is a good starting point: how can perceptions of something as basic and intimate as the body differ so much across cultures?86 Pelliot tibétain 1058 is an important example of an early, practical sort of illustration, in the original sense of the word: shedding light upon. The illustration of the body, with black dots, illustration lines and descriptions, sheds light on the texts which accompany it, PT 127 and PT 1044. Having only the descriptions of the points, it appears that it was meant for use – or perhaps for documentation – alongside the descriptions found in PT 127 and PT 1044. Unlike images which are more inherently linked to religion – either via ritual or those linked with tantric, or Daoist notions of the body – PT 1058 manifests no attempt to stylize: the purpose of the image is to aid the practice and nothing more.87 Incidentally, it also shines a light on an illustrator with both proficiencies and incompetence: on the one hand we have a realistic view of the body, depicting some key muscles and joints along with an impressive sense of movement. On the other hand, the very oddly shaped fingers and toes along with a difficulty in drawing a face in profile, suggest some limitations as well. While the particular visual style of PT 1058 may have travelled farther afield, it appears not to have made a mark within Tibetan medical painting. Unlike the content of the Tibetan moxa-cautery texts, the naturalistic style of the Tibetan moxa-cautery images does not seem to have had continuity. In his history of Tibetan medicine, completed in 1703, Sangye Gyatso mentions only a handful of titles which appear to refer to illustrated texts – none of which are extant – in the backdrop of dozens of textual sources.88 Indeed, when reflecting on the medical illustrations which he commissioned, the seventy-nine medical

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paintings he conceived as a visual aid depicting the essential knowledge of Tibetan medicine for his Blue Beryl, Sangye Gyatso saw himself as inventing a visual tradition from nothing.89 Pelliot tibétain 1058 was indeed a unique exemplar, which during Sangye Gyatso’s time had been buried in the Dunhuang ‘library cave’ for seven centuries or so, and was due to remain buried for nearly two centuries to come. But while it did not influence later Tibetan illustration styles, it does represent an important exemplar in the development of medical illustrations, bringing a naturalistic depiction of the human body together with the practical diagrammatic elements of the indication lines, as found shortly afterwards in the Uighur moxa-cautery illustrations, and perhaps also further west in Anatolia, as the next chapter suggests.

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Medicine of the Bakhshis: Cross-pollinations in Buddhist Iran

While in popular perception the Mongol era is often conceived as a period of much death and destruction, scholarship of the last few decades has begun to regard the Mongols as active promoters of Eurasian exchanges of knowledge, generated by a vast mobilization of people, along with artefacts and ideas, on a scale never seen before. These Eurasian exchanges triggered profound transformations, some intended and others not, in a vast geographical expanse and in a great variety of fields, some of which are only now beginning to be explored.1 The Mongol Empire (Map 5.1), while being the largest contiguous land empire, also brought about a high point of what Nicola Di Cosmo has termed ‘Amphibian History’, with the Black Sea becoming the nerve centre of international trade. During this time, the Black Sea became a node connecting continental Asia with the Mediterranean networks, serving as a ‘conveyor belt that allowed two fully separate ecological and economic systems to become integrated into a common market of exchange and circulation whose capillaries potentially extended to China in the East and Spain in the West’.2 Historians of the Mongol era have been focusing on the special conditions which allowed, sustained and subsequently eradicated those high moments of trade and political connections. These high moments of trade and political connections also brought about the creation and movement of knowledge in ways and scales not seen before. Thinking of knowledge as created in motion and through motion – as Pamela Smith has called on us to think of it3 – the Mongol era presents a number of game changers, impacting Eurasian medical knowledge. These were products of the new conditions which the Mongol Empire, spanning from the Pacific Ocean in the east all the way to the Danube in the west, had created. Firstly, the Mongol Empire enabled missionaries, diplomats, merchants and royal brides – and indeed the multiple ways in which these categories

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Map 5.1  Map of the Mongol Empire.

intertwined – to travel all the way from Europe to Asia, in numbers unknown before. Even more significantly, these agents of motion did not only go all the way from one side of the empire to the other – many of them also returned and lived to tell their accounts and tales. These accounts included, among many other things, medical knowledge of various sorts, particularly of the extraordinary, bewildering kind: the Chinese ability to diagnose according to the pulse, for example, reported by the Flemish Franciscan missionary, William of Rubruck, or the exceptionally long life of the Indians reported by Marco Polo. The direct encounters of this period created an unprecedented openness and eagerness to learn from cultures far and wide. After the division of the Mongol Empire into four separate khanates in 1260, the Ilkhanate, the south-western sector of the Mongol Empire based primarily in the areas which are part of modern-day Iran, Iraq and Turkey, became a key node of trade, diplomacy and cultural exchanges. The monumental endeavour of Rashīd al-Dīn, Ilkhanid court physician turned powerful minister, to bring scholars from all over the Mongol Empire, house them together, fund them as well as their scholarship and outputs, is an academic utopia of mind-boggling proportions even before we begin to reflect on the fact that it is the thirteenth century we are speaking about, in a city which many today will not have even heard of – Tabriz.

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The encounters discussed in this chapter were, as ever, products of specific political conditions. Rashīd al-Dīn’s endeavours need to be seen within the Mongols’ method of governance: enlisting local talents and creating variations of successful past empire-building enterprises. The flow of missionaries, diplomats and merchants from Europe to Tabriz and Qaraqorum – as well as back again – also needs to be viewed against the backdrop of Christian Europe’s attempts to unite with this unknown power which suddenly sprung from seemingly nowhere right into the central world stage, against what was seen to be their common enemy: the Muslims. The favourable attitude towards the Mongols reached its peak in the second half of the thirteenth century with renewed hopes for cooperation between Europe and the Mongols aimed at the destruction of Muslims.4 The political agendas and cultural openness, along with the intellectual space where Mongol knowledge could be appreciated – whether by William of Rubruck, by the ‘Frank physician’ in the court of Rashīd al-Dīn, or later by Roger Bacon and Ramon Llull – were also intertwined with powerful European medieval Christian narratives linking the Mongols with the Three Magi and with Prester John.5 As early as when the first rumours of the Mongol campaigns in Northwest Persia reached the crusades in the Holy Land, their existence revived the legend of Prester John, a powerful narrative about a Christian king, who supposedly ruled somewhere in the East, and was expected to come to the aid of the Crusaders. The bewildering encounter between legend, travel accounts and political agendas proved to be fruitful ground for cultural openness. Medical exchanges in this period were of many sorts, flowing in a variety of directions.6 This variety of flows and interactions created a number of important Eurasian medical encounters: an intriguing text on Chinese medicine in Persian, government institutions of Islamic medicine in China, a European account of the Chinese ability to diagnose from the pulse and what appears to be an Asianinspired European account of medical alchemy. These fascinating encounters, however, have left but traces.

Islamic medicine in China Medicine with Greek roots came to China following the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty by Qubilai Khan, via what was known as ‘Islamic medicine’, although the conveyors of that medical knowledge were often members of the Church of the East.7 Qubilai Khan, himself a son of an Eastern Christian mother

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(Sorkaktani), employed an Eastern Christian physician as his personal doctor. Rashīd al-Dīn, the court physician turned minister of the Mongol Ilkhanid court, tells us that this Christian physician was known as ‘Īsā the Translator. ‘Īsā’s Chinese biography indicates that he was born in Fu-lin, the Chinese transcription of Rum, or what the Tibetan medical histories refer to as Khrom, i.e. Byzantium (see Chapter 1). After a particularly successful career as the Khan’s personal physician, ‘Īsā became a central figure in the medical establishment of Mongol China. He set up the Islamic Medical Bureau in the main Mongol capital (in what later became Beijing) and became head of this bureau.8 During this era we find what is referred to as ‘Islamic medicine’ mostly in relation to materia medica, as in the case of the Huihui yaofang (Muslim Medicinal Recipes). As Dror Weil has shown, the Huihui yaofang is a Chinese translation/adaptation of the Ẕakhīra-i Khwarazmshāhī, a Persian medical compendium, made for the Ming Court during the early fifteenth century.9 It mentions Zhalinuxi, the Chinese transliteration of Galen, although the relationship between those references and any Galenic writings is yet to be analysed.10 Key here, however, is the overall linguistic context of these mentions of Galen, linking the text to Persian and Arabic sources, as reflected in the form of the name as it is transcribed in Chinese: Zhalinuxi, reflecting the Arabic and Persian form: Jālinus.

Tabriz: A cultural hub It was not only the Yuan Mongol court in China which was supporting a variety of medical systems: around the same time, the Ilkhanid Mongol court in Iran was setting up its court in Tabriz and turning it into a cultural hub of intellectually productive cultural encounters. A crossroads of trade, and a flourishing intellectual centre already by the eleventh century, Tabriz rose to great prominence when the Iran-based Mongols made it the capital of their Ilkhanate. Tabriz’s moderate climate and its abundant supply of water were key for this Mongol choice of a capital, but most important was the location of Tabriz on a major Eurasian trade route.11 Travellers, merchants and missionaries were dazzled by Tabriz and its riches, as we find in the writings of Marco Polo, Odoric of Pordenone and Ibn Battuta.12 The role of Tabriz as a key node stems from the fact that it maintained active connections with both Yuan China and Byzantium. The Yuan and Ilkhanid Mongol rulers kept good relations, maintaining constant communications

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between these two Mongol courts of China and Iran.13 Tribute and trade embassies flowed back and forth from Iran to China: it was not only Chinese merchants who came to Tabriz, but astronomers and agronomists too. Meanwhile also, Tabrizians were going to China.14 Tabriz also served as a gateway to India, as described by the accounts of the Venetians Marco Polo and Marino Sanudo Torsello. Torsello in his Book of the Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross, comments that from Tabriz ‘as far as India even Christian merchants can direct their feet since there are many of them who already go and return’.15 Tabriz was not only a central node in the trade networks of the time, it was also an important meeting point for scientists, scholars, diplomats and artists from east and west. It was a place which could offer a forum for theoretical debates, where, as Judith Pfeiffer has pointed out, it was the ‘diversity and friction in opinions and institutions that facilitated excellence in the scholarly milieu’.16 During the Mongol period, this large and prosperous town became particularly multicultural: in addition to its main native Persian population, it became home to its new Mongol rulers, Jewish traders and officials, Genoese and Venetian merchants,17 Armenian craftsmen and traders, members of a variety of the Christian Eastern Church,18 members of the Dominican order, bureaucrats from China, Tibet, Kashmir, India and Central Asia and Buddhist learned monks, known as bakhshis.

Ilkhanid Buddhism and the Bakhshis Until the conversion of Ghāzān Khan to Islam in 1295, Buddhism occupied a central role in the Ilkhanid court.19 The court actively supported Buddhism in its territory through institutionalized sponsorship of Buddhist sites and monasteries, and through the Ilkhans’ own following of Buddhist teachings.20 Buddhists from all over Asia resided in the Ilkhanate: from Tibet, Kashmir, China and Central Asia. Hülegü (r. 1256–1265), grandson of Genghis Khan who conquered Baghdad and set up the Ilkhanate, was, like his brother Qubilai in China, a follower of Tibetan Buddhism, who maintained his close links with Tibet while ruling in Iran.21 He remained closely attached to his Tibetan links, even after establishing the Ilkhanid court in Iran. It was not only Tibetan Buddhism that thrived at the court in Tabriz. Rashīd al-Dīn’s Life of the Buddha, produced at the court in Tabriz, reflects Kashmiri, Uighur and Tibetan influences.22

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Successive descendants of Hülegü: Abāqā (r. 1265–1282), Arghun (r. 1284– 1291), Gaikhatu (r. 1291–1295) and, until his conversion to Islam, Ghāzān (r. 1295–1304) and Öljeitü (r. 1304–1316) adhered to the Buddhist faith and embraced its cultural system.23 Ghāzān, the seventh Ilkhan, grew up as a Buddhist. Ghāzān’s grandfather, Abāqā, surrounded him with Buddhist lamas. Prior to Ghāzān’s conversion to Islam he had been fervent in his Buddhist faith, and according to Rashīd al-Dīn, he also spoke Tibetan. Rashīd al-Dīn recounts that Ghāzān, When he was with his grandfather Arghun Khan in his early youth, he was turned over to one or two bakhshis, to whose beliefs he was amenable, and Arghun Khan ordered that they should exert themselves to the utmost to teach him and encourage him in acquiring their customs. They were constantly in attendance upon him and always encouraged him in their beliefs. He was so intelligent and clever that in a short time he had learned to perfection the most obscure points of their teachings. Indeed, he acquired such perfect mastery that he became highly expert in the art of the bakhshi.24

The word bakhshi is known in Persian, Tibetan and Turkic languages.25 There have been suggestions that this word originates from either Sanskrit or Chinese – the Chinese option, deriving from the Chinese boshi (man of learning) is favoured by most scholars. It is with the Mongol conquest that it appears both in Tibetan on the one hand, and Persian, on the other. In the Tibetan context, the word appears following the Mongol conquest of Tibet in 1240, meaning both ‘master, teacher’ and ‘magician’.26 The word also first appeared in Persian during the Ilkhanid period, denoting a Buddhist lama or scholar.27 Its later meanings also incorporated ‘shaman’, ‘scribe’ and ‘doctor’. Sources in Arabic tell us that Hülegü extended his patronage to a large group of wise men (ḥukamā’) of a variety of faiths and nations.28 He also brought with him Chinese astronomers, and several of them worked in the observatory at Maragha.29 This large group created an intellectual vibrancy, which was the basis of discernible intellectual interaction and has led to the transmission and development of knowledge.

Rashīd al-Dīn: cultural broker and agent of cross-pollinations At the heart of the Ilkhanid vibrant and diverse cultural milieu of Tabriz, stood an exceptionally fascinating author and patron – Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlallāh Hamadānī, also known as Rashīd al-Dīn al-ṭabīb, Rashīd al-Dīn the doctor. Born c. 1247–125030 in Hamadan to a Jewish pharmacist, Rashīd al-Dīn later

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Figure 5.1  Mountains of Tibet from Rashīd al-Dīn’s Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, Khalili Collection ms. 727, fol. 22a. © The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art (part of the Khalili Family Trust).

converted to Islam and became the physician of the Ilkhanate court, a prosperous statesman and a prolific polymath.31 Rashīd al-Dīn was a unique and extraordinary agent of cultural exchanges: a patron and cultural broker, he was a key figure in cultural translation. He assembled Chinese, Tibetans, Indians, Kashmiris and others at the Ilkhanid court and systematically translated and promoted the collection and dissemination of the different medical traditions of the cultures under Mongol rule at the time.32 His monumental multicultural oeuvre – which is yet to receive the place it deserves in global intellectual history – was formed through noteworthy political levels of support.33 Rashīd al-Dīn’s voluminous oeuvre comprises several thousand pages. He began to write in 1302, when he was more than fifty years old, under the patronage of the Ilkhan Ghāzān (r. 1295–1304). This commission by Ghāzān to write the history of the Mongols, which later became the first part of the Compendium of Chronicles (Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, see Figure 5.1), and eventually included histories of the Turks, Jews and Franks, of China, and of India – incorporating a fascinating account of the life of the Buddha34 – is an

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exceptional enterprise which has earned him the reputation of being the first ‘world historian’.35 This monumental global history, however, was only the beginning: he composed the bulk of his writings under Ghāzān’s successor, Öljeitü (r. 1304–1316).36 In Rashīd al-Dīn’s own account, his writings fall into two categories: one part includes the theological, metaphysical and medical or scientific writings; the other part includes his historical and geographical works.37 That he should group the medical and scientific with the religious is completely in line with the place of medicine both in the Muslim and Buddhist views of his time. As a Jewish convert into Islam, Rashīd al-Dīn’s position, though seemingly powerful, was also marked by marginality. In his own accounts he reveals that he sees himself as an outsider38 – which may well have been the underlying cause of his fascination and investment in a bridge-building multicultural approach – an approach which can be seen not only in his better-known historical writings, but in his medical writings as well. Rashīd al-Dīn specifically comments on the exceptional cosmopolitan milieu that the Mongol rule had created: Now that the world from one end to the other is under one or the other branch of the Chingiz Khanids, philosophers, astronomers, scholars and historians of all sects and religions connected with China [Khita], ancient India, Kashmir, Tibet, Uyghur, as well as other people like the Turks, Arabs and Franks are before our eyes in large numbers and every one of them has books containing the history, chronology and religious thought of those countries.39

Medical aspects of Rashīd al-Dīn’s work As a physician himself, eager for information from other parts of the world, part of Rashīd al-Dīn’s multicultural legacy is his contribution to medicine and pharmacology. The Mongol ruling elite had access to the major medical systems of Eurasia: Chinese, Tibetan, Indian, Uighur, Muslim and Eastern Christian and had a great variety of court physicians from all over the Mongol Empire working together. These court physicians accompanied them on their conquests. When Hülegü travelled west to conquer Baghdad, he had Chinese physicians with him and they remained in attendance throughout his reign. Ghāzān also made use of Chinese medicine,40 and Rashīd al-Dīn himself had a great interest in it.41 The branch of Chinese medical knowledge that was most admired in Iran was pulse diagnosis. This reflects the Mongols’ deep appreciation of this Chinese diagnostic technique, which was widely used by the Mongol leaders.42

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Rashīd al-Dīn tells us that when Hülegü conquered Ismaʻili strongholds in Iran, there was a group of physicians who were serving the Ismaʻilis. Hülegü took on these physicians and made them his court physicians.43 The members of this group were Jewish physicians from Hamadan and included Rashīd al-Dīn’s own family: his grandfather, father and uncle. The case of Rashīd al-Dīn’s family of doctors is instructive in how the Mongols went about managing the medical knowledge and experience which came under their auspices. Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn b. ‘Alī Kātib, author of the fifteenth-century New History of Yazd (Tārīkh-i jadīd-i Yazd), noted that Rashīd al-Dīn used to travel around the Mongol Empire at the beginning of his career and implied that these journeys were made in search of medical knowledge.44 According to this source, it appears that Rashīd al-Dīn spent some time in Yazd, where he was befriended by a well-known physician of Yazd, who had a library and gave Rashīd al-Dīn access to it.45

The Tanksūqnāma Perhaps the most intriguing medical text from this era is the Tanksūqnāma-i Īlkhān dar funūn-i ‘ulūm-i Khatā’ī (The Treasure Book of the Ilkhan on Chinese Science and Techniques).46 The Tanksūqnāma, completed in 1313, and which exists in a single manuscript now in Istanbul at the Süleymaniye Library (Aya Sofya Collection, ms. 3596), is divided into two parts: the first part is an introduction by Rashīd al-Dīn, and the second part is a Persian exposition of Chinese medicine illustrated by a series of images. In the preface to the Tanksūqnāma Rashīd al-Dīn notes that just as the great Abbasid caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 786–809) made Greek knowledge available to Islamic scholars through translations into Arabic, so he intends to make Chinese knowledge available to Islamic scholars through translation into Persian.47 He further explains that Chinese sciences have much to offer to Persian scholars, and sets out a grand plan of Sino-Persian translations.48 This grand plan was much grander than what was finally accomplished, a downgrading which has received a number of explanations.49 Rashīd al-Dīn laments the prejudice against Chinese sciences among Persians, suggesting that this is due to insufficient knowledge. He proposes, however, that this would be remedied by his translations.50 For the purpose of composing the Tanksūqnāma, Rashīd al-Dīn assembled a team which included the leading Chinese doctor in Tabriz, a Persian doctor who had been sent to China to learn Chinese, Ṣafī al-Dawlah wa-l-Dīn, an unnamed interpreter, a scribe, and, probably a painter.51 Isahaya has suggested

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that the unnamed interpreter was Asutai, son of ‘Īsā the Translator, mentioned earlier, and that he was like his father, a Syriac speaking scholar, as some of the invented letters used in the Tanksūqnāma to denote Chinese sounds which cannot be represented in Persian, seem to be derived from Syriac.52 Some letters also reveal similarities with Hebrew letters.53 As noted above with regards to ‘Īsā the Translator, Eastern Christians had a major role in transmitting medical knowledge at this time. Further evidence of the role of Eastern Christians in the transmission of medical knowledge during the Mongol era is found in a sixteenth-century Tibetan history, called the Scholar’s Delight (Mkhas pa’i dga’ ston), by Pawo Tsuglag (Dpa’ bo gtsug lag). The focus of this work is the history of Buddhism in India and Tibet, and Pawo Tsuglag contextualizes it within a general description of the world, including accounts of the history of Khotan, ancient China, recent China, the Tanguts, and Mongolia. Indeed, this work is considered to be one of the most well-informed Tibetan sources on the Mongol period. The last part is a kind of ‘History of Science’ text, dealing with the five classical fields of Buddhist knowledge – medicine being one of them – and the way they spread. It is in this section that a much-quoted, and often misinterpreted narrative of how Galen settled in Lhasa, appears.54 In another section of this work, within his discussion of the influence of Tibetan lamas in the Mongol court, we are supplied with an indication that Pawo Tsuglag was aware of an East Christian presence in the Mongol court. While the focus here is the Yuan Mongol court, what is instructive is the itinerary of another loanword: erga-bo.55 This term, which may have originated from the Greek ‘archon’, meaning ‘chief ’ or ‘leader’, migrated to Asia via Syriac, was adopted into Uighur and Mongol (ärkä’ün) by Eastern Christian Turko-Mongols, then appeared in Tibetan (erga-bo or er-ka-’un), Chinese (ye li ke wen), Persian (arkāvūn) and Armenian. In Tibetan sources it apparently first appears in the autobiographical writings of Karma pag shi (1204/1206–1283), the Tibetan lama who served at the court of Möngke Khan (r. 1251–1259).56

Rashīd al-Dīn’s Questions and Answers and the learned man from the West A fascinating document which records the active flow of knowledge between Tabriz and Byzantium is Rashīd al-Dīn’s Questions and Answers (As’ila waajwiba). Several versions of this text are extant in Persian and Arabic.57 This work, which has been dated to 1311, includes Rashīd al-Dīn’s answers to

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questions posed to him by foreign scholars from Arabia, Khorezm, Khotan, Sind and Byzantium.58 It includes a fascinating dialogue in which a Byzantine/ Frank (faranjī) physician (or philosopher, literally: learned man – ḥakīm), poses questions to Rashīd al-Dīn concerning human physiology, the factors which differentiate humanity from animals and the relationship between blood and spirit. As Rashīd al-Dīn explains, that spirit is the motivating force behind the movement of the blood. This section also includes a dialogue on the nature of the senses, and why the creator would want to annihilate his own creations.59 The questions of this western wise man are conveyed by Rashīd al-Dīn.60 Although presented as the words of this ‘Western learned man’, it is mostly likely Rashīd al-Dīn’s voice speaking.61 The author begins by telling us how this exchange came to be – that this ‘Byzantine learned man’ was admitted to Rashīd al-Dīn’s entourage in some sort of capacity: The questions that the king of philosophers and physicians, the Frank/ Byzantine [faranjī] physician (or: scholar, philosopher – ḥakīm), who asked the author of the book: The servant and the supplicant of … [missing name, probably Öljeitü, but could also be the name of the Byzantine Emperor], known as the Frank/Byzantine physician, having been [admitted to] the presence of the refuge of the world, the servant of the two worlds [the earthly world and the next], who has the attributes of Asaf [the vizier] of [King] Solomon, the best and most perfect in the world, who is aided by divine grace, Rashid alMilla wa’l-Haqq wa’l-Din [Rashīd al-Dīn], May the stars be his stepping stool [to heaven] and may he have a long life in His [God’s] service … and after [the philosopher] paying homage and showing his reverence [at the court], he stated the following: … 62

Who was this learned westerner? Zeki Velidi Togan has suggested that it was Gregorios Chioniades, a Byzantine physician from Trebizond, who served as a court physician of the Byzantine Emperor in Trebizond, from where he travelled to Ilkhanid Persia. Originally from Constantinople, during the years 1295 to 1310 Chioniades travelled between Constantinople, Trebizond and Tabriz, and was named Bishop of Tabriz probably around 1304 or 1305.63 Chioniades arrived in Tabriz in 1295, attracted both by the reputation of Tabriz at the time as a major centre of learning, and the sympathetic attitude of the early Ilkhans towards Christians.64 His name is mostly associated with the introduction of Persian astronomical tables to Constantinople, but in his Profession of Faith he is designated as a physician (iatrosophist).65 As his student George Chrysokokkes notes in his preface to the Persian Syntaxis, written around 1347, Chioniades’ interest in Persian astronomy came about from his desire to improve his medical

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practice. Chrysokokkes further tells us that Chioniades had studied all the sciences in Constantinople, but wanted to gain an even more profound level of knowledge. Having heard from ‘some people’ in Constantinople that he would not be able to attain his goal unless he went to Persia,66 Chioniades travelled to the Ilkhanid Mongol court, stayed there and learned Persian. After a considerable length of time when he was not allowed to study astronomy, as it was regarded as a form of state secret, he managed to become close enough to the king, and obtained authorization to learn astronomy in return for his services. During that time he ‘consorted with the King, and met with consideration from him’.67 Upon his return to Trebizond, Chioniades translated into Greek the astronomy books which he brought back with him from Tabriz.68 Chioniades returned to Constantinople in 1302, and trained students in Persian astronomy and medicine. In this period he also translated into Greek a short Persian treatise on antidotes, and also wrote his ‘Profession of Faith’.69

Persian into Greek Although it is difficult to ascertain whether Rashīd al-Dīn’s ‘Byzantine physician’ was indeed Chioniades, what the material about Chioniades does point to is an active knowledge transfer from Persian into Greek, and a Byzantine interest in the Ilkhanid knowledge of astronomy along with its links to medicine. As the Introduction to the Questions and Answers goes on to say: Once [I] was honoured to be received at the luminous presence [of the vizier], who is the fountain of security and safety and the mine of justice and benevolence, [I] the servant observed the fabric (?) of the court and the results of the nature of the munificent [vizier, or possibly the Ilkhan], and saw things that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no man had ever imagined beforehand. I translated some of these benefits into Greek and sent them to … [missing], who is the king of Constantinople, which is the capital of Byzantium [literally: the land of the Greek], so that they too would be blessed by these benefits and the people of those lands would not remain deprived of this happiness.70

Indeed, one of the least known and most often neglected paths of medieval knowledge transfers is that of the translations of Arabic and Persian works into Greek.71 In addition to active Persian to Greek transmissions in the area of astronomy, Byzantine pharmacology incorporated Arabic and Persian knowledge at this time.72 Meliteniotes, about whom not much is known, for

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example, translated a Persian antidotary into Greek in the late fourteenth century.73 There is also a fourteenth-century Greek translation of a Persian antidotarium, ascribed to Chioniades.74 Perhaps a result of the growing interest in pulse analysis of the time, there is even a short and intriguing Greek translation from Persian on the art of pulse divination.75 Rashīd al-Dīn, speaking in the name of the ‘Byzantine physician’, contemplates the reversal of the direction of translations in his time: although [in the past] those lands [Byzantium] were the source of wisdom/ philosophy and the mine of sciences and logic, and all the famous philosophers have been from there, and the sciences that nowadays are current among the people of professions all arrived from there, today the source of the rational sciences and origin of the certain knowledges (theological assertions) is the supreme lord. If Aristo, Plato, and other great pillars of philosophy were alive, they would have been among those gaining from his lord, and would show gratitude for having been admitted into the circle of his benefiters. Thus, [I] the servant will achieve progress from this beneficial effort, and accumulate this blessing for his [my] people. I ask for your forgiveness for this rudeness.76

That medical knowledge should travel along this well-trodden route is not really surprising, as this was the main route through which Central Asian drugs and spices came to the West.77 An active Trebizond-Tabriz caravan route, a journey which lasted thirty-two days, opened up after the Mongols conquered Baghdad in 1258, becoming one of the most active trade routes of the late Middle Ages. It was used by emissaries, merchants and ecclesiastics from the Byzantine as well as the Latin world.78 Indeed, in the thirteenth century the economic and political strength of Trebizond depended on Tabriz. Francesco Pegolotti reports in his famous fourteenth-century handbook of trade, that the ‘weights and measures of Tabriz are as one with those of Trebizond’.79 These intense connections were, however, brief and ended with the increased persecution of Christians of all denominations during and after Timur’s reign.

Rashīd al-Dīn’s role model: Asaf ben Berakhya That Asaf, vizier of King Solomon is one of the role models chosen by Rashīd al-Dīn in this introduction is instructive. An extensive Persian tradition links a legendary figure by the name of Asaf ben Berakhya to knowledge.80 In these accounts Asaf ben Berakhya is portrayed as an exemplary vizier, known for his wisdom, rectitude and relentless protection of the people’s interests. He

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appears in Persian-Islamic narratives as a minister, scribe, or companion of King Solomon (Sulayman), who had ‘knowledge of the book’. Asaf ben Berakhya is also said to be the author of the intriguing Hebrew medical text known as the Book of Asaf (Sefer Asaf, see Chapter 1).81 The continuous popularity of Asaf ben Berakhya in Persian culture is reflected in visual representations as well. Serpil Bağci has noted that in Shirazi manuscript frontispieces of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Asaf ben Berakhya never fails to appear alongside King Solomon.82 Bağci suggested that these scenes were the products of a collective image, long in the making and with wide currency, shared by artists and readers.83

Prolonging human life: Knowledge of the Bakhshis One of the reasons why Buddhist monks, many of them Tibetan, known at this time in Tibetan, Persian and Turkic languages as bakhshis, served the Khans was their reputation as having knowledge of medicine, astrology and alchemy.84 Daoists were also called to the service of the Khans in Qaraqorum for their lifeprolonging expertise.85 Tibetans had a significant role as conduits of medical knowledge between the eastern and western parts of the Mongol Empire, particularly between China and the Islamic world.86 This was true both with regard to the main court in Qaraqorum as well as the Mongol court in Iran, where mercury-based remedies were used as life-prolonging treatments. Mercury-based remedies have played an important role in Tibetan medicine from its early days.87 In IOL Tib J 756, a medical manuscript from Dunhuang which has preliminarily been dated to the mid-ninth century, for example, cinnabar (mercury sulphide T: mtsal) is used in a cosmetic context: to be applied after removing unasthetic moles from a face, in order to avoid the formation of a scar.88 The twelfth-century Gyushi maintains that mercury, once ‘purified’, ‘pacifies all diseases’, and is especially beneficial for severe diseases. In addition to treating diseases, the Gyushi discusses preparations of mercury for rejuvenation, or chulen (bcud len), a term which literally means: ‘extracting the essence’.89 Uses and methods of detoxifying mercury are described in several other early Tibetan medical texts of the (eighth?), eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries.90 In the Mongol court in Iran substances which were considered to have life-prolonging effects were a major attraction for the Khans. The Armenian churchman-historian Kirakos Ganjakec’i (1203–1271) discussing the links between Hülegü and Buddhist monks, recounts that Hülegü favoured the

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bakhshīs for their skills in alchemy: ‘They deceived him [Hülegü], promising him immortality, and he lived, moved, and mounted a horse at their bidding, entirely having given himself over to their will.’91 Rashīd al-Dīn held a slightly better view of the bakhshis’ alchemical knowledge. While praising Hülegü’s love of learning, he says that Hülegü was particularly fond of alchemy, on which he spent vast sums of money:92 A great lover of wisdom, [Hülegü] encouraged the learned to debate the basic sciences and rewarded them with stipends and salaries. His court was adorned by the presence of scholars and wise men. He was exceptionally fond of the science of alchemy, and its practitioners received extraordinary patronage from him.93

Rashīd al-Dīn, however, recounts that Hülegü’s grandson, Arghun (r. 1284– 1291), who also supported the bakhshīs enthusiastically, died as a result of a lifeprolonging drug prepared for him by a bakhshī from India: One bakhshi came from India and claimed to have lived a long time. Arghun asked him how the bakhshis’ lives were so prolonged there. He replied that it was due to a special medicine. ‘Can that medicine be found here?’ Arghun asked. ‘It can,’ he answered, and Arghun ordered him to make some.94

The concoction, Rashīd al-Dīn tells us, was composed of sulphur and mercury. Arghun took it for nearly eight months and then went on a forty-day retreat. During that time only some of his closest associates were allowed to see him, as well as the bakhshis, ‘who attended him day and night to discuss their beliefs’.95 When he emerged from his retreat he developed some symptoms. He was treated by several physicians and recovered. Rashīd al-Dīn goes on to recount that his condition deteriorated when one day a bakhshi came and gave Arghun three goblets of wine. When the wine ‘had penetrated his body, he had a relapse, and the illness turned chronic. The physicians were incapable of treating him’.96

Roger Bacon: Talking like a Daoist? Roger Bacon (1214–1294) was an English Franciscan polymath, with wellknown accomplishments in the fields of natural sciences, mathematics, language studies, geography and alchemy – among others.97 He is considered an innovator in many of those fields. One field in which Bacon’s contributions are considered important and idiosyncratic is alchemy.98 Roger Bacon’s bold synthesis of alchemy and medicine was a significant novelty in Europe at this

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time and even if it did not have an immediate major impact, it foreshadowed the development of a medical alchemy in Europe.99 Roger Bacon saw alchemy as closely intertwined with medicine and was on a quest for a panacea, an elixir that would allow the ‘prolongation of human life to its utmost by means of substances that have been “reduced to equality”’.100 Bacon’s alchemy is regarded as idiosyncratic, primarily with regards to the following three characteristics: the idea that alchemy should be used by healthy people; his focus on an elixir of immortality; and the idea that this elixir of immortality would include ‘mortified’ mercury.101 These three characteristics are also hallmarks of Asian medical alchemy. Indeed, Joseph Needham in his account of comparative alchemy pointed out key parallels between Roger Bacon’s alchemy and Asian alchemy. As Needham put it: ‘Roger Bacon, the English Franciscan, was the first European to talk like a Taoist’.102 Although Needham was certainly interested in the history of transmissions of knowledge, he left this puzzling statement at that. Was it merely accidental that Roger Bacon came up with such Asian ideas or was he inspired by an Asian source of knowledge? In his Opus Majus, written at the request of Pope Clement IV, Roger Bacon set out a proposal to overhaul the approach to learning in Europe. One aspect which comes across in the Opus Majus is how impressed Roger Bacon was by Asian knowledge. Bacon’s encounter with Asian knowledge came via William of Rubruck (1220–1293), a Franciscan friar like Bacon, who had travelled to the court of Möngke Khan at Qaraqorum between 1253 and 1255 and wrote a detailed report to the French King, Louis IX, upon his return. William of Rubruck’s mission, like Roger Bacon’s work, needs to be seen within the general context of European rapprochement with the Mongols at the time.103 Bacon’s proposal for a far-reaching educational reform, was, in his view, the best chance to reverse the doom of Christendom, which, with the Mongol advances into Europe, appeared to many to be on the horizon. William of Rubruck was the first European to bring to Europe detailed information about Buddhism, along with the realization that most of the world was neither Christian nor Muslim, but Buddhist. Although William of Rubruck’s account is considered one of the most valuable European accounts of the Mongol court, its fate was one of near oblivion. That is, with one notable exception: its use by Roger Bacon. Bacon’s Opus Majus is replete with references to the Mongols, most of which are quoted verbatim from William of Rubruck’s account.104 Bacon and William of Rubruck apparently met in Paris upon Rubruck’s return to Europe. On this occasion Bacon received further oral information from William of Rubruck.105

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Bacon writes that it is Mongol science, philosophy and astronomy which have been the ultimate source of Mongol strength. According to Bacon, the poorly-fed Tartars did not conquer by their might: rather, their success on the world stage has come about ‘by means of science and especially by means of astronomy, by which they profess to be ruled and directed in all things’.106 Bacon’s deep appreciation for Mongol knowledge led him to argue that the Mongolian language should be studied in European universities. Bacon counts the Tartars among the six great intellectual traditions of the world, ‘namely Saracens, Tartars, Pagans, Idolaters [Buddhists], Jews, Christians’.107 He portrays the Mongols as wise and artful philosophers whose ‘science’ is the key to their worldly power,108 and who ‘pursue eagerly philosophy and the arts of magic’.109 What did he know about their ‘arts of magic’? In his general discussion of alchemy Roger Bacon says: that I am not led astray in this matter by my imagination is proven by the fact that men are found in several parts of the world who are clever at producing those sixteen modes … 110

In his discussion of the search for the secret medicine to prolong life and stop ageing, Bacon mentions that such knowledge has been preserved in the East.111 This knowledge, Bacon tells us, was originally discovered by Adam or Enoch, but has remained hidden. It was Artephius who travelled to the east in search of this knowledge and found Tantalus, teacher of the King of India. Thanks to this Indic knowledge, Bacon goes on to tell us, Artephius lived till the age of 1,025 years. This account can be seen as a reworking of the topos discussed earlier of India as a source of superior medical knowledge and as a place where wondrous materia medica grows (see Chapters 1 and 3). The idea that people in India are able to prolong life thanks to drinking concoctions of sulphur and mercury, became practically common knowledge in Europe a few decades after Bacon’s account, upon the publication of the more famous envoy to the Mongol court: Marco Polo. In Marco Polo’s account we find: These Brahmins live longer than any other people in the world; this is due to their sparse diet and strict abstinence … Among them are some men living under a rule who are called Yogis. They live even longer than the others, for they reach 150 to 200 years of age … And I can further tell you that these Yogi who live to the great age I have mentioned also ingest the following substance, which will surely strike you as an extraordinary thing. For I assure you that they take quicksilver and sulphur and mix them

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together to make a drink, which they then swallow. They say it prolongs life, and so they live all the longer. I can tell you that they take it twice a month. You should know, too, that these people start taking this drink from childhood in order to live longer. And certainly those who live to the age I have mentioned take this drink of sulphur and quicksilver.112

As is well known, Marco Polo’s account was to have a very different fate than the almost unknown account of William of Rubruck. Within a very short time after it was written, Polo’s account was published and widely disseminated across Europe.

Alchemy and gunpowder As Chris Cullen has pointed out, it is one of history’s greatest ironies that gunpowder, the source of so much death in world history, had been brought about through the search for immortality.113 Gunpowder, which was gradually developed in China between the ninth and twelfth centuries, remained in East Asia until the Mongol era.114 Leading scholars of the Mongol era, such as Thomas Allsen and Nicola Di Cosmo consider the transfer of gunpowder from China to Europe as one of the most significant instances of cultural transmissions of the Mongol era.115 Chinese siege engineers who accompanied Hülegü to Iran had gunpowder makers among them, although the actual use and impact of this new weapon by Mongol armies in the thirteenth century is still debated.116 But while the precise details of this complex and multipronged transmission and the role of the Mongols within it is still not clear, we can note that it is shortly after the Mongol era that we find mentions of gunpowder and its usage in Islamic, Indian and European sources.117 Among European writers, it is within Bacon’s alchemical writings that we find the first European account of the Chinese invention of gunpowder,118 an account which may serve as a further indication of the Asian origin of some of Bacon’s alchemical ideas. The Eurasian transmission of knowledge concerning gunpowder brings to the fore the importance of looking at multiple methods of non-textual transmissions of knowledge. In a comparable way to what we find in various aspects of alchemy, and as with military technology more generally, secrecy was of the essence. When passing such sensitive information, an anonymous writer, probably from the first half of the fourteenth century, in his discussion of the

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fighting methods of the Franks, reminds us of the key role of oral transmissions of knowledge – in the case here, via prisoners of war: As for flammable oils, they (i.e. the Franks) do not know them, nor do they know the tarāsīm (fitting gunpowder and explosive devices to weapons), nor do they know the arrows (i.e. flying arrows), or the composition of fuses (dhakhā’ir), so understand this. If one is taken prisoner by them, God forbid, he must not give them any information because they will then ruin everything. I used secretive symbols in some places of this book …119

Bacon’s work reflects his own efforts to incorporate the knowledge of what he had learned from William of Rubruck about Asian culture into his vision of the world.120 Most of Bacon’s new alchemical ideas are in the form of commentaries. His emphasis on a search for an elixir of immortality is presented as his solution to the enigma contained in the pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets.121 What is at play here is an active process of reinterpretation. As Thomas Allsen has pointed out with regards to knowledge transfers in the Mongol era: encounters with foreign knowledge can bring about changes in the receiving culture which are not necessarily limited to just direct borrowing or translation – encounters with foreign knowledge can also bring change by way of reformulation or reconfiguration.

Into Anatolia Around 450km west of Trebizond, along the Black Sea coast and then slightly south, lies the town of Amasya. In 1308 Amasya came under Ilkhanid rule and, in the same year, a hospital was built there. The epitaph above the entrance to the hospital links it directly to the Ilkhanid court in Tabriz.122 Indeed, as Bruno De Nicola has demonstrated, collections of letters composed by physicians demonstrate that they maintained an articulated network spanning Anatolia and the Ilkhanate, with close links to the ruling courts in both locations, as early as the mid-thirteenth century.123 In 1392 Amasya came under Ottoman rule. During the early period of the Ottoman Empire, Amasya was an important cultural and commercial centre. It was during that time that Şereffeddin Sabuncuoğlu (b. c. 1404, d. after c. 1469), who is known for several books he composed, served as physician in this hospital for fourteen years.124 As an anecdote recounted by Şereffeddin suggests, interactions with Central Asian medical knowledge were ongoing:

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A Tatar physician came, looked, and asked me why I was not using the method of cutting the vein off in the treatment of this disease. I told him I did not know how to do that and asked him to perform the incision. He incised certain veins from behind the ear of the patient.125

Figure 5.2  Turkish cautery chart, Supplément turc 693, fol. 42v. © Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

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In 1465–1466 Şereffeddin Sabuncuoğlu wrote Surgery of the Ilkhans (Cerrahiyei Ilhaniye),126 a Turkish adaptation of the surgical part of al-Zahrāwī’s (Abulcassis) book on surgery. The Cerrahiyei Ilhaniye is one of the first Islamic illustrated medical books. The illustrations however do not date from the time of Abulcassis, but were either added for the first time with the Turkish translation, or are based on an unknown intermediary.127 Scholars have argued whether the illustrations are based on an earlier Persian source or not, but what is more important for the context of transmission of medical knowledge is the inherent link between the text and the images which accompany it (Figure 5.2). While a detailed comparison between al-Zahrāwī’s book and Şereffeddin Sabuncuoğlu’s treatise is still a desideratum, it is clear that the book as we have it is not a translation, but includes Sabuncuoğlu’s additions and adaptations. With regards to his use of images to illustrate the procedures he describes, there is a clear affinity with the Uighur, Tibetan and Chinese moxibustion/cauterization material from Turfan and Dunhuang (see Chapter 4).

Motion and knowledge-making We can now return to Pamela Smith’s idea of knowledge created in motion, and ask specifically: what moved? And how did that movement create medical knowledge? First, it is worth reiterating the precondition for the movements discussed here: the realignment of political powers, resulting in a realignment of ‘cultural meridians’ and an increased ease in traversing them. The movement of diplomats, merchants, Buddhist monks, Christian pilgrims and Mongol slaves across Eurasia provided multiple opportunities for cross-cultural transmissions. Following this precondition, perhaps the most obvious factor igniting movement of medical knowledge during the Mongol era was the movement of physicians, or more generally: people with a knowledge and interest in medicine, who were able to move between cultural boundaries with relative ease. Beyond the texts which they carried, these people of knowledge enabled movement of knowledge of two kinds: embodied knowledge and oral knowledge. The first was essential in even beginning to make sense of the celebrated art of Chinese pulse diagnosis. As anyone who has ever tried to master Chinese or Tibetan pulse diagnosis will testify, it is only with a master that one can learn what ‘rolling’, ‘hesitating’, ‘twisted in depth’ or ‘floating’ pulses might feel like.128 Texts

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on this topic are practically useless if not accompanied by someone who can interpret such elusive signs with a fingertip touch. Another important factor is oral knowledge, though the historical study of transmission of oral knowledge is a rarity for good reasons. While its traces are bound to be conjectural; like the case of Roger Bacon and the alchemical knowledge he may have gathered from William of Rubruck, in other cases such as secrets of military technology discussed here in relation to gunpowder, or encryption, we are perhaps standing on firmer ground.129 Traversing various aspects of knowledge in motion from this period, are also accounts of verified wonders, a unique synthesis of Wonder Literature with first-hand travel accounts.130 The accounts of Polo and William of Rubruck were where pilgrimage accounts met marvel books of the east and Alexander romances, a sort of ‘Wonders verified’ sub-genre.131 This sub-genre illustrates how narratives are not just narratives but they also define and shape interests and knowledge production. What about the ‘cultural meridians’? Did they also move, or at least shift a little? Standing at the epicentre of where those ‘cultural meridians’ merged, Rashīd al-Dīn gives us food for thought on this. In his introduction to the Tanksūqnāma, he clearly delineates the dividing lines: although the lands of Khiṭāy, Chīn, Māchīn, Sūlānqa (Goryeo?), Jurchen (Jūrja), Qarā-Khiṭāy and the Uyghur land, until the borders of Turkistan, and from the other end, until the boundaries of Hindustan, all differ in their languages and script, they nevertheless all follow the scientific books of the people of Khiṭāy (China). And this despite their differences in languages and schools of thought. For example, the Uyghur people, who have a separate language and script [from Chinese], [still] whatever they know about astronomy, they work from the books of the Chinese.132

While delineating these lines, he is also the mover and shaker of them. Or at least, he tried to be: of the monumental translation project from Chinese which he had in mind, he managed to achieve only a small fraction.133 But some traces of his impact, while minute and elusive are worth considering. The Chinese concept of qi was too difficult to comprehend and transmit, but led perhaps to a rethinking about how the blood flows in the body.134 Further impact might be even more elusive, yet perhaps stemmed from these co-existent multiple ways of looking at the workings of the body, along with the new technologies of knowledge production.

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Modes of knowledge production One important point that emerges from looking at the co-existence of multiple medical systems and their various ways of interacting with one another, are ways of reaction and interaction to emerging means of the production of knowledge. Chinese papermaking and printing left a profound impression on Rashīd alDīn, inspiring him to provide equivalent production. The new technologies for knowledge construction were also moving at this time: the use of paper for the production of medical texts and images, and with it the popularization of the medical image as a means of instruction. The proliferation of paper made transmissions of images of the body for practical uses easier. With large sheets of fine quality paper becoming available during this period, we find the emergence of illustrated books135 – and within them medical books with images of the body. As we have shown with regards to the moxa-cautery images travelling between the Chinese, Tibetan and Uighur spheres, it was practical knowledge, quick to understand and easy to use that travelled easily between these cultural spheres.136 Key to this sort of knowledge transfer is the medium: the text-image amalgams were essential for the ease of traversing cultural boundaries, enabling quick and easy medical practice, in the form of: ‘For x and y ailments, heat z times at q location’, with simple to follow illustrations of the bodily locations in question.137 In his explanation of why he chose to write his treatise in Turkish, Şereffeddin explains that many of the physicians of his day are illiterate, and that even among those who can read, they can only read Turkish. While the assertion of illiterate physicians is somewhat bewildering, and even if this was an exaggerated claim, it is indicative and sheds light not only on the resort to writing in a local language but also to the innovative use of text and illustration. Other visual representations were transmitted in the Tanksūqnāma as well: beyond the images of the body, the text also features a magic square representing a synopsis of links between the micro- and macro-cosmos.138 Interestingly, forms of magic squares feature in the first examples of transmission of print, suggesting that Muslims developed the tradition of block-printing amulets as a result of their contacts with Buddhists.139 How far west and how deep did these innovations go? Roxann Prazniak, who has analysed Mongol influences on Italian art, demonstrated that the intensive links between various Italian city-states and the Ilkhanid court, went beyond extensive two-way travel, and included artistic mutual influences

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leading to profound innovations, primarily in Siena, for example in the realistic representation of human movement found in this period in Italian art.140 Can we argue the same for medical illustration? Seyyed Hossein Nasr has suggested that the illustrations of the Tanksūqnāma in all likelihood influenced the new school of anatomy in fourteenth-century Italy, whose founder, Mundinus de Bologna (Mondino de Luzzi, b. c. 1270) was familiar with Islamic sources on medical science.141 Considering what we know now about links between Venice, Genoa, Siena, Naples, Sicily and the Ilkhans, in trade, diplomacy and art, this suggestion seems very probable, though it does merit more research.

Afterword Lingering effects: From Shambhala to Shangri-La

The topos of the Orient as a source of knowledge has had a long history. This long history has had a lingering effect, not only on how ‘the Orient’ has been viewed but also on how it has been studied. As Donald Lopez put it, these were ongoing manifestations, ‘in which the West perceives some lack within itself and fantasizes that the answer, through a process of projection, is to be found somewhere in the East’.1 The notion of India as a source of knowledge held sway in Europe for several centuries,2 but with European colonialism, its value plummeted: India had to be seen as backward and corrupt, incapable of governing itself, so that its colonization seemed wholly justified.3 Tibet, however, which was closed to Europeans, could assume its place as an imagined domain of lost wisdom. Notions of Tibet, Shambhala and later, Shangri-La, thus became interlinked.4 Shambhala, a legendary abode where the elaborate teachings of the Kālacakra Tantra are said to be preserved and practised, became widely known in the west in the nineteenth century through the writings of Madame H. Blavatsky (1831–1891). Blavatsky, who along with Colonel H. S. Olcott founded the Theosophical Society in 1875, had a key role in bringing ideas about India, Tibet and Buddhism to Europe. They revived and reformulated the old idea of an Eastern primeval lost wisdom. Blavatsky referred to Shambhala as a ‘fabled’ land, somewhere in the north-west of Tibet, where a selected few belonging to a spiritual race, descendants of the ‘sons of wisdom’, took refuge.5 Another figure whose views on Shambhala had a major influence over the way it has evolved in the west, was the Russian painter, mystic master, founder of the Agni Yoga movement and peace activist Nikolai Roerich (1874–1947). Roerich held a strong belief that the current cosmic era is about to end and that the future Buddha Maitreya was about to appear in Shambhala. The Roerich family: Nikolai, his wife Helena and son George (Yuri), believed that through a

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careful study of the myth of Shambhala along with an actual geographical search, they would be able to locate it somewhere in the Altai Mountains. It was these ideas that inspired the two major expeditions of the Roerich family to Central Asia, sponsored by the Roosevelt administration.6 These ideas also propelled George Roerich’s studies of the Kālacakra at Urusvati.7 There was even a secret plan which this influential family and their followers had for establishing an actual Shambhala state somewhere in the Himalayas or southern Siberia.8 Some of Blavatsky and Roerich’s ideas were echoed in James Hilton’s notion of Shangri-La, the western variant of Shambhala, which features in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, with which I began this book.9 The book was later adapted into a popular Hollywood film by the same name, directed by Frank Capra (1937). Hilton depicted Shangri-La as a repository of knowledge with a ChristianBuddhist orientation, portraying it as a ‘monastery with a library of European books’. Hilton’s Shangri-La monastery is a Christian one built on the same place as a previous Buddhist monastery. The so-called lamas are depicted as Tibetan and Chinese, but the ‘head lama’ is European. Their main achievement is described as having found the secret to eternal (actually: very long) life, using Yoga and unnamed drugs. Hilton’s Shangri-La is portrayed as the only safe place for when the great war begins (the book was published in 1933!). Hilton, it should be noted, travelled no farther than the British Library. According to his biographer, Hilton’s idea of Shangri-La sprung from his imagination, most probably as a result of reading some of Josef Rock’s articles in the National Geographic.10 The view of Tibet as a repository of knowledge and as the cure for the declining Western culture has had its resonance both in New Age thinking and in the way Tibetan Buddhists themselves, and most notably the fourteenth Dalai Lama, have been speaking about Tibetan Buddhism. Since 1959, the image of Tibetan Buddhism as the best preserved variety of Buddhism has also been promoted by many Buddhologists. The topos of lost and found precious knowledge has been recurring and powerful for other reasons too – stories about buried texts have had some concrete dramatic manifestations. Take the texts discussed in this book: the buried Bower Manuscript, the Dunhuang manuscripts and the discarded documents of the Cairo Genizah. Although the historical conditions and cultural contexts that have led to their hiddenness are different, what unites them is our interest in them. What further unites them are the colonial conditions which led to their ‘discoveries’, acquisitions and subsequent studies, of which this book itself is a product.11 The narrative of lost knowledge has also been at the heart of what has been the dominant European historiography of the history of medicine –

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and indeed of the history of science at large. Put bluntly, this narrative states: ‘European knowledge, originally developed in Greece, was lost for Europe for a thousand years. Happily, the Muslims kept it alive during this time. It was then translated back into Latin and hence returned to Europe.’ The Arabic into Latin translations were presented as reclaiming what was originally European, failing to acknowledge a millennium of Islamic contributions, and their various interactions with Asian input. Although this Eurocentric essentialist description has been debunked by historians of science for quite some time, it still lingers on in secondary literature. How can we understand the persistence of this narrative? Deeply ingrained narratives are not so easy to rewrite, in spite of best evidence against them. Annette Yoshiko Reed’s analysis of the Syriac corpus and what it tells us about the Eurocentric historiography of religion, is relevant for the historiography of medicine too. As Reed points out, the persistent Eurocentric narrative on history of science and philosophy was adopted as a result of the European appropriation of the Greek and Roman pasts during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. It resulted in scholars taking for granted ‘a notion of the history of “the West” as a unilinear narrative – a narrative that begins with ancient Greeks, continues with the Roman Empire and Latin Christendom, and culminating with the European Renaissance and Enlightenment’.12 This overall narrative is generally how the history of medicine has been presented. Reed’s analysis within a more general context is applicable for the history of medicine: ‘the formative era between the journey of the first European envoy to the Mongol Empire in the late thirteenth century and the consolidation of the Anglo-European tradition of scholarship on Sanskrit, Chinese and other Asian languages in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was also the same era that saw the promotion of now-familiar notions like “Classics” and “Western Civilization”’.13 The same era, she argues, also heralded a historiography that saw Europe as the rightful heir of ancient Greek philosophy and science, failing to acknowledge that important centres of learning were situated either in the eastern Mediterranean or east of the Mediterranean. The sources produced in these unacknowledged centres, can help us to ‘re-orient’ Eurocentric historiography and explore translations to and from forgotten or marginalized languages. These once great, but now forgotten hubs of trade and culture – like Dunhuang, Fustat or Tabriz – were where great enterprises of translations took place. The texts produced in these centres reflect and promote cultures of translation, from cultures near and far. This book has brought to the fore a number of bridging languages, narratives, geographical nexuses, substances, artefacts, practices and technologies, which

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illustrate the importance of the ‘orient’ as integral to histories of medicine. It has sought to elucidate some of the ways in which these languages, narratives, geographical nexuses, substances, artefacts, practices and technologies have been intertwined within themselves as well as within the grander Eurasian context. There is still much to do in these largely uncharted territories. My hope is that this book will encourage further explorations of Eurasian histories of medicine.

Notes Preface 1 Herodotus, The Histories, Book Four, chapter 45, Aubrey de Sélincourt (trans.) and John M. Marincolo (Introduction and notes) (London: Penguin [1954] 2003), 254. 2 Details are provided in the bibliography. 3 Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘The Silk-Roads as a Model for Exploring Eurasian Transmissions of Medical Knowledge: Views from the Tibetan Medical Manuscripts of Dunhuang’, in Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia, ed. Pamela Smith (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 47–62. 4 Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Exploring Eurasian Transmissions of Medical Knowledge: Cue from the Hebrew Book of Asaf’, in Defining Jewish Medicine: Transfer of Medical Knowledge in Jewish Cultures and Traditions: Proceedings of a One-Day Panel-Section at the X. Congress of the European Association of Jewish Studies (EAJS), 24.07.2014, at Sorbonne/ Ecole Normale Superieur (Ens), Paris, ed. Lennart Lehmhaus (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020, in press). 5 ‘Galen in Asia?’, in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Galen, ed. Petros BourasVallianatos and Barbara Zipser (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 594–608. 6 Vivienne Lo and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Travelling Light: Sino-Tibetan Moxa-Cautery from Dunhuang’, in Imagining Chinese Medicine, ed. Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 271–290.

Introduction 1 This introduction is an extended version of Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘The Silk Roads as a Model for Exploring Eurasian Transmissions of Medical Knowledge: Views from the Tibetan Medical Manuscripts of Dunhuang’, in Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia, ed. Pamela Smith (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2019), 47–62. 2 For an overview on these views see the posts on ‘Secrets of the Cave’ on Sam van Schaik’s ‘Early Tibet blog’, available: www.earlytibet.com (accessed December 2019).

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3 For more details on the Dunhuang collections as well as digital images of some of the manuscripts see the website of the International Dunhuang Project, based at the British Library, available: idp.bl.uk (accessed December 2019). 4 For studies on the Chinese medical manuscripts from Dunhuang, see: Vivienne Lo and Christopher Cullen (eds), Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005); Catherine Despeux (ed.), Médecine, Religion et societe dans la Chine medievale: étude de manuscrits chinois de Dunhuang et de Turfan (3 vols, Paris: Collège de France, 2010); and numerous works by Chen Ming, for example, Chen Ming, ‘The Transmission of Indian Ayurvedic Doctrines in Medieval China: A Case Study of Aṣṭāṅga and Tridoṣa Fragments from the Silk Road’, Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University for the Academic Year 2005 (2005): 201–230, and Chen Ming, ‘La Médecine dans la région de turfan à l’époque médiévale interactions entre chinois et hu’, in Catherine Despeux (ed.), Médecine, religion et société, vol. 2, 641–709. For an overview of the relevance of the Dunhuang manuscripts to the history of science, see Rong Xinjiang, ‘Dunhuang Studies and the History of Science and Technology’, in Rong Xinjiang, Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang, trans. Imre Galambos (Leiden: Brill, 2013). The only Tibetan medical texts from Dunhuang which have been studies till now in any Western language are those dealing with horse veterinary: Anne-Marie Blondeau, Matériaux pour l’étude de l’hippologie et de l’hippiatrie tibétaines: à partir des manuscripts de Touen-houang (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1972). 5 See Vivienne Lo and Li Jianmin, ‘Manuscripts, Received Texts and the Healing Arts’, in China’s Early Empires: A Re-appraisal, ed. Michael Nylan and Michael Loewe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 367–397. 6 On their formidable discoveries and lives, see Janet Soskice, Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers found the Hidden Gospels (London: Vintage Books, 2010). On the significance of their scholarship, see Rebecca J. W. Jefferson, ‘Sisters of Semitics: A Fresh Appreciation of the Scholarship of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson’, Medieval Feminist Forum 45, no. 1 (2009): 23–49. 7 Solomon Schechter, ‘A Hoard of Hebrew MSS’, The Times (3 August 1897): 13. 8 For an online catalogue see: www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/ taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit/projects/medicine-medieval-egypt. See also: H. D. Isaacs (with the assistance of C. F. Baker), Medical and Para-medical Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Efraim Lev and Zohar Amar, Practical Materia Medica of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean According to the Cairo Genizah (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Leigh Chipman and Efraim Lev, Medical Prescriptions in the Cambridge Genizah Collections: Practical Medicine and Pharmacology in Medieval Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

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9 P. Fenton, ‘The Importance of the Cairo Genizah for the History of Medicine’, Medical History 24 (1980): 347–348. The medical writings of the Genizah have been studied in the last two decades by Lev, Amar and Chipman. For a detailed bibliography of medical writings from the Genizah, see Chapter 4. 10 This is now changing. Some of the important work that has appeared in the last few years includes Sonja Brentjes and Jürgen Renn (eds), Globalization of Knowledge in the Post-Antique Mediterranean, 700–1500 (London: Routledge, 2016); Jürgen Renn (ed.), The Globalization of Knowledge in History (Berlin: Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge, Studies 1, 2012); Markham J. Geller (ed.), Melammu: The Ancient World in an Age of Globalization (Berlin: Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge, Proceedings, 7, 2014); Feza Günergun and Dhruv Raina (eds), Science between Europe and Asia: Historical Studies on the Transmission, Adoption and Adaptation of Knowledge (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011). On the transmission of knowledge along the Silk Roads, see the special issue of Diogenes 43, no. 171 (1995). 11 See, for example, Jürgen Renn and Malcolm D. Hyman, ‘The Globalization of Knowledge in History: An Introduction’, in Renn (ed.), The Globalization of Knowledge in History. 12 Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 324–325; Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 25; Roxann Prazniak, ‘Ilkhanid Buddhism: Traces of a Passage in Eurasian History’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, no. 3 (2014): 650–680. See also Carlo Ginzburg’s notion of traces/ clues: Carlo Ginzburg and Anna Davin, ‘Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method’, History Workshop 9 (1980): 5–36; Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, in Clues, Myths and the Historical Method, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 96–125. 13 Renn and Hyman, ‘The Globalization of Knowledge in History: An Introduction’, 18. 14 No studies of the Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang have been published to date in any European language, except my own. Details are in the bibliography. A printed edition of the Tibetan medical manuscripts from Dunhuang has been published in China: Luo Bingfen et al. (eds), Tun hong nas thon pa’i bod kyi gso rig yig cha gces bsdus, (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2002). For the Book of Asaf, no proper edition or translation has been published to date. For a bibliography of previous studies of the Book of Asaf, see Chapter 1. 15 Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Arts of the Contact Zone’, Profession 33 and 40 (1991) and Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992).

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16 Anna Akasoy and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Along the Musk Routes: Exchanges between Tibet and the Islamic World’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 3, no. 2 (2007): 217–240; Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Islam and Tibet: Cultural Interactions – An Introduction’, in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, ed. Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (Farnham: Ashgate 2011), 1–16. 17 1877 and 1877–1912 (lecture and book), Ferdinand von Richthofen, ‘Über die zentralasiatischen Seidenstrassen bis zum 2.Jh n. Chr.’, Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin (1877): 96–122; Daniel C. Waugh, ‘Richthofen’s “Silk Roads”: Towards the Archaeology of a Concept’, The Silk Road 5, no. 1 (2007): 1–10. 18 For a concise and illuminating overview of many of these areas, see James Millward, The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 19 ‘The spaces in between’ was a phrase used by the British explorer and politician Rory Stewart. See Millward, The Silk Road. 20 David Christian, ‘Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History’, Journal of World History 2, no. 1 (2000): 1–26. 21 Khodadad Rezakhani, ‘The Road that Never Was: The Silk Road and TransEurasian Exchange’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30, no. 3 (2010): 420–433. 22 Susan Whitfield, ‘Was there a Silk Road?’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 3, no. 2 (2007): 201–213. 23 See Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). 24 David Christian, ‘Silk Roads or Steppe Roads?’. 25 For a cross-cultural overview, see Geoffrey Lloyd, ‘Medicine’, in Disciplines in the Making: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Elites, Learning and Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 76–92. 26 M. J. Geller, Ancient Babylonian Medicine: Theory and Practice (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2010). See my discussion: ‘Between Medicine and Ritual: Tibetan “Medical Rituals” from Dunhuang’, in Tibetan and Himalayan Healing: An Anthology for Anthony Aris, ed. Charles Ramble and Ulrike Roesler (Kathmandu: Vajra Publications, 2015), 739–746. 27 See, for example, Geoffrey Samuel, ‘The Effectiveness of Goddesses, or, how Ritual Works’, Anthropological Forum 11, no. 1 (2001): 73–91. 28 See, for example, Monica H. Green (ed.), Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death (Kalamazoo: Arc Medieval Press, 2015). 29 Jonathan Bloom, Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); Jonathan Bloom, ‘Silk Road or Paper Road?’, Silk Road 3, no. 2 (2005): 21–26; Millward, The Silk Road, 72–76; Valerie Hansen, Silk Road: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 16, 137–139.

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30 Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, Written on Bamboo and Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, [1962] 2004), 146. 31 Ibid. For more on origins of paper, see A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, ‘Who was the Inventor of Rag-Paper?’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1903): 663–684; Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, ‘Paper and Printing’, Science and Civilization in China, Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part I: Paper and Printing, ed. Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 32 Saying: ‘If without reason one’s hair stands erect like worms, whiskers or eyebrows, he will have met with evil air. To counteract, one can boil a hemp shoe with [or into] paper, and the evil will be expelled’. Quoted in Tsuen-hsuin, Written on Bamboo and Silk, 147. 33 Ibid., 146–147; reproduction on 156. See also Hansen, Silk Road: A New History, 16. 34 Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 35 Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books, chapter 6. See also: Tsuenhsuin, Science and Civilization in China, Volume 5, 296; B. Schindler, ‘Preliminary Account of the Work of Henri Maspero Concerning the Chinese Documents on Wood and Paper Discovered by Sir Aurel Stein on his Third Expedition in Central Asia’, Asia Major 1 (1949): 216–264. 36 Rong Xinjiang, Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang, ed. and trans. Imre Galambos (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 424–425, and Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books, 180. 37 Tsuen-hsuin, Science and Civilization in China, Volume 5, 296–297. 38 Quoted in Tsuen-hsuin, Written on Bamboo and Silk, 159; from Édouard Chavannes, Les Documents chinois découverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan oriental (Oxford: Imprimerie de l’Université, 1913), nos. 969, 970, 971. 39 On the Sogdian Ancient Letters see: Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (Leiden: Brill, 2005); N. Sims-Williams, ‘The Sogdian Ancient Letter II’, in Philologica et Linguistica. Historia, Pluralitas, Universitas. Festschrift für Helmut Humbach zum 80. Geburtstag am 4. Dezember 2001, ed. M. G. Schmidt and W. Bisang (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2001), 267–280; F. Grenet and N. SimsWilliams, ‘The Historical Context of the Sogdian Ancient Letters’, in Transition Periods in Iranian History, Actes du Symposium de Fribourg-en-Brisgau (22–24 Mai 1985) (Leuven: E. Peeters, 1987), 101–122; Frantz Grenet, Nicholas Sims-Williams and Étienne de la Vaissière, ‘The Sogdian Ancient Letter V’, in Alexander’s Legacy in the East: Studies in Honor of Paul Bernard, Bulletin of the Asia Institute 12 (1998): 91–104. 40 Ofir Haim, Michael Shenkar and Sharof Kurbanov, ‘The Earliest Arabic Documents Written on Paper: Three Letters from Sanjar-Shah (Tajikistan)’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 43 (2016): 141–189.

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41 Vladimir Minorsky (trans.), Ḥudūd al-ʿālam: The Regions of the World. A Persian Geography (London: Messrs. Luzac & Co., 1937), 113. 42 Pelliot tibétain 127, lines 174–175. See my ‘Central Asian Mélange: Early Tibetan Medicine from Dunhuang’, in Scribes, Texts, and Rituals in Early Tibet and Dunhuang, ed. Brandon Dotson, Kazushi Iwao and Tsuguhito Takeuchi (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013), 53–60. 43 Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Islam and Tibet: Cultural Interactions – An Introduction’, and Dan Martin, ‘Greek and Islamic Medicines’ Historical Contact with Tibet: A Reassessment in View of Recently Available but Relatively Early Sources on Tibetan Medical Eclecticism’, in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, 1–16 and 117–143 respectively. 44 Rudolf Sellheim and Mohsen Zakeri, ‘Fehrest’, Encyclopaedia Iranica (2012), available: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/fehrest (accessed December 2019). 45 Sellheim and Zakeri, ‘Fehrest’. 46 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihirst. Quoted in Bloom, The Invention of Paper, 44. 47 A. K. S. Lambton, ‘The Āthār wa Aḥyā’ of Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh Hamadānī and his Contribution as an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturalist’, in The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, ed. R. Amitai-Preiss and D. O. Morgan (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 139. 48 Bloom, The Invention of Paper. On the impact of paper on Muslim inner Asia, see David Roxburgh, The Persian Album 1400–1600: From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 159–165. 49 Pierce Salguero, ‘Toward a Global History of Buddhism and Medicine’, Buddhist Studies Review 32, no. 1 (2015): 35–61. See also Victor Mair, ‘Buddhism and the Rise of the Written Vernacular in East Asia: The Making of National Languages’, The Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 3 (1994): 707–751. 50 See Vivienne Lo and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Travelling Light: Sino-Tibetan Moxacautery from Dunhuang’, in Imagining Chinese Medicine, ed. Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 271–290. 51 For accounts on everyday lives based on the Genizah manuscripts, see S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (6 vols, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–1993). For accounts on everyday lives based on the Dunhuang manuscripts, see Susan Whitfield, Life along the Silk Road (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015). 52 Ming, ‘La Médecine dans la région’, 641–709. 53 On the Siddhasāra, see Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘The Silk-Roads as a Model’. 54 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society. 55 Editions, translations and studies of these documents have been published in: S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents

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57

58 59 60

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from the Cairo Geniza (‘India Book’) (Leiden: Brill, 2007); India Book I: Joseph Lebdī – Prominent India Trader, Cairo Geniza Documents (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2009) [Hebrew]; India Book II: Maḍmūn Nagid of Yemen and the India Trade, Cairo Geniza Documents (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2010) [Hebrew]; and India Book III: Abraham Ben Yijū – India Trader and Manufacturer, Cairo Geniza Documents (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2009) [Hebrew]; M. A. Friedman, India Book IV-A: Ḥalfon and Judah ha-Levi: The Lives of a Merchant Scholar and a Poet Laureate according to the Cairo Geniza Documents (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2013) [Hebrew], and S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman with the assistance of A. Ashur, Indian Book IV-B: Ḥalfon the Travelling Merchant Scholar: Cairo Geniza Documents (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2013) [Hebrew]. Scholarship on Geniza trade is extensive. For a recent study, see Jessica L. Goldberg, Trade and Institutions in the Medieval Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith, Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018). I thank Yossef Rapoport for sharing the relevant chapters with me. See also their previous publications: Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith, An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The ‘Book of Curiosities’, Edited with an Annotated Translation (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Yossef Rapoport, ‘The Book of Curiosities: A Medieval Islamic View of the East’, in The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road, ed. Philippe Forêt and Andreas Kaplony (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 151–171. Akasoy and Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Along the Musk Routes’. Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Islam and Tibet: Cultural Interactions – An Introduction’. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, ‘The Mediterranean and “the New Thalassology”’, American Historical Review (June 2006): 722–740. I thank Professor Luca Mola who raised this point during our discussions at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin), as part of the Entangled Itineraries of Materials, Recipes, Practices and Knowledge across Eurasia, 750–1800 project led by Professor Pamela Smith. See David Abulafia, ‘Mediterraneans’, in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. William Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 64–93; Peregrine Horden, ‘Situations Both Alike? Connectivity, the Mediterranean, the Sahara’, in Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa, ed. James McDougall and Judith Scheele (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 25–38; David Abulafia, ‘Mediterranean History as Global History’, History and Theory 50, no. 2 (2011): 220–228. See M. Vink, ‘Indian Ocean Studies and the “New Thalassology”’, Journal of Global History 2 (2007): 41–62; K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the

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Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). For an overview of historiography, see S. Prange ‘Scholars and the Sea: A Historiography of the Indian Ocean’, History Compass 6 (2008): 1382–1393. 63 See the contribution by Amanda Respess and Lisa Niziolek, ‘Exchanges and Transformations in Gendered Medicine on the Maritime Silk Road: Evidence from the Thirteenth-Century Java Sea Wreck’, in Histories of Medicine and Healing in the Indian Ocean World: The Medieval and Early Modern Period, vol. 1, ed. Anna Winterbottom and Facil Tesfaye (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 64 See, for example, Winterbottom and Tesfaye (eds.), Histories of Medicine and Healing in the Indian Ocean World; and my review of it in Social History of Medicine 30, no. 4 (November 2017): 852–854. 65 Salguero, ‘Toward a Global History of Buddhism and Medicine’, 49. 66 The Third SEECHAC (Société Européenne pour l’Étude des Civilisations de l’Himalaya et de l’Asie Centrale) International Conference held in the Vienna Academy of Sciences in 2013 was dedicated to ‘Interactions in the Himalayas and Central Asia’, dealing with processes of transfer, translation and transformation in art, archaeology, religion, polity and medicine. Within Silk Road visual cultures it is worth mentioning here the Iranian and Sogdian influences on early Tibetan art, demonstrated by Amy Heller and Melikian-Chirvani. See Amy Heller, ‘Preliminary Remarks on Painted Coffin Panels from Tibetan Tombs’, in Scribes, Texts and Rituals in Early Tibet and Dunhuang, ed. Brandon Dotson, Kazushi Iwao and Tsuguhito Takeuchi (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013), 11–23; Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, ‘Iran to Tibet’, in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, 89–115. 67 Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Mohaghegh (eds), Al-As’ilah wa’l-Ajwibah (Questions and Answers) (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1995); Al-Bīrūnī, In den Gärten der Wissenschaft: Ausgewählte Texte aus den Werken des muslimischen Universalgelehrten, trans. and commentary, Gotthard Strohmeier (Leipzig: Reclam, 1991), 49–65. For Ibn-Sīnā’s life, see William E. Gohlman, The Life of Ibn Sina: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation (New York: SUNY Press, 1974). 68 C. E. Bosworth, ‘Bukhara ii. From the Arab Invasions to the Mongols’, Encyclopaedia Iranica (2000), available: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ bukhara-ii (accessed October 2017). 69 As put by S. Frederick Starr, Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 4. 70 Hansen, Silk Road: A New History, 26; Aurel Stein, On Central-Asian Tracks: Brief Narrative of Three Expeditions in Innermost Asia and North-Western China (London: Macmillan, 1933), 1–2; Valéria Escauriaza-Lopez, ‘Aurel Stein’s Methods

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73 74 75

76

77 78 79

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and Aims in Archaeology on the Silk Road’, in Sir Aurel Stein, Colleagues and Collections, ed. Helen Wang (London: British Museum Publication, 2012). See Takata Tokio, ‘Multilingualism in Tun-huang’, Acta Asiatica: Bulletin of the Institute of Eastern Culture 78 (2000): 49–70. Shaul Shaked, ‘Judaeo-Persian letter from Dandan-Uiliq’, in The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith, ed. Susan Whitfield (London: The British Library, 2004), 221–222. For numismatics, see Jonathan Skaff, ‘Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins from Turfan: Their Relationship to International Trade and the Local Economy’, Asia Major 9, no. 2 (1998): 67–115. Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press), 2003. Akasoy and Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Along the Musk Routes’, 217–240. See T. Takeuchi, ‘Sociolinguistic Implications of the Use of Tibetan in East Turkestan from the End of Tibetan Domination through the Tangut Period (9th-12th c.)’, in Turfan Revisited: The First Century of Research into the Arts and Cultures of the Silk Road, ed. D. Durkin-Meisterernst et al. (Berlin: Reimer, 2004), 341‒348; G. Uray, ‘L’Emploi du Tibétain dans les chancelleries des états du Kan-sou et de Khotan postérieurs à la domination tibétaine’, Journal Asiatique 269 (1981): 81‒90. On the concept and history of lingua franca in the singular and the plural, see European Commission, Directorate-General for Translation, Studies on Translation and Multilingualism: Lingua Franca: Chimera or Reality? (Luxembourg: EUR-OP, 2011). Jocelyne Dakhlia, Lingua Franca (Arles: Actes Sud, 2008). Tokio, ‘Multilingualism in Tun-huang’. Previously referred to as ‘Nestorians’. On why the term ‘Nestorian’ in this context should be replaced by either ‘Church of the East’ or ‘Church of Persia’, see Peter L. Hofrichter, ‘Preface’, in Jingjiao: The Church of the East in China and Central Asia, ed. Roman Malek (Sankt Augustin: Monumenta Serica, 2006), 11–14. The remarks on Syriac as a vehicle of transmission of medical knowledge on the Silk Road are based on my, ‘Re-visiting “Galen in Tibet”’, Medical History 56, no. 3 (July 2012). For an overview see, Mark Dickens, ‘Syriac Christianity in Central Asia’, in The Syriac World, ed. Daniel King (London: Routledge, 2019), 583–624. According to Baum and Winkler, Merv (present-day Uzbekistan) may have been Christianized as early as 360. Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler, The Church of the East: A Concise History (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), 46. Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Die Begegnung von Christentum, Gnosis und Buddhismus an der Seidenstrasse (Düsseldorf: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), 11–12. See also Colless, ‘The Nestorian Province of Samarqand’, 51–57.

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82 Dickens, ‘Syriac Christianity’, and Hidemi Takahashi, ‘Syriac Christianity in China’, in King (ed.), The Syriac World, 625–652; Roman Malek (ed.), Jingjiao: The Church of the East in China and Central Asia (Sankt Augustin: Monumenta Serica, 2006); Li Tang and Dietmar W. Winkler (eds), Winds of Jingjiao: Studies on Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia (Zürich: Lit Verlag, 2016); Michael S. Kordosis, T’ang China, The Chinese Nestorian Church and ‘Heretical’ Byzantium (Ioannina, 2008); Li Tang, A Study of the History of Nestorian Christianity in China and its Literature in Chinese: Together with a New English Translation of the Dunhuang Nestorian Documents (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002). See also Paul Pelliot, L’Inscription Nestorienne de Si-ngan-fou, ed. with supplements by A. Forte (Kyoto/Paris: Scuola di Studi sull’Asia Orientale/ Collège de France, 1996). Malek’s edited collection also includes an extensive bibliography on this topic. 83 For an overview and translation of the Chinese Nestorian documents from Dunhuang, see Li Tang, A Study, 103–204. 84 Dickens, ‘Syriac Christianity’, 594. 85 See the various relevant chapters in Jean Dauvillier, Histoire et institutions des églises orientales au Moyen Age (London: Variorum Reprints, 1983). 86 Colless has mentioned a rock at Drangtse in Ladakh which has three Nestorian (‘Maltese’) crosses engraved on it, together with inscriptions in Sogdian, Tibetan and other languages. B. E. Colless, ‘The Nestorian Province of Samarqand’, AbrNahrain 24 (1986): 51–57, 52; Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, ‘Das Kreuzessymbol in der zentralasiatischen Religionsbegegnung’, Zeitschrift für Religions und Geistesgeschichte 31 (1979): 103–104. For a photo of the Drangtse rock, see Gerd Gropp, Archäologische Funde aus Khotan, Chinesisch-Ostturkestan (Bremen: Verlag Friedrich Röver, 1974), 367. 87 For more details, see Géza Uray, ‘Tibet’s Connections with Nestorianism and Manicheism in the 8th–10th Centuries’, in Contributions on Tibetan Language, History and Culture: Proceedings of the Csoma de Kőrös Symposium held at VelmVienna, Austria, 13–19 September 1981, ed. E. Steinkellner and H. Tauscher (Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien Universitität Wien, 1983), vol. 1, 399–429. See also the various relevant chapters in Dauvillier, Histoire et institutions des églises oriental. 88 See primarily the studies by Raymond Le Coz: Les Médecins Nestoriens au Moyen Âge: Les maîtres des Arabes (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004) and Les Chrétiens dans la médicine Arabe (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006). 89 Miklós Maróth, ‘Ein Fragment eines syrischen pharmazeutischen Rezeptbuches aus Turfan’, Altorientalische Forschungen 11 (1984): 115–125. The fragment discussed by Maróth is a Syriac prescription from the ninth or tenth century, dealing with hair loss. For Christian Sogdian pharmacological texts, see Nicholas Sims-Williams and Dieter Maue, ‘Pharmacological Texts’, in From Liturgy to Pharmacology: Christian Sogdian Texts from the Turfan Collection (Turnhout:

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91 92

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Brepols, 2019), 89–94. See also Peter Zieme, ‘Notes on Uighur Medicine, Especially on the Uighur Siddhasāra Tradition’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 3, no. 2 (2007): 308–322. Nicholas Sims-Williams, ‘Medical Texts from Turfan in Syriac and New Persian’ (unpublished paper) and Nicholas Sims-Williams, ‘Early New Persian in Syriac Script: Two Texts from Turfan’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 74, no. 3 (2011): 353–374. I would like to thank Professor Sims-Williams for sharing these papers with me. See also Nicholas Sims-Williams, ‘Sogdian and Turkish Christians in the Turfan and Tun-huang manuscripts’, in Turfan and Tunhuang: The Texts, ed. Alfredo Cadonna (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1992), 51 and 54. Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 19–20. Siam Bhayro, ‘The Reception of Galen’s Art of Medicine in the Syriac Book of Medicines’, in Medical Books in the Byzantine World, ed. Barbara Zipser (Bologna: Eikasmós, 2013), 123–144; Siam Bhayro, ‘Theory and Practice in the Syriac Book of Medicines: The Empirical Basis for the Persistence of Near Eastern Medical Lore’, in In the Wake of the Compendia: Infrastructural Contexts and the Licensing of Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Mesopotamia, ed. J. Cale Johnson (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 147–158. See also Stefanie Rudolf, ‘Die astraldivinatorischen Passagen des Syrischen Medizinbuches: Neu übersetzt und kommentiert’ (PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 2015) and Stefanie Rudolf, Syrische Astrologie und das Syrische Medizinbuch [Syriac astrology and the Syriac Book of Medicines] (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018). See the discussions in: Paolo Delaini, Medicina del Corpo, Medicina dell’anima: La circolazione delle Conoscenze Medico-Filosofiche nell’Iran Sasanide (Milano: Mimesis, 2013), esp. 7–120; Reinink, ‘Theology and Medicine’; Becker, Fear of God. For recent work on Syriac medicine, see the many publications by Grigory Kessel (a full list is available on his academia.edu page); Alexey Muraviev, ‘La médecine thérapeutique en syriaque (IVe-VIIIe siècle)’, in Les Sciences en syriaque, ed. Émilie Villey (Paris: Geuthner, 2014), 253–284; Siam Bhayro and Robert Hawley, ‘La Littérature botanique et pharmaceutique en langue syriaque’, in Les Sciences en syriaque, 285–318. See also: Gerrit Reinink, ‘Theology and Medicine in Jundishapur: Cultural Change in the Nestorian School Tradition’, in Learned Antiquity: Scholarship and Society in the Near East, the Greco-Roman World, and the Early Medieval West, ed. Alasdair A. MacDonald, Gerrit Jan Reinink and Michael Twomey (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 163–174; Gerrit Reinink, ‘Man as Microcosm: A Syriac Didactic Poem and its Prose Background’, in Calliope’s Classroom: Studies in Didactic Poetry from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Annette Harder, Alasdair A. MacDonald and Gerrit Jan Reinink (Leuven:

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96

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Notes Peeters, 2007), 123–152; Adam Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisbis and the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). See also Rudolf, ‘Die astraldivinatorischen Passagen’. The groundwork for this field was laid by the many works of Philippe Gignoux. For an overview and extensive bibliography, see Gad Freudenthal, ‘Science and Medicine’, in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 6, ed. Robert Chazan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 702–741. The corpus of works that were translated into Hebrew in the Middle Ages has been described by Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907) in his monumental Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (The Hebrew Translations in the Middle Ages and the Jews as Translators) (Berlin: 1893, reprinted Graz, 1956), which is still considered the definitive work in the field. For a first part of an updated English translation, see Moritz Steinschneider, The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages and the Jews as Transmitters, ed. Charles H. Manekin, Y. Tzvi Langermann and Hans Hinrich Biesterfeldt (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013). For an excellent survey of the engagement with science of medieval Jews, see Gad Freudenthal (ed.), Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). See also: Y. Tzvi Langermann, ‘On the Beginnings of Hebrew Scientific Literature and on Studying History through “Maqbilot” [Parallels]’, Aleph 2 (2002): 169–190; Y. Tzvi Langermann, ‘Was There Science in Ashkenaz?’, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 8 (2009): 1–26. On Syriac as a language of transmission see the many works by Hidemi Takahashi, for example, ‘Syriac as a Vehicle for Transmission of Knowledge across Borders of Empires’, Horizons 5 (2014): 29–52. For Aramaic see, for example, Jonathan Ben-Dov, Head of All Years: Astronomy and Calendars at Qumran in their Ancient Context, STDJ 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 245–287 and 140–146. Through his analysis of Qumran sources, Ben-Dov shows how Aramaic ‘served as a vehicle for the transmission and cross-cultural diffusion of Mesopotamian traditions’ into the various learned elites of the Mediterranean world, Jews and Hellenistic elites among them. See also Ben-Dov, ‘Scientific Writings in Aramaic and Hebrew at Qumran: Translation and Concealment’, in Aramaic Qumranica: The Aix-en Provence Colloquium on the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls, STDJ 94, ed. K. Berthelot and D. Stökl Ben Ezra (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 379–402. As put by William McNeil in his Foreword to A. Gunder Frank and B. K. Gills (eds), The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand Years? (London: Routledge, 1993). More generally on the need to move away from the dichotomy of ‘East’ and ‘West’ through a focus on Central Asia, see Susan Whitfield, ‘The Perils of Dichotomous

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102

103

104 105

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Thinking: A Case of Ebb and Flow Rather Than East and West’, in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed. Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 247–261. Sujit Sivasundaram, ‘Sciences and the Global: on Methods, Questions, and Theory’, Isis 101 (2010): 157. Sivasundaram, ‘Sciences and the Global’. For a published version of this paper, see Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘On Urine Analysis and Tibetan Medicine’s Connections with the West’, in Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society, ed. Sienna Craig, Mingji Cuomu, Frances Garrett and Mona Schrempf (Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2010), 195–211. This collaborative work has been published in a special Silk Roads issue of Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 3, no. 2 (2007), co-edited with Vivienne Lo; and two co-edited volumes with Anna Akasoy and Charles Burnett: Islam and Tibet, Interactions along the Musk Routes; and Rashīd al-Dīn as an Agent and Mediator of Cultural Exchanges in Ilkhanid Iran. Victor Mair, ‘Kinesis versus Stasis, Interaction versus Independent Invention’, in Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World, ed. Victor Mair (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 1–16. Ibid., 3. Arun Bala, The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 45. For my review of Bala, see Annals of Science 70, no. 4 (2013): 557–559. These are discussed in Renn and Hyman, ‘The Globalization of Knowledge in History: An Introduction’.

Chapter 1 1 Pieter W. van der Horst, Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Studies on Jewish Hellenism in Antiquity (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 143. 2 This chapter is based on my ‘Exploring Eurasian Transmissions of Medical Knowledge: Cues from the Hebrew Book of Asaf ’, in Jewish Traditions and the Transfer of Medical Knowledge: Proceedings of the Panel ‘Jewish Medicine in Context(s)’ at the 15th Congress of the European Association of Jewish Studies (EAJS), Paris, 20.-25.7.2015, ed. Lennart Lehmhaus (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, in press), as well as ‘Exploring Persian Lore in the Hebrew Book of Asaf ’, Aleph 18, no. 1 (2018): 123–146; Yoeli-Tlalim ‘Galen in Asia?’, in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Galen, ed. Petros Bouras-Vallianatos and Barbara Zipser (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 594–608; ‘Re-visiting “Galen in Tibet”’, Medical History 56,

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no. 3 (2012): 355–365, and ‘Medical Practices in Tibet’, in Routledge Handbook on Science in the Islamicate World: Practices from the 8th to the 19th Century, ed. Sonja Brentjes (Abingdon: Routledge, in press). Other parts have been presented in the workshops: ‘Found in Translation: A Conference on the World History of Science, ca. 1200–1600 CE’, University of Pittsburgh, October 2015 and ‘Translating Premodern Medicine: Materials, Visual Objects, Tools and Techniques’, Wellcome Collection, London, July 2017, and in the Asian Treasure Traditions Seminar, Merton College, Oxford, November 2017. I thank all organizers, editors and participants of these publications and workshops for their comments. 3 For the Graeco-Roman world, see Philip J. van der Eijk (ed.), Ancient Histories of Medicine: Essays in Medical Doxography and Historiography in Classical Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 1999). On origin narratives in Islamic sources: Keren Abou-Hershkovitz, ‘The Historiography of Science between the 10th and the 14th Centuries’ (PhD diss., Ben-Gurion University, 2008) [Hebrew], and Sonja Brentjes, ‘Narratives of Knowledge in Islamic Societies: What do they tell us about Scholars and their Contexts?’, Almagest 4, no. 1 (May 2013): 74–95. A Latin version of the Asaf origin narrative has been studied by Vivian Nutton, ‘From Noah to Galen: A Medieval Latin History of Medicine’, in Ritual Healing: Magic, Ritual and Medical Therapy from Antiquity until the Early Modern Period, ed. Ildikó Csepregi and Charles Burnett (Firenze: SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo, 2012), 53–69. On origin myths of Indian Medicine, see Kenneth Zysk, ‘Mythology and the Brahmanization of Indian Medicine: Transforming Heterodoxy into Orthodoxy’, in Categorisation and Interpretation: Indological and Comparative Studies from an International Indological Meeting at the Department of Comparative Philology, Göteborg University, ed. Folke Josephson (Göteborg: Adoptionscentrum, 1999), 125–145. I would like to thank Dominik Wujastyk for supplying this source. For an analysis of similar Tibetan narratives, see my ‘Re-visiting “Galen in Tibet”’, and my ‘Galen in Asia?’. 4 Main studies on Sefer Asaf include: Ludwig Venetianer, Asaf Judaeus: Der aelteste medizinische Schriftsteller in hebraeischer Sprache (Strassburg: Karl J. Tübner, 1916–17); Isidore Simon, Asaph Ha-Iehoudi (Paris: Librairie Lipschutz, 1933); Suessman Muntner, Introduction to the Book of Asaf the Physician (Jerusalem: Geniza, 1957) [Hebrew]; Aviv Melzer, ‘Asaph the Physician: The Man and His Book: A Historical Philological Study of the Medical Treatise, The Book of Drugs’ (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1972); Elinor Lieber, ‘Asaf ’s Book of Medicines: A Hebrew Encyclopedia of Greek and Jewish Medicine, possibly Compiled in Byzantium on an Indian Model’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38 (1984): 233–249; A. Bar-Sela and H. E. Hoff, ‘Asaf on Anatomy and Physiology’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 20 (1965): 358–389; S. Pines, ‘The Oath

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7 8

9

10 11 12

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of Asaph the Physician and Yohanan ben Zabda: Its Relation to the Hippocratic Oath and the Doctrina Duarum Viarum of the Didache’, Proceedings of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities 5, no. 9 (1975): 223–264; Joseph Shatzmiller, ‘Doctors and Medical Practices in Germany around the Year 1200: The Evidence of Sefer Asaph’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 50 (1983): 149–164; Vivian Nutton, ‘From Noah to Galen’; Tamás Visi, ‘Medieval Hebrew Uroscopic Texts: The Reception of Greek Uroscopic Texts in the Hebrew “Book of Remedies” Attributed to Asaf ’, in Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann and Robert Morrison (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), 162–197; and my ‘Exploring Persian Lore’. Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Exploring Persian Lore’; Tamás Visi, ‘Medieval Hebrew Uroscopic Texts’. Yitzhak Tzvi Langermann, ‘Was there a Science in Ashkenaz? The Ashkenazic Reception of Some Early‐Medieval Hebrew Scientific Texts’, Jahrbuch des SimonDubnow-Instituts 8 (2009): 67–92. Yoeli-Tlalim ‘Exploring Persian Lore’; Tamás Visi, ‘Jewish Physicians in Late Medieval Ashkenaz’, Social History of Medicine 32, no. 4 (3 January 2019): 670–690; Tamás Visi, ‘Sefer Asaf in Latin Translation? Hermogenas’ Uroscopy and Its Hebrew Source’, paper presented at the 11th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies, Krakow, 15–19 July 2018. I would like to thank Tamás Visi for sharing a copy of this paper with me. For the use of Hebrew in the area corresponding to present-day Iraq around the eighth to ninth centuries, see Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, ‘The Knowledge of Hebrew among Early Karaites, and its Use in Karaite Legal Contracts’, in Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yeduda, ed. William Horbury (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), 165–185; Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, ‘Karaite Linguistics: The “Renaissance” of the Hebrew Language among the Early Karaites, and Contemporary Linguistic Theories’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 7, no. 1 (1997): 81–100. Tamás Visi, ‘Sefer Asaf in Latin Translation?’ For a discussion of the main manuscripts, with an emphasis on those containing the Introduction discussed here, see my ‘Exploring Eurasian Transmissions of Medical Knowledge’. Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Exploring Persian Lore’. Emunah Levy, personal communication. I would like to thank Professor Marina Rustow, Director of the Princeton Geniza Lab for supplying me with images of JTS ENA 957.8. Nutton, ‘From Noah to Galen’; Tamás Visi, ‘Jewish Physicians in Late Medieval Ashkenaz’, Tamás Visi, ‘Sefer Asaf in Latin Translation?’ Luvar as one of the mountains of Ararat appears also in Jubilees 7:1. The Eastern Christian origin of Sefer Asaf for which I argue in my ‘Exploring Persian Lore’ also explains the use here of ‘Macedonians’ for Greeks – a usage confined to the Septuagint, specifically to Esther and Maccabees. This point has

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been raised by Nutton, though he suggested this indicates a Jewish source. See Nutton ‘From Noah to Galen’. I would like to thank Mark Geller for raising this question. 13 OX Or 113 adds: ‘and the wisdom of Aram’. 14 ‫ – לחבר‬can also mean: compose. 15 The verb here could be read either as ‘to teach’ or as ‘to learn’. 16 Kesed is mentioned in Genesis 22.22. 17 The khartumim are mentioned in Genesis 41, when they are unable to decipher Pharaoh’s dream; in Exodus 7–9 – in magic competitions with Moses; and in Daniel 1–2 and 4 – when Daniel and his Jewish companions’ wisdom exceeds that of the local khartumim and as interpreters of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams. 18 The expression appears in Genesis 3.24. The King James Bible translates this expression as: ‘the flaming sword which turned every way’. The context in Genesis 3.24 is similar to here: God is said to have appointed the cherubim and the flame of the swirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life. Biblical commentators have discussed whether the deterrent refers to the sword or the flame. Rabbi David Kimkhi explains for example that it is the sight of the flame that is meant to frighten, i.e., not the physical aspect, but the sight of it. 19 Perhaps referring to the mythical association of the god Ba’al with northern Syria, or sometimes more generally, the mythical ‘Mountain of the north’. 20 Biblical island; usually associated with Crete. In the Septuagint and in the Syriac tradition, Caphtor was identified with Cappadocia. See: Gerald Avery Wainwright, ‘Caphtor-Cappadocia’, Vetus Testamentum 6 (1956): 199–210; Roger Le Déaut and Roger Jacques, Targum des Chroniques (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1971). On this identification in the Peshitta and in the Syriac geographical tradition, see Witold Witakowski, ‘The Division of the Earth between Descendants of Noah in Syriac Tradition’, Aram Periodical 5 (1993): 637, 639 and 647. 21 This translation is based on BSB (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) Cod. hebr. 231, fols. 2r & 2v, with variant readings from Florence Laurenziana Plut. 88.37, Oxford Bodleian, Ms. Laud. Or. 113 and British Library add.27018. For a discussion on these manuscripts and an edition of this section of the text, see Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Exploring Eurasian Transmissions of Medical Knowledge’. My translation. 22 On the links between Sefer Asaf and Jubilees, see Martha Himmelfarb,‘Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature’, in Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha, ed. John C. Reeves (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 115–141. 23 For some studies on these, see Muriel Debié, ‘Writing History as “Histories”: The Biographical Dimension of East Syriac Historiography’, in Writing ‘True Stories’: Historians and Hagiographers in the Late Antique and Medieval Near East, Arietta, ed. Arietta Papaconstantinou (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 43–75; Eva Riad, Studies

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in the Syriac Preface (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1988); Adam Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisbis and the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 24 Van der Horst, Japheth in the Tents, 139. 25 Ibid., 146. See also: Johannes Haubold, ‘Berossus’, in The Romance between Greece and the East, ed. Tim Whitmarsh and Stuart Thomson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Johannes Haubold, ‘Kulturkontakt aus der Sicht des Homerlesers’, in Kulturkontakte in antiken Welten: Vom Denkmodell zum Fallbeispiel, ed. Robert Rollinger and Kordula Schnegg (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 325–342; Johannes Haubold, ‘Hellenism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Role of Babylonian Elites in the Seleucid Empire’, in Cosmopolitanism and Empire: Universal Rulers, Local Elites, and Cultural Integration in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, ed. M. Lavan, R. E. Payne and J. Weisweiler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 89–102. Speyer has suggested that this topos of ancient knowledge inscribed on stone tablets which later generations rediscover goes back to Egypt. See Wolfgang Speyer, Bücherfunde in der Glaubenswerbung der Antike. Mit einem Ausblick auf Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 111–120. 26 Van der Horst, Japheth in the Tents, 144–145. 27 See the discussion by Michael Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). See also Alexander Toepel, ‘Yonton Revisited: A Case Study in the Reception of Hellenistic Science within Early Judaism’, The Harvard Theological Review 99, no. 3 (July 2006): 235–245. 28 Van der Horst, Japheth in the Tents, 150–151. 29 Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1.69–71. Translation in Judean Antiquities 1–4 (Vol. 3 of Flavius Josephus), trans. Louis Feldman, ed. Steve Mason (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 24–26. Regarding Seiris, Toepel suggests that we may reasonably assume that this is a reference to China. Toepel, ‘Yonton Revisited’, 240. 30 See Abraham Melamed, The Myth of the Jewish Origins of Science and Philosophy (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2010) [Hebrew]. On Jewish variations of this topos see: Richard Marks, ‘Hindus in Medieval Jewish Literature’, in Indo-Judaic Studies in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Nathan Katz et al. (London: Palgrave, 2007), 57–73; Abraham Melamed, ‘The Image of India in Medieval Jewish Culture: Between Adoration and Rejection’, Jewish History 20, nos. 3 and 4 (2006): 299–314. On views in Syriac literature see Annette Yoshiko Reed, ‘Beyond the Land of Nod: Syriac Images of Asia and the Historiography of “The West”’, History of Religions 49, no. 1 (2009): 48–87. For the Greek material, see Klaus Karttunen, India and the Hellenistic World, Studia Orientalia 83 (Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 1997). For a survey on later (thirteenth to nineteenth century) sources of Persian

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works on Indian learned traditions, see Perso-Indica, ed. Fabrizio Speziale and Carl Ernst, available: www.perso-indica.net (accessed December 2019). 31 See Leonid Zhmud, The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity, trans. Alexander Chernoglazov (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 40–41. 32 Karttunen, India and the Hellenistic World, 232. 33 This is in contrast with his high regard of Persian medicine. Rosalind Thomas, Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29. The commentary on the Hippocratic Oath ascribed to Galen and preserved in Arabic does mention the Indians alongside the Chaldeans, Yemenites and Persians, as those from whom medical knowledge derived, but as Rosenthal states, it is impossible to know which bits of this text can indeed be ascribed to Galen and which were added by Ḥunayn Ibn Ishaq. The mention of these peoples in particular appear to be later additions and not part of Galen’s commentary. See F. Rosenthal, ‘An Ancient Commentary on the Hippocratic Oath’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 30 (1956): 52–87, esp. 58, n. 9 and n. 22. 34 Steven Bowman, ‘Alexander and the Mysteries of India’, Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies 2 (1999): 71–111. 35 Luitpold Wallach, ‘Alexander the Great and the Indian Gymnosophists in Jewish Tradition’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 11 (1941): 48–83; Bowman, ‘Alexander and the Mysteries of India’. On Megastenes’ theory of the connection between the wisdom of the Jews and the wisdom of the Indians as reported by Clemens of Alexandria, see Abraham Melamed, Jewish Origins, 61. A version of the Alexander Romance was interpolated in the Sefer Yosippon, completed in southern Italy or Sicily around the end of the ninth/ beginning of the tenth century. David Flusser dated Sefer Yosippon to 953 CE, but as Dönitz has pointed out, this dating has been questioned several times. An earlier dating – at the end of the ninth or beginning of the tenth century is generally agreed. See: Saskia Dönitz, ‘Historiography among Byzantine Jews: The Case of Sefer Yosippon’, in Jews in Byzantium: Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, ed. Robert Bonfil et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 951–968; and Saskia Dönitz, Überlieferung und Rezeption des Sefer Yosippon (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). See also: Eli Yassif, ‘Hebrew Traditions about Alexander the Great: Narrative Models and their Meaning in the Middle Ages,’ Tarbiz 75 (2006): 359–407 [Hebrew]; Saskia Dönitz, ‘Alexander the Great in Medieval Hebrew Traditions’, in A Companion to Alexander Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. Z. David Zuwiyya (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 21–39. For editions see Wout Jac van Bekkum, A Hebrew Alexander Romance according to MS London Jews’ College no. 145 (Louvain: Peeters Press, 1992); Wout Jac van Bekkum, A Hebrew Alexander Romance according to MS Héb. 671.5 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale (Groningen: Styx Publications, 1994).

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36 David Flusser, The Josippon [Josephus Gorionides], Edited with Introduction, Commentary and Notes (2 vols, Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1978–1980), vol. 1, 474. [Hebrew]. 37 Babylonian Talmud, Seder Kodashim, Tractate Tamid 31b-32b. 38 See, for example, on Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra’s views on the sages of India: Shlomo Sela, Astrology and Biblical Exegesis in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Thought (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1999), esp. 107, 302–303. [Hebrew]. 39 On some of the direct contacts see Chapter 3. 40 BSB (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) Cod. hebr. 231, fol. 2r. 41 These have been studied by Dimitri Gutas and Kevin van Bladel: Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbāsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries) (London: Routledge, 1998), 34–40; Kevin van Bladel, ‘The Arabic History of Science of Abū Sahl ibn Nawbaḥt (fl. ca 770–809) and Its Middle Persian Sources’ in Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas, ed. Felicitas Opwis and David Reisman (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 41–62. 42 Van Bladel, ‘Arabic History of Science’. 43 Van Bladel, ‘Arabic History of Science’. See also Kevin van Bladel, ‘The Bactrian Background of the Barmakids’, in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, ed. Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 43–88. Alexander’s theft of Persian learning was a common theme in Middle Persian sources and later in Arabic sources: see Kevin van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), esp. 31–36 and 58–62. A variation of this topos appears also in Jewish sources, where it is claimed that the Greeks stole Jewish knowledge. On this theme, see for example, N. Roth, ‘The “Theft of Philosophy” by the Greeks from the Jews’, Classical Folia 32 (1978): 53–67. See also Sela, Astrology and Biblical Exegesis, 48–54. 44 Dēnkard, Book 4, translated in Jason Sion Mokhtarian, Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), 86. This famous passage has been studied and translated many times. For a detailed study, see Mansour Shaki, ‘The Dēnkard Account of the Zoroastrian Scriptures’, Archív Orientalni 49 (1981): 114–125. Shaki also mentions astronomy as another example of non-religious knowledge discussed in the Dēnkard and presented as a collation of Indian, Greek and Persian knowledge: ibid., 123. For other translations of this passage see H. W. Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books: Ratanbai Katrak Lectures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943), 81; Shaul Shaked, Dualism in Transformation: Varieties of Religion in Sasanian Iran (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1994), 100–101; and Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in its Sasanian Context (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 60. See

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also Alberto Cantera, Studien zur Pahlavi-Ǖbersetzung des Avesta (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004), 106–113. 45 For Gutas’s analysis of similar Sasanian texts on the origins and transmission of knowledge, see Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, esp. 34–40. See also van Bladel, ‘The Arabic History of Science’, 41–62. For a discussion of the Jewish case, see Annette Yoshiko Reed, ‘“Ancient Jewish Sciences” and the Historiography of Judaism’, in Ancient Jewish Sciences, ed. Jonathan Ben-Dov and Seth Sanders (New York: NYU Press, 2014). For Pliny the Elder’s encyclopedic knowledge as a commodity of the Roman Empire, see Trevor Murphy, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopedia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 46 Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. 47 On ascribing the fall on the Christians in Islamic sources, see Dimitri Gutas, ‘The “Alexandria to Baghdad” Complex of Narratives. A Contribution to the Study of Philosophical and Medical Historiography among the Arabs’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medieval 10 (1999): 155–193. 48 The following is based on Fred Rosner, ‘The Illness of King Hezekiah and “The Book of Remedies” Which He Hid’, Koroth 9, nos. 1 and 2 (1985): 190–197. 49 Pesahim 56a. 50 See Rosner, ‘The Illness of King Hezekiah’ for an overview. 51 Similar purposes of validation myths have also been discussed in relation to Jewish mysticism as found in Hekhalot literature: see Swartz, Scholastic Magic. 52 On Syriac as a language of transmission see the works in note 96 of the Introduction. 53 There is also a side story of translation, that of divination, which is about Babylonian divination ‘translated’ in Egypt – or perhaps the other way around? 54 See Yang Ga, ‘The Origins of the Four Tantras’, in Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine, ed. Theresia Hofer (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2014) 154–177; Yang Ga, ‘Sources for the Writing of the Rgyud bzhi, Tibetan Medical Classic’ (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2010). See also my overview, ‘Yuthog Yonten (the younger)’, Dictionary of Medical Biography, ed. W. F. Bynum and H. Bynum (Westport, CN and London: Greenwood Press, 2007), vol. 5, 1342–1344. 55 See Janet Gyatso, ‘Drawn from the Tibetan Treasury: The gTer ma Literature’, in Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, ed. José Ignacio Cabezón and Roger Jackson (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1996), 147–169. 56 The following is based on my ‘Re-visiting “Galen in Tibet”’ and my ‘Central Asian Mélange: Early Tibetan Medicine from Dunhuang’, in Scribes, Texts, and Rituals in Early Tibet and Dunhuang, ed. Brandon Dotson, Kazushi Iwao and Tsuguhito Takeuchi (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2013), 53–60. 57 For a study of this work, see Dan Martin, ‘An Early Tibetan History of Indian Medicine’, in Soundings in Tibetan Medicine, ed. Mona Scrempf (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 307–325.

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58 For a detailed analysis of the two western components of this and similar lists, i.e. stag gzig and phrom, see Dan Martin, ‘Greek and Islamic Medicines’ Historical Contact with Tibet: A Reassessment in View of Recently Available but Relatively Early Sources on Tibetan Medical Eclecticism’, in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, 117–143. See also my ‘On Urine Analysis and Tibetan Medicine’s Connections with the West’, in Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society, ed. Sienna Craig, Mingji Cuomu, Frances Garrett and Mona Schrempf (Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2010), 195–211 and my ‘Re-visiting “Galen in Tibet”’, 355–365. 59 For the English translation, see Gavin Kilty (trans.) Desi Sangyé Gyatso, Mirror of Beryl: A Historical Introduction to Tibetan Medicine (Boston: Wisdom, 2010), 148– 149. For the critical edition of the Tibetan text: Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho (Sangye Gyatso), Gso ba rig pa’i khog ’bugs vaidūrya’i me long [Mirror of Beryl] (2008), 96. This quote was first discussed by Christopher Beckwith, ‘The Introduction of Greek Medicine into Tibet in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 99 (1979): 301. 60 The various Tibetan spellings we find are: Ta zig; ta zhig; ta chig; stag gzig; stag gzigs. On these terms, see Yoeli-Tlalim, Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, 1–16. 61 See Martin ‘Greek and Islamic Medicines’ Historical Contact with Tibet’, 117–143. 62 Ibid., 117–143. 63 On these various connections, see Akasoy, Burnett and Yoeli-Tlalim (eds) Islam and Tibet. 64 See also Chapter 5, and Paul Buell, ‘Tibetans, Mongols and the Fusion of Eurasian Cultures’, in Islam and Tibet, 189–208. 65 Paul Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 107. 66 We do not know the date of composition of this text. Prior versions of it may date as early as the fourth century BCE, but the text has been supplemented, edited and partially rewritten by later authors, whose dates run up to the eighth century CE. See Dominik Wujastyk, ‘Medicine in India’, in Oriental Medicine: An Illustrated Guide to the Arts of Healing, ed. J. van Alphen and A. Aris (London: Serindia, 1995), 22. 67 For an overview of these, see Jan Gerrit Meulenbeld, A History of Indian Medical Literature (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1999–2002), IA.152–154, IIA.158–160, 764, 781. 68 phyag sbal is a term for a place where something is hidden or confined. It is used either to refer to archives or a state of confinement. phyag sbal is mentioned in Pelliot tibétain 1079, lines 9 and 21 and in Pelliot tibétain 986. For Coblin’s translation and study of Pelliot tibétain 986, see Weldon South Coblin, ‘A Study of the Old Tibetan Shangshu paraphrase, parts I & II’, Journal of the American

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Oriental Society 111, nos. 2 and 3(1991): 303–322 and 523–559. I would like to thank Brandon Dotson for discussing this term with me. 69 dpyad phugs. 70 dpyad yIg ’dI ni phyag sbal na yang myed de| dpyad yIg thams cad las kyang bdus pa’I steng du zhang zhung gyI dpyad phugs pa dang| sbyar te bgyis pa lags so|| Pelliot tibétain 127, lines 183–184. 71 Vivienne Lo, ‘Manuscrits de Dunhuang et de Khotan sur la moxibustion’, in Médecine, Religion et societe dans la Chine medievale: étude de manuscrits chinois de Dunhuang et de Turfan, ed. Catherine Despeux (3 vols, Paris: Collège de France, 2010), vol. 1, 239–284. 72 See Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘On Urine Analysis’, 195–211. 73 For other inputs, see Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Central Asian Mélange’, 53–60. 74 For a study of a thirteenth-century exemplar of this medical history genre, see Martin, ‘An Early Tibetan History of Indian Medicine’, 307–325. 75 On this episode, see Janet Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 76 Dan Martin, ‘Manaho, Tibskrit, available: https://tibeto-logic.blogspot. com/2011/02/tibskrit-reloaded.html (accessed January 2020). 77 On Manaho, see: Janet Gyatso, ‘The Authority of Empiricism and the Empiricism of Authority: Medicine and Buddhism in Tibet on the Eve of Modernity’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 90; Olaf Czaja, ‘The Making of the Blue Beryl – Some Remarks on the Textual Sources of the Famous Commentary of Sangye Gyatsho (1653–1705)’, in Soundings in Tibetan Medicine: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, ed. M. Schrempf (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 348; and Dan Martin, ‘Veil of Kashmir – Poetry of Travel and Travail in Zhangzhungpa’s 15th Century Kāvya Reworking of the Biography of the Great Translator Rinchen Zangpo (958–1055 CE)’, Revue d’Études Tibétaines 14 (2008): 13–56 (29, n. 38). An analysis of this interesting text, and a comparison with Islamic ophthalmology of this period should yield interesting data with which we can further our understanding of transmission of ophthalmological knowledge. 78 Gyatso, Being Human, 116–117. 79 As called on by Nappi in regards to the history of science at large, see Carla Nappi, ‘The Global and Beyond: Adventures in the Local Historiographies of Science’, Isis 104, no. 1, Special Issue Focus: The Future of the History of Science (March 2013): 102–110. 80 Some elaboration on this sort of process is discussed by Bentley in his analysis of what he calls, ‘social conversion’: the processes by which pre-modern people adopted or adapted foreign cultural traditions; as well as his notion of syncretism,

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or rather, cultural syncretism, the process by which elements from a different cultural tradition blended in such a way that ‘a foreign tradition could become intelligible, meaning-full, and even attractive in a land far from its origin’. Jerry Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in PreModern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 8–9, 15.

Chapter 2 1 A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, The Bower Manuscript: Facsimile Leaves, Nagari Transcript, Romanised Transliteration and English Translation with Notes (Calcutta: Archeological Survey of India, 1893–1912). 2 For example in part II, chapter 1, verse 45. This section has been identified as deriving from the Bheḍa Saṃhitā, one of the sources of this text. See V. N. Pandey and A. Pandey, ‘A Study of the Nāvanītaka: The Bower Manuscript’, Bulletin of the Indian Institute of History of Medicine (Hyderabad) 18, no. 1 (1988): 1–46, at p. 5. 3 On the Bower Manuscript, see G. Jan Meulenbeld, A History of Indian Medical Literature (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2000), vol. 2A, 3–12. For a bibliography on the Bower Manuscript see vol. 2B, 4. See also Dominik Wujastyk, The Roots of Ayurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), 149–153. 4 On the notion of ‘contact zone’ see Lissa Roberts, ‘Situating Science in Global History: Exchanges and Networks of Circulation’, Itinerario 33, no. 1 (2009): 9–30. 5 The Bower Manuscript is now owned by the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. Sansk. C. 17). 6 Wujastyk, Roots of Ayurveda, 149–153. 7 Ibid. 8 The term ‘Great Game’ originated with a British military intelligence officer, and was made famous by Rudyard Kipling in his book Kim. See Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire (London: John Murray, 1990). See also Stanley Abe, ‘Inside the Wonder House’, in Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism, ed. Donald Lopez (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 103. 9 Bir Good Gill, ‘The Venture of the Central Asian Trading Company in Eastern Turkistan, 1874–5’, Asian Affairs 31, no. 2 (2000): 181–188. See also M. Anwar Khan, England, Russia and Central Asia: A Study in Diplomacy, 1857–1878 (Peshawar: University Book Agency, 1963), 183. 10 Ibid., at p. 186 based on Proceedings of the Secret Branch of the Foreign Department records, January 1876.

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11 Hamilton Bower, ‘A Trip To Turkistan’, The Geographical Journal 5, no. 3 (March 1895): 240–257. 12 J. Waterhouse, ‘Birch bark MS. from Kashgaria’, Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (November 1890 [1891]): 221–223. 13 A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, ‘Remarks on Birch Bark Ms’, Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 64 (April 1891 [1892]). 14 A. F. Rudolf Hoernle, ‘The Bower Manuscript’, in Studies in the History of Science in India, ed. Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (New Delhi: Asha Jyoti, 1992), vol. 1, 117. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan: Detailed Report of Archaeological Explorations in Chinese Turkestan (2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), v. 18 For an overview, see Rong Xinjian, ‘Lecture 6: Scramble for the Treasures of Khotan, Kucha, Loulan and Gaochang’, in Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang, trans. Imre Galambos (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 19 For an overview of these findings, see Paul Harrison and Jens-Uwe Hartmann (eds), From Birch Bark to Digital Data: Recent Advances in Buddhist Manuscript Research, Papers Presented at the Conference Indic Buddhist Manuscripts: The State of the Field, Stanford, June 15–192009 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014) and Mark Allon, ‘Recent Discoveries of Buddhist Manuscripts from Afghanistan and Pakistan and their Significance’, in Art, Architecture and Religion along the Silk Road (Silk Road Studies XII), ed. Ken Parry (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 153–178. 20 Lore Sander, ‘Origin and Date of the Bower Manuscript, a New Approach’, in Investigating Indian Art: Proceedings of a Symposium of the Development of Early Buddhist and Hindu Iconography held at the Museum of Indian Art Berlin, in May 1986, ed. Marianne Yaldiz and Wibke Lobo (Berlin: Museum für Indische Kunst, 1987), 313–323; Ahmad Hasan Dani, Indian Palaeography (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1986), 148–151. 21 Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 49. 22 Richard Salomon, ‘Why Did the Gandhāran Buddhists Bury their Manuscripts?’, in Buddhist Manuscript Cultures: Knowledge, Ritual, and Art, ed. Stephen C. Berkwitz, Juliane Schober and Claudia Brown (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 19–32. 23 Gerrit Jan Meulenbeld, A History of Indian Medical Literature, vol. 2A, 4. 24 Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). See esp. chapter 2. 25 Xuanzang, the ‘Life’, quoted in Marylin M. Rhie, Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia, vol. 2: The Eastern Chin and Sixteen Kingdoms Period in China and Tumshuk, Kucha and Karashahr in Central Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 598.

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26 Ibid., and Mariko Namba Walter, ‘Tokharian Buddhism in Kucha’, Sino-Platonic Papers 85 (October 1998). 27 Xuanzang, the ‘Record’, quoted in Rhie, Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia, vol. 2, 597. 28 Rhie, Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia, vol. 2, 707. 29 Hansen, The Silk Road, 62. 30 Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books, chapter 3. On papermaking in the oases around the Taklamakan Desert, see also Tsien Tsuen-hsuin, Science and Civilization in China, Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part I: Paper and Printing, ed. Joseph Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 296–297. 31 On these hypotheses see Lore Sander, ‘The Earliest Manuscripts from Central Asia and the Sarvāstivāda Mission’, in Corolla Iranica: Papers in Honour of Prof. Dr. David Neil MacKenzie on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday on April 8th, 1991, ed. R. E. Emmerick and Dieter Weber (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991), 142, n. 37. 32 On the Bakhshālī manuscript and the dating controversy around it see, Kim Plofker, Agathe Keller, Takao Hayashi, Clemency Montelle, and Dominik Wujastyk, ‘The Bakhshālī Manuscript: A Response to the Bodleian Library’s Radiocarbon Dating’, History of Science in South Asia 5, no. 1 (2017): 134–150. 33 Ursula Sims-Williams, ‘Rudolf Hoernle and Sir Aurel Stein’, in Sir Aurel Stein: Colleagues and Collections, ed. Helen Wang (London: British Museum Press, 2012), available: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/research_ publications_series/2012/sir_aurel_stein.aspx (accessed December 2019). 34 Michaël Peyrot, ‘Tocharian: An Indo-European Language from China’, in Aspects of Globalisation. Mobility, Exchange and the Development of Multi-cultural States, ed. Jorrit Kelder, Stefan de Jong and Alexander Mouret (Leiden: Luris, 2017), 12–17. 35 Douglas Q. Adams, ‘The Position of Tocharian among the Other Indo-European Languages’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 104, no. 3 (1984): 395–402. 36 Rajeshwari Ghose, ‘Introduction: Kizil on the Silk Road’, in Kizil on the Silk Road: Crossroads of Commerce & Meeting of Minds, ed. Rajeshwari Ghose (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2008), 8–23. 37 See J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000). 38 Michaël Peyrot, ‘Tocharian Language’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, available: http:// www.iranicaonline.org/articles/tocharian-language (accessed May 2018). On Tocharian Buddhism, see Walter, ‘Tokharian Buddhism’. 39 Dieter Maue, ‘An Uighur Version of Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 4 (2008): 113–173. 40 Dieter Maue, ‘An Uighur Version’. 41 In 2007 Carling reported that the number of published Tocharian medical texts is around seventy, mostly in Tocharian B (Kuchean). Gerd Carling, ‘The Vocabulary

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of Tocharian Medical Manuscripts’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 3, no. 2 (2007): 323–333. Carling recently reported that this estimation still stands. A large project to publish all the Tocharian manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, run by Georges Pinault, is due to clarify the situation. Gerd Carling, personal communication. 42 Carling, ‘The Vocabulary of Tocharian Medical Manuscripts’. 43 Ibid. 44 On the Yogaśataka, see Gerd Carling, ‘Fragments bilingues du Yoga-śataka. Révision commentée de l’edition de Jean Filliozat’, Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 10 (2003): 37–68. This manuscript was originally transcribed and translated by Filliozat. For his full study, see Jean Filliozat, Yoga-śataka: Texts médical attribué à Nāgārjuna, Texte sanskrit et tibétain, traduction française, notes, index (Pondichery: Institut français d’Indologie, 1979). See also: Emil Sieg, ‘Die medizinischen und tantrischen Texte der Pariser Sammlung in Tocharisch B. Bemerkungen zu Prof. Filliozats Textausgabe und Übersetzung’, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung 72 (1955): 63–82, and Sylvain Lévi, ‘Étude des documents tokhariens de la mission Pelliot’, Journal Asiatique 10, no. 18 (1911): 119–144. See also: Vaidya Bhagwan Dash, Tibetan Medicine: With Special Reference to Yoga-sataka (Dharamsala, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1976); Heinz Helmut Michael Schmidt, ‘Das Yoga-śataka. Ein Zeugnis altindischer Medizin in Sanskrit und Deutsch’ (Inauguraldiss., Universität Bonn, 1978). 45 Gerd Carling, ‘New Look at the Tocharian B Medical Manuscript IOL Toch 306 (Stein Ch.00316.a2) of the British Library-Oriental and India office Collections’, Historische Sprachforschung (Historical Linguistics) 116, no. 1 (2003): 75–95. The text was transliterated and translated by Couvreur: Walter Couvreur, ‘Die fragmente Stein Ch. 00316a2 und Hoernle H 149.47 und 231’, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung 72 (1955): 222–226. It was also studied by Broomhead: J. W. Broomhead, ‘A Textual Edition of the British Hoernle Stein and Weber Kuchean Manuscripts: Transliteration, Translation, Grammatical Commentary and Vocabulary’ (2 vols, PhD diss., Cambridge University, Trinity College, 1964), 46–48. 46 On this problematic translation, see Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Tibetan “Wind” and “Wind” Illnesses: Towards a Multicultural Approach to Health and Illness’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 41 (2010): 318–324. 47 For example, when the Buddha lists all the illnesses which can be cured with his spell, he lists fevers which arise due to air, bile, phlegm or all three combined. Hoernle, The Bower Manuscript, 227. 48 Bower Manuscript, second text, verse 308. Discussed in Hartmut Scharfe, ‘The Doctrine of the Three Humors in Traditional Indian Medicine and the Alleged Antiquity of Tamil Siddha Medicine’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 119, no. 4 (1999): 609–629. See also Hoernle, The Bower Manuscript, 42 (for the

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Sanskrit) and 108 (the translation). Hoernle’s translation differs somewhat from Scharfe’s. 49 Dagmar Riedel, ‘Kalila wa Demna, i. Redactions and Circulation’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, available: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kalila-demna-i (accessed June 2018). 50 François de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of Kalīlah wa Dimnah (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1990), 40–43 and 58. 51 Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, ‘Borzūya’, Encyclopaedia Iranica (1989), available: http:// www.iranicaonline.org/articles/borzuya-also-burzoe-a-physician-of-the-time-ofkosrow-i- (accessed June 2018). 52 De Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India, 27–28. 53 Hoernle, The Bower Manuscript, ‘Introduction’. 54 Tibetan dice divination texts from Dunhuang include: PT 1043, PT 1046B, PT 1051, PT 1052, IOL Tib J 738, IOL Tib J 739, IOL Tib J 740. For editions and studies see: August H. Francke, ‘Tibetische Handschriftenfunde aus Turfan’, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1924): 5–20; August H. Francke, ‘Drei weitere Blatter des tibetischen Losbuches von Turfan’, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1928): 110–118; F. W. Thomas, Ancient Folk Literature from Northeastern Tibet (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957), 113–150; Brandon Dotson, ‘Divination and Law in the Tibetan Empire: The Role of Dice in the Legalisation of Loans, Interest, Marital Law and Troop Conscription’, in Contributions to the Cultural History of Early Tibet, ed. Matthew Kapstein and Brandon Dotson (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 3–77; Brandon Dotson, ‘The Call of the Cuckoo to the Thin Sheep of Spring: Healing and Fortune in Old Tibetan Dice Divination Texts’, in Tibetan and Himalayan Healing: An Anthology for Anthony Aris, ed. Charles Ramble and Ulrike Roesler (Kathmandu: Vajra Publications, 2015); Brandon Dotson, ‘Hunting for Fortune: Wild Animals, Goddesses and the Play of Perspectives in Early Tibetan Dice Divination’, Études Mongoles & Sibériennes, Centrasiatiques & Tibétaines 50 (2019): 1–26; Brandon Dotson, ‘A Fragment of an Early Tibetan Divination Board from Mīrān’, Unearthing Himalayan Treasures Festschrift for Franz-Karl Ehrhard, ed. Volker Caumanns, Marta Sernesi and Nikolai Solmsdorf (Marburg: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 2019), 165–187; Ai Nishida, ‘Two Tibetan Dice Divination Texts from Dunhuang: Pelliot tibétain 1046B and IOL Tib J 740’, Central Asiatic Journal, 61, no. 1 (2018), Old Tibet and Its Neighbours, 133–150; Ai Nishida, Ko chibettogo uranai monjo no kenkyū 古チベット語占い文書の研究 (A Study on Old Tibetan divination manuscripts) (PhD diss., Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, 2012); Manfred Taube, Die Tibetica der Berliner Turfansammlung (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1980), 85–90; Iwao, Kazushi, Sam van Schaik and Tsuguhito Takeuchi, Old Tibetan Texts in the Stein Collection Or. 8210 (Tokyo: Toyo Bunko, 2012), text no. 2, verso (S.155, Giles No. 3090), 12–23.

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55 A similar method appears in a Chinese manuscript from Dunhuang, discussed by Kalinowski (Dunhuang Stein 5614). Kalinowski assumes this involved throwing a die with numbers 1–4 three times. Here each combination has a name of a deity. Marc Kalinowski, ‘La Divination par les nombres dans les manuscrits de Dunhuang’, in Nombres, astres, plantes et viscères: Sept essais sur l’histoire des sciences et des techniques en asie orientale, ed. Isabelle Ang and Pierre-Étienne Will (Paris: Collège de France, 1994). 56 The text was first published with a translation by Thomsen in 1912: Vilhelm Thomsen, ‘Dr. M.A. Stein’s Manuscripts in Turkish “Runic” Script from Miran and Tun-huang’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1912): 190–214. For a new translation, see Talat Tekin, Irk Bitig: The Book of Omens (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1993). For its dating see Talat Tekin, who followed Erdal in dating it to the ninth century. Bazin has suggested that the Turkic divination text is from the second quarter of the tenth century: Louis Bazin, Les Systemes Chronologiques dans le Monde Turc Ancien (Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest & Editions du CNRS, Paris: 1991), 236. 57 Albert von Le Coq, ‘Ein christliches und ein manichäisches Manuscriptfragment in türkischer Sprache aus Turfan (Chinesisch –Turkistan)’, Sitzungsberichte der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaflen (1909): 1202–1218. 58 Nicholas Sims-Williams, ‘The Sogdian Fragments of the British Library’, IndoIranian Journal 18 (1976): 43–82, at 63–65. 59 See Dotson ‘Hunting for Fortune’; F. W. Thomas, Ancient Folk Literature, 141–146; and Dotson ‘The Call of the Cuckoo’, 152. 60 Quoted in Rolf Stein, Tibetan Civilization (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 52, n. 2. 61 It should be noted though that the Tibetan designation Kongtse does not always refer to Confucius. Shen-yu Lin, ‘The Tibetan Image of Confucius’, Revue d’Études Tibétaines 12 (2007): 105–129. On the Chinese princesses, see 112–113. 62 Colophon of IOL Tib J. See Ariane MacDonald, ‘Une lecture des Pelliot tibétain 1286, 1287, 1038, 1047, et 1290’, in Études tibétaines dédiées à la mémoire de Marcelle Lalou, ed. Marcelle Lalou (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1971), particularly 282–283. Other Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang which mention Kong tse (in its variant spellings) are: Pelliot tibétain 987, Pelliot tibétain 988, Pelliot tibétain 992, Pelliot tibétain 1284. For a discussion of these, see Shen-yu Lin, ‘The Tibetan Image of Confucius’. 63 See Samten Karmay, ‘A gZer-mig Version of the Interview between Confucius and Phyva Ken-tse lan-med’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38 (1975): 562–580. 64 Some of these sources are discussed by Shen-yu Lin, ‘The Tibetan Image of Confucius’. See also Béla Kelényi, ‘The Myth of the Cosmic Turtle according to

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65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74

75

76

77

159

the Late Astrological Tradition’, in Impressions of Bhutan and Tibetan Art: Tibetan Studies III, Proceedings of the Ninth Seminar of the IATS 2000, ed. John Ardussi and Henk Blezer (Leiden: Brill 2002), 69–90. Pelliot tibétain 987 and Pelliot tibétain 988. Kalinowski, ‘Mantic Texts in Their Cultural Context’, in Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts, ed. Vivienne Lo and Christopher Cullen (London: Routledge, 2005), 120–121. Ibid., 123. Ibid., 123–127. Ibid., 120. Ibid., 126. Marc Kalinowski, ‘Mantic Texts’. See Rolf Stein, ‘Tibetica Antiqua VI: Maximes confucianistes dans deux manscrits de Touen-houang’, Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 79, no.1 (1992): 9–17. English translation in Rolf Stein, Rolf Stein’s Tibetica Antiqua: with Additional Materials, trans. and ed. Arthur Mckeown (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 273–283. Berthold Laufer, ‘Loan-Words in Tibetan’, T’oung Pao 17 (1916): 404–552, 509–511. See Géza Uray, ‘The Earliest Evidence of the Use of the Chinese Sexagenary Cycle in Tibetan’, in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, ed. Louis Ligeti (Budapest: Akademia Kiadó, 1984), ii, 354. (Line 1) sngon ’phrul gyi myis | gcug la … gi (ge?) (gcug lag gi yi ge?) phyi rabs la dpe bzhang (?) pa’i gcug lag gya (rgya?) yog | stan (? rgya yig ste?) (Line 2) dbang btang che chung dang | lo srog mthun myi (mthun?) | bzang ngan du lta ba ||This quote has been commented on by Macdonald, ‘Une lecture’, 284 and by Rolf Stein, ‘Tibetica Antiqua VI’, 273–335, esp. 276, n. 3, and Uray, ‘Earliest Evidence’. Similar categories of divination have been discussed by Uray, ‘Earliest Evidence’, 358–359. Uray has pointed out that these categories come from Chinese divination. Rolf Stein, ‘Tibetica Antiqua III: À propos du mot gcug-lag et de la religion indigène’, Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient LXXIV (1985): 83–133. English versions: ‘Tibetica Antiqua III: Apropos of the Word Gtsug lag and the Indigenous Religion’, in Rolf Stein, Rolf Stein’s Tibetica Antiqua, 117–190. Rolf Stein, ‘Saint et divin, un titre tibétain et chinois des rois tibétains’, Journal asiatique 269 (1981): 269; Rolf Stein, ‘Tibetica Antiqua I: The Two Vocabularies of Indo-Tibetan and Sino-Tibetan Translations in the Dunhuang Manuscripts’, in Rolf Stein’s Tibetica Antiqua 1–96, esp. 41–42. ITJ 748 ends with the words: cu yag gyi yi ge rdzogs sho [s+sho]. I would like to thank Brandon Dotson for sharing his transliteration of this text with me. The more well-known later term in Tibetan for the Yijing is spor thang (or: spor thang nag rtsis). For a list of Tibetan

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78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86

87

88

Notes sources dealing with the Yijing, see Gyurme Dorje (ed.), Tibetan Elemental Divination Paintings: Illuminated Manuscripts from The White Beryl of Sangs-rgyas rGya-mtsho: with the Moonbeams Treatise of Lo-chen Dharmaśri (London: John Eskenazi, 2001), 46. Macdonald, ‘Une lecture’, 284. Dotson, ‘Divination and Law’, 32. Ibid., 60. Ibid., 35. See von Le Coq, ‘Ein christliches und ein manichäisches’ and Sims-Williams, ‘The Sogdian Fragments’. Michel Strickmann, Chinese Poetry and Prophecy: The Written Oracle in East Asia, ed. Bernard Faure (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), xxvi. James Hamilton, ‘Le Colophon de l’Irq bitig’, Turcica 7 (1975): 7–19. I thank Vivienne Lo for clarifying the name for me. Niya die: Oblong ivory die, square ends. The spots are on the rectangular sides, each marked by a circle and a dot in its centre ‘as though engraved with a twopointed instrument’. The 3 dots are opposite the 1; and 4 is opposite the 2. Length: 7/8 inch; width: 3/8 inch nearly. Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan: Detailed Report of Archaeological Explorations in Chinese Turkestan (2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), Plate LXXIV, N.xv.004 and 374 and 411. Loulan die: Stein, Serindia Plate XXXVI; L.B. IV V 0034; description in Serindia, vol. 1, p. 448: Numbers 1 to 4 are marked consecutively by broad incised circles. 4.5” x 9/16”. For a die found in Khotan, see Francke, ‘Drei weitere Blatter’, 114. See also A. Róna-Tas, ‘Tally-stick and Divination-dice in the Iconography of lha-mo’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 6 (1956): 163–179, esp. 179. Clauson has noted that such dice have been discovered at Khayrabad Tepe, a few miles north of Termez in Uzbekistan ‘in a layer anterior to the 3rd Century A.D. containing Kushan coins. Clauson further noted that ‘their discovery in a Kushan/Saka context suggests that the ideas underlying the Irk Bitig were Iranian’. He is also quite adamant that ‘they did not come from China’ – as it had quite a different system of fortune-telling. This argument is somewhat problematic, as China had very many different systems of divination. Clauson also suggests that: ‘There is nothing to show that the book is a translation from an Iranian language, and indeed that is very probable. Its whole flavour is Turkish, and it was almost certainly compiled for a Turkish audience, but perhaps by an author who was not himself a Turk’. Gerard Clauson, ‘Notes on the Irk Bitig’, Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 33 (1961): 219. Grégoire Frumkin, Archaeology in Soviet Central Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 110– 113; Atsushi Iwamoto, ‘A Study on the Prosperity and Decline of Buddhist Sites in Northern Bactria: Kara Tepe and Zurmala’, The Rissho International Journal of Academic Research in Culture and Society 2 (2019): 151–178.

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89 See Anna Contadini, ‘Islamic Ivory Chess Pieces, Draughtsmen and Dice’, in Islamic Art in the Ashmolean Museum, Part 1, ed. James Allen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 90 Most of the oblong dice discussed by Contadini have the numbers 1, 2, 5 and 6 marked on them. 91 Hoernle’s translation. Hoernle, The Bower Manuscript, 197. 92 Li Rongxi (trans.) A Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1995), 94. For an overview of the ten Buddhist sciences in Tibetan Buddhist literature, see D. S. Ruegg, ‘Science religieuse et sciences séculières en Inde et au Tibet: vidyāsthāna indo-bouddhiques et rig gnas indo-tibétains’, in Ordre spirituel et ordre temporel dans la pensée bouddhique de l’Inde et du Tibet: quatre conférences au Collège de France (Paris: Collège de France, 1995), 93‒147, and Jonathan Gold, The Dharma’s Gatekeepers: Sakya Paṇḍita on Buddhist Scholarship in Tibet (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), esp. chapter 1. See also: Vesna Wallace, The Inner Kālacakratantra: a Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 43–55. 93 The link between the rigne and Buddhism is established in Tibetan medical literature and Tibetan astral sciences literature, as well as Buddhist literature. 94 The other four are the inner science (i.e., nang rig pa or Buddhism), epistemology and logic (gtan tshigs rig pa), grammar (sgra rig pa), and arts and crafts (bzo rig pa). 95 The other four are poetry (snyan ngag), metrics (sdeb sbyor), lexicography (mngon brjod), and drama (zlos gar). 96 See Kurtis Schaeffer, ‘Textual Scholarship, Medical Tradition and Mahāyāna Buddhist Ideals in Tibet’, Journal of Indian Philosophy 31 (2003): 621–641. 97 Akasoy, Burnett and Yoeli-Tlalim, Astro-Medicine: Astrology and Medicine, East and West (Florence: Micrologus, 2008). 98 See Chapter 1, and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Medicine, Astrology, and Divination’, in Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine, ed. Theresia Hofer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014). 99 Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’, in Clues, Myths and the Historical Method, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 96–125, esp. 106. 100 Ginzburg, ‘Clues’, 124. 101 Ibid., 105. 102 Strickmann, Chinese Poetry and Prophecy. 103 Blanca Villuendas, ‘Arabic Geomancy in Jewish Hands: Specimens from the Cairo Genizah’, in Geomancy and Other Forms of Divination, ed. Alessandro Palazzo and Irene Zavattero (Firenze: Sismel, Micrologus Library, 2017).

162

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Chapter 3 1 Myrobalans feature in many logos of Tibetan pharmaceutical companies active today. The best-known Tibetan pharmaceutical company is also named after it: Arura. See Martin Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), 109 and 177–178. 2 Pamela Smith, ‘Nodes of Convergence, Material Complexes, and Entangled Itineraries’, in Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia, ed. Pamela Smith (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 21. 3 On Tibet and its association with musk in Islamic contexts, see Anna Akasoy and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Along the Musk Routes: Exchanges between Tibet and the Islamic World’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 3, no. 2 (2007): 217–240; Anya King, Scent from the Garden of Paradise: Musk and the Medieval Islamic World (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 4 Mushegh Asatryan, ‘Heresy and Rationalism in Early Islam: The Origins and Evolution of the Mufaḍḍal Tradition’ (PhD diss., Yale University, 2012), 256–257. 5 Asatryan, ‘Heresy and Rationalism’. 6 India was the main focus of ‘wonder literature’. For a discussion of some of the Greek sources, see Ioannis Xydopolous, ‘Alexander’s Historians and the Alexander Romance: A Comparative Study of the Representation of India and Indians’, in Memory as History: The Legacy of Alexander in Asia, ed. Himanshu Prabha Ray and Daniel T. Potts (New Delhi: Aryan Books, 2007), 19–27. For the European literature on wonders, see Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998). See also Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discoveries, 1400–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Berthold Laufer has argued that the view that wonders originated in India emerged out of an aristocratic Arabic-Persian milieu: see Berthold Laufer, The Diamond: A Study in Chinese and Hellenistic Folk-Lore (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1915), 11. 7 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants (New York: Vintage, 1993), 3–14. 8 Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica: Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran, with Special Reference to the History of Cultivated Plants and Products (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1919), 580–585. 9 See, for example, 1.109.1 in Dioscorides’ Materia Medica. For an English translation, see Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus, De materia medica, trans. Lily Y. Beck, introduction by John Scarborough, third, revised edition (Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 2017), 78–79.

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163

10 4.157 in Dioscorides, Materia Medica (p. 309 in Beck’s translation). And 1.58 in Aetios of Amida’s ‘Tetrabiblos’. 11 Ibid., and A. Dietrich ‘Halīladj’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition, ed. P. Bearman et al. (2012), available: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/ encyclopaedia-of-islam-2 (accessed July 2019). 12 See H. G. Liddell, R. Scott and H. S. Jones (eds), A Greek-English Lexicon [9th edition] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), s.v. μυροβάλανος = βάλανος μυρεψική. 13 Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, Innovation in Byzantine Medicine: The Writings of John Zacharias Aktouarios (c.1275-c.1330) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 173–174. I would like to thank Petros Bouras-Vallianatos for discussing this section with me. 14 Marijke Van der Veen and Jacob Morales, ‘The Roman and Islamic Spice Trade: New Archaeological Evidence’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 167 (2015): 54–63. Van der Veen and Morales discuss various uses of the substances they overall term as ‘spices’, the medical use being one of them. 15 Myrobalan also appears in the Price Edict of Diocletian, promulgated in 301. See M. H. Crawford and J. M. Reynolds, ‘The Aezani Copy of the Prices Edict’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie and Epigraphik 34 (1979): 163–210. 16 Dietrich, ‘Halīladj’. 17 For Ibn Jumayʿ’s list, see Daniel S. Nicolae, ‘A Mediaeval Court Physician at Work: Ibn Jumayʿ’s Commentary on the Canon of Medicine’ (PhD diss., Oxford University, 2012), 177–178. 18 Anne McCabe, ‘Imported materia medica, 4th-12th centuries, and Byzantine Pharmacology’, in Byzantine Trade, 4th-12th Centuries: The Archaeology of Local, Regional and International Exchange, ed. M. M. Mango (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 273–292. 19 Zohar Amar, Efraim Lev and Yaron Serry, ‘Ibn Rushd on Galen and the New Drugs Spread by the Arabs’, Journal Asiatique 297 (2009): 83–101; J. M. Riddle, ‘The Introduction and Use of Eastern Drugs in the Early Middle Ages’, Sudhoffs Archiv 49 (1965): 185–198; Z. Amar, E. Lev and Y. Serry, ‘On Ibn Juljul and the Meaning and Importance of the “List of Medicinal Substances not Mentioned by Dioscorides”’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 24, no. 4 (2014): 529–555. Curiously, however, in the section for halīlaj asfar, we find: ‘And Galen assumed that it has a purging power between it … so we follow S [=Dioscorides] in his book’. It appears that Ibn Juljul is referring here to Dioscorides’ entry on balanos myrepsikē (4.157), which according to Beck’s translation (p. 309) is the nut of the Ben tree (Moringa). I thank Petros Bouras-Vallianatos for helping me clarify this contradiction. 20 Quoted in the Introduction to the 2013 edition of Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: The Definitive Glossary of British India, ed. Kate Teltscher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), xxii.

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21 Teltscher, ‘Introduction’, Hobson-Jobson, xxii. 22 Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial AngloIndian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, ed. William Crooke (London: John Murray, 1903), 607–610, esp. 609. Yule and Burnell have pointed out that the designation ‘myrobalanus’ in Greek literature (described by authors such as Dioscorides, Celsus, Pliny and possibly Theophrastus) refers to several different products – all of which are entirely unconnected to the Indian triphala. See also Klaus Karttunen, ‘India and the Hellenistic World’, Studia Orientalia 83 (1997): 160. 23 On two other Indic loanwords in medieval Judaeo-Arabic and more generally on the contribution of historical linguistics to the study of cultural contact in the medieval Indian Ocean world, see Elizabeth Lambourn, ‘Borrowed Words in an Ocean of Objects: Geniza Sources and New Cultural Histories of the Indian Ocean’, in Irreverent History: Essays for M. G. S. Narayanan, ed. Kesavan Veluthat and Donald R. Davis Jr (Delhi: Primus Books, 2014), 363–414. 24 P. Gignoux, ‘Le Traite syriaque anonyme sur les medications’, in Symposium Syriacum VII: Uppsala University, Department of Asian and African Languages, 11–14 August 1996, ed. R. Lavenant (Roma: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1998), 725–733 and P. Gignoux, ‘On the Syriac Pharmacopoeia’, in The Harp: A Review of Syriac and Oriental Ecumenical Studies 11 and 12 (1998–99): 193–201; P. Gignoux, ‘Les Relations interlinguistiques de quelques termes de la pharmacopée antique. II’, in Exegisti monumenta: Festschrift in Honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams, ed. W. Sundermann, A. Hintze and F. de Blois, Iranica 17 (2009): 123; P. Gignoux, ‘La Pharmacopée syriaque exploitée d’un point de vue linguistique’, Le Muséon 124 nos. 1 and 2 (2011): 16. Hummel, ‘Flora-Historical Background’, Encyclopaedia Iranica; Claudia Ciancaglini, ‘Syriac Language i: Iranian Loanwords in Syriac’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2006, available: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ syriac-language-i (accessed October 2017). 25 See Gerrit Bos, Martina Hussein, Guido Mensching and Frank Savelsberg, Medical Synonym Lists from Medieval Provence: Shem Tov ben Isaac of Tortosa, Sefer ha-Shimush, Book 29: Part 1: Edition and Commentary of List 1 (HebrewArabic-Romanc/Latin) (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 184; Immanuel Löw, Aramäische Pflanzennamen (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1881), 81. 26 In BSB (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) Cod. hebr. 231, for example folios: 21r; 41v; 44r; 95r; 96r; 100v; 113r. Many of these mentions provide synonyms as well, for example: ‘khalilkim (‫ )חלקיקים‬which is myrobalanon (‫’)מירובלנון‬, fol. 41v. According to Löw the form in Asaf is: ‫חלילקים‬. See Löw, Aramäische Pflanzennamen, 129:84. 27 See Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Exploring Persian Lore in the Hebrew Book of Asaf’, Aleph 18, no.1 (2018): 123–146. A literary parallel which demonstrates this overall backdrop is the earliest known transmission path of the Kalīla and Dimna. This

Notes

28 29

30

31 32 33

34

35

165

transmission path moved from Sanskrit to Middle Persian to Syriac and then into Hebrew. See Claudia Ciancaglini, ‘Syriac Language i: Iranian Loanwords in Syriac’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2006, available: http://www.iranicaonline.org/ articles/syriac-language-i (accessed October 2017). S. P. Brock, ‘Kalila and Dimna’, in The Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage, ed. Sebastian Brock et al. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2007), 241–242; F. de Blois, Burzōy’s Voyage to India and the Origin of the Book of Kalila wa Dimna (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1990) and F. Rundgren, ‘From Pancatantra to Stephanites and Ichnelates: Some Notes on the Old Syriac Translation of Kalīlah wa Dimna’, in Leimon: Studies Presented to Lennart Rydén on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Jan Olof Rosenqvist (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1996), 167–180. A. F. Rudolf Hoernle’s translation of the Jivaka Pustaka (unpublished), British Library Mss Eur D723, 21–22. Ursula Sims-Williams, unpublished English original of, ‘The Discovery and Decipherment of Sogdian in the early 20th Century’, in Sute ren zai Zhongguo: kao gu fa xian yu chu tu wen xian de xin yin zheng = Sogdians in China: New Evidence in Archaeological Finds and Unearthed Texts, vol. 2, ed. Rong Xinjiang and Luo Feng (Beijing: Science Press, 2016): 429–435. See Dieter Maue and Nicholas Sims-Williams, ‘Eine Sanskrit-Sogdische Bilingue in Brāhmī’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 54, no. 3 (1991): 486–495; Nicholas Sims-Williams, ‘The Sogdian Fragments of the British Library’, Indo-Iranian Journal 18 (1976): 44. The Otani Collection also includes one Sogdian medical fragment from Turfan. It is part of the collection of the Ryukoku University in Kyoto and was published in 1961 by Haneda Akira and Yamada Shinobu: Irango danpen shusei (Collection of Fragments in Persian), 55–56. Maue and Sims-Williams, ‘Eine Sanskrit-Sogdische’, Mz. 639, verso, line 3. Ibid., recto, line 5. ‘Alī b. Sahl Rabban al-Ṭabarī is sometimes referred to in short as Sahl Rabban al-Ṭabarī. He is to be distinguished from Muhammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, the Arabo-Persian historiographer, who is said to have read the other Ṭabarī’s medical compendium when he was sick. C. E. Bosworth, ‘Merv’, in Historic Cities of the Islamic World, ed. C. E. Bosworth (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 403; A. B. Yazberdiev, ‘The Ancient Merv and its Libraries’, Journal of Asian Civilizations 23, no. 2 (2000): 137–157. Max Meyerhof, ‘Ali aṭ-Ṭabarī’s “Paradise of Wisdom”, one of the oldest Arabic Compendiums of Medicine’, Isis 16 (1931): 6–54 (reprinted in, ‘Alī Ibn Rabban al-Ṭabarī (d.c. 250/864): Texts and Studies, collected and reprinted by Fuat Segzin, Islamic Medicine, vol. 30 (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of ArabicIslamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University,1996), 90–138). See also Carl Brockelmann, ‘Review of: Siddiqi, M.Z. (Ed.): Firdausu ‘l-Ḥikmat or Paradise of Wisdom of Alí b. Rabban-al-Ṭabarí. Berlin 1928’, Zeitschrift für Semitistik und verwandte Gebiete 8 (1929–32): 270–288.

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Notes

36 Meyerhof, ‘Ali at-Ṭabarī’s “Paradise of Wisdom”’, 6–54; M. Zubair Siddiqi, ‘An Early Arabian Author, on the Indian System of Medicine’, The Calcutta Review, 3rd series, vol. 41 (1931): 277–283. Reprinted in ‘Alī Ibn Rabban al-Ṭabarī (d.c. 250/864): Texts and Studies, collected and reprinted by Fuat Segzin, Islamic Medicine, vol. 30, 145–151. On the mention of Indian terms in the section on unfamiliar medical and pharmaceutical names in al-Rāzī’s Ḥāwī, see Emilie Savage-Smith, ‘The Working Files of Rhazes: Are the Jāmiʿ and the Ḥāwī Identical?’, in Medieval Arabic Thought: Essays in Honour of Fritz Zimmermann, ed. R. Hansberger, M. Afifi al-Akiti and C. Burnett (London: Warburg Institute, 2012), 171. 37 Werner Schmucker, Die pflanzliche und mineralische Materia Medica im Firdaus al-Ḥikma des Ṭabarī (PhD diss., Bonn: Selbstverlag des Orientalischen Seminars der Universität, 1969), 89–90, 120, 522–523. 38 M. Meyerhof, ‘Pharmacology during the Golden Age of Arabian Medicine’, Ciba Symposia 6 (1944): 1857–1867, 1858. 39 Oliver Kahl, The Sanskrit, Syriac and Persian Sources in the Comprehensive Book of Rhazes (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 123–124, n. 107. 40 For an overview of the Bactrian documents, see Nicholas Sims-Williams, New Light on Ancient Afghanistan: The Decipherment of Bactrian (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1997). For translations of the documents see Nicholas Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan I, II & III (London, Khalili Collections: 2001, 2007, 2012). 41 Xavier Tremblay, ‘The Spread of Buddhism in Serindia: Buddhism among Iranians, Tocharians and Turks before the 13th Century’, in The Spread of Buddhism, ed. Ann Heirman and Stephan Peter Bumbacher (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 88. 42 Tremblay, ‘The Spread of Buddhism in Serindia’. 43 Translated in Kevin van Bladel, ‘The Bactrian Background of the Barmakids’, in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, 52–53. Based on The Hye-Ch’o Diary, ed. and trans. Han-Sung Yang et al. (Seoul: 1984), 100–103. 44 See van Bladel, ‘The Bactrian Background of the Barmakids’, 43–88. See also: Dominik Wujastyk, ‘From Balkh to Baghdad: Indian Science and the Birth of the Islamic Golden Age in the Eighth Century’, Indian Journal of History of Science 51, no. 4 (2016): 679–690; and Miri Shefer-Mossensohn and Keren AbouHershkovitz, ‘Early Muslim Medicine and the Indian Context: A Reinterpretation’, Medieval Encounters 19 (2013): 274–299. 45 Johan Elverskog, Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 51. 46 Mohammed Said, Al-Biruni’s Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica (Karachi: Hamdard National Foundation, 1973). 47 Said, Al-Biruni’s Book on Pharmacy, 42.

Notes

167

48 Ibid., 329. What Said translated as ‘Hindi’ should be understood as a designation for a local vernacular. 49 Akasoy and Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Along the Musk Routes’. See also Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti, ‘Knowledge of Eastern Materia Medica (Indian and Chinese) in pre-modern Mediterranean Medical Traditions: A Study in Comparative Historical Ethnopharmacology’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 148 (2013): 361–378. 50 Said, Al-Biruni’s Book on Pharmacy, p. 65. English: p. 42. Said’s translation is slightly different. I would like to thank Fabiab Käs and Dror Weil for discussing the translation of this sentence with me. 51 Ibid., 330. 52 Martin Levey, The Medical Formulary of Al-Samarqandī (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 69–70. 53 Chen Ming, ‘Ancient Persian Medicine in China’, in Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine, ed. Michael Stanley-Baker and Vivienne Lo (Routledge, forthcoming); Laufer, Sino-Iranica, 378. 54 Edward Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T’ang Exotics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 145–146; H. W. Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books: Ratanbai Katrak Lectures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943), 82. I would like to thank Dror Weil for clarifying this point to me. 55 On the Yogaśataka see Vaidya Bhagwan Dash, Tibetan Medicine: with Special Reference to Yoga-sataka, (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1976); Heinz Helmut Michael Schmidt, ‘Das Yoga-śataka. Ein Zeugnis altindischer Medizin in Sanskrit und Deutsch’ (Inauguraldiss., Universität Bonn, 1978); Jean Filliozat, Yoga-śataka: Texts médical attribué à Nāgārjuna, Texte sanskrit et tibétain, traduction française, notes, index (Pondichery: Institut français d’Indologie, 1979). The Tocharian version of this text (PK.AS.2A, PK.AS.2B and PK.AS.2C) was originally transcribed and translated by Filliozat: Jean Filliozat, Fragments de textes koutchéens de médecine et de magie: Textes parallèles sanskrit et tibétain, traduction et glossaire (Paris: Librairie d’Amerique et d’Orient, 1948). It was commented on by Sieg in: Emil Sieg, ‘Die medizinischen und tantrischen Texte der Pariser Sammlung in Tocharisch B. Bemerkungen zu Prof. Filliozats Textausgabe und Übersetzung’, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung 72 (1955): 63–82. It was subsequently revised completely by Gerd Carling, ‘Fragments bilingues du Yoga-śataka. Révision commentée de l’edition de Jean Filliozat’, Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 10 (2002): 37–68. 56 S. D. Goitein, ‘Involvement in Geniza Research’, in Religion in a Religious Age: Proceedings of Regional Conferences Held at the University of California, Los Angeles and Brandeis University in April 1973, ed. S. D. Goitein (Cambridge, MA:

168

Notes

Association for Jewish Studies, 1974), 141–142. See also S. D. Goitein, ‘From the Mediterranean to India: Documents on the Trade to India, South Arabia, and East Africa from the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Speculum 29, no. 2, part 1 (April 1954): 181–197. 57 Goitein, ‘Involvement in Geniza Research’. 58 K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 59 Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith, Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018). 60 Al-Muqaddasī, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions: Aḥsan al-Taqāsīm fī Ma’rifat al-Aqālīm, trans. Basil Anthony Collins (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 1994). Quoted in Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean, 58. 61 See Moshe Gil, ‘The Rādhānite Merchants and the Land of Rādhān’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 17 (1974): 299‒328. For the Jewish involvement in Silk Road trade, see Lena Cansdale, ‘Jews on the Silk Roads’, in Silk Road Studies II, Worlds of the Silk Roads: Ancient and Modern, ed. David Christian and Craig Benjamin (New South Wales: Brepols, 1998), 23–30. Cansdale presents an overview of the main sources which attest to Jewish presence and trade activity on the overland and maritime routes of the Silk Roads from at least the eighth to the thirteenth centuries. 62 Kitāb al Amānāt wa’i Tiqadat. Samuel Rosenblatt, Saadia Gaon: The Book of Beliefs and Opinion, translated from the Arabic and the Hebrew (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), 26. On the role of Jewish traders in the Asian trade, see also Gil, ‘The Rādhānite Merchants’, 299–328. 63 These have been studied by Goitein and published posthumously by Mordechai Friedman in a number of ‘India Books’: see references in Chapter 1. For the prescriptions, see Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica; Leigh Chipman and Efraim Lev, Medical Prescriptions in the Cambridge Genizah Collections: Practical Medicine and Pharmacology in Medieval Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 64 Goitein and Friedman, India Traders of the Middle-Ages, 16. 65 Ibid. 66 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Genizah, vol. 2 (5 vols, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–1993), 265–266. 67 S. D. Goitein,‘The Medical Profession in the Light of the Cairo Genizah Documents’, Hebrew Union College Annual 34 (1963): 177–194. 68 For an inventory of medical substances mentioned in the Cairo Genizah, see Efraim Lev and Zohar Amar, Practical Materia Medica of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean according to the Cairo Genizah (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 71; and Efraim Lev and Zohar Amar, ‘“Fossils” of practical medical knowledge from medieval

Notes

169

Cairo’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 119, no. 1 (2008): 39. See also E. Lev,‘Drugs Held and Sold by Pharmacists of the Jewish Community of Medieval (11th14th centuries) Cairo According to Lists of materia medica found at the TaylorSchechter Genizah Collection, Cambridge’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 110 (2007): 275–293. 69 On the import of myrobalans from Egypt to Sicily, see Moshe Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle-Ages trans. David Strassler (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 568–569 (the Hebrew was published in 1997). 70 Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, ‘Medical Theory and Practice in Late Byzantium: The Case of John Zacharias Aktouarios (ca. 1275–ca. 1330)’ (PhD diss., King’s College London, 2015), 278. 71 Goitein and Friedman, India Traders of the Middle-Ages, 413–429. 72 Goitein and Friedman note that in Genizah documents we usually find: ihlīlaj or ihlīlij. 73 He is also sending a small quantity of pepper, presumably to cover expenses, and some wood. 74 Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India Book 4: Ḥalfon and Judah Ha-Levi: The Lives of a Merchant Scholar and a Poet Laureate according to the Cairo Geniza Documents (2 vols, Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2013) [Hebrew]. 75 Friedman, India Book 4, vol. 1, 84–86. 76 Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 220. 77 TS 13 J 33.1, margins lines 12–13. p. 75 (edition) and p. 78 (translation) Friedman, India Book 4, vol. 2 (Letter ‫ח‬15. Reproduction: p. 595). 78 TS 13 J 33.1, margins line 14. p. 75 (edition) and p. 78 (translation), ibid. 79 TS 13 J 33.1, margins lines 15–16. p. 75 (edition) and p. 78–79 (translation), ibid. 80 Mann was a weight measure which varied considerably. This is why in a previous part of this letter Abu Zikri specifies that one hundred mann is two hundred rutal. See ibid., 77, n. 24. 81 TS 13 J 33.1, margins lines 16–18. p. 75 (edition) and p. 79 (translation) in vol. 2 of: Mordechai Akiva Friedman, India Book 4 (Letter ‫ח‬15. Reproduction: 595). It is interesting to note here that Maimonides in his Glossary of Drug Names also refers to amlaj as: sīr amlaj, and explains: ‘It is embolic preserved’. As Meyerhof further elucidates, ‘Šir is the Persian for milk … Ibn al-Beithar states that šīramlağ was the emblic macerated in milk. But šīr can also be a wine or syrup.’ Moses Maimonides’ Glossary of Drug Names, ed. Fred Rosner, translated from Max Meyerhof ’s French Edition (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1979), 265–266. 82 Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith, An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The ‘Book of Curiosities’, Edited with an Annotated Translation (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 83 Rapoport and Savage-Smith, An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide, 378.

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Notes

84 Bodl. Ms. Heb. d.74, fol. 41. Edition and Hebrew translation in S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman with the assistance of A. Ashur, Indian Book IV-B: Ḥalfon the Travelling Merchant Scholar, 166–172 (Letter ‫ח‬30. Reproduction: 620–621). 85 Bodl. Ms. Heb. d.74, fol. 41 verso, lines 5–6 in S. D. Goitein and M. A. Friedman with the assistance of A. Ashur, Indian Book IV-B: Ḥalfon the Travelling Merchant Scholar, edition: p.169; Hebrew translation: 172. 86 Marijke Van der Veen and Jacob Morales, ‘The Roman and Islamic Spice Trade: New Archaeological Evidence’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 167 (2015): 54–63. Van der Veen and Morales discuss various uses of the substances they overall term as ‘spices’, the medical being one of them. 87 Van der Veen and Morales, ‘The Roman and Islamic Spice Trade’. 88 S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. 1, 337 and Meera Abraham, Two Medieval Merchant Guilds of South India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1988), 172. 89 See, for example, Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, The Archaeology of Tibetan Books (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 90 See Martin Levey, ‘Mediaeval Arabic Bookmaking and Its Relation to Early Chemistry and Pharmacology’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 52, no. 4 (1962): 1–79. The text studied by Levey was composed by Mu’izz ibn Bādīs c. 1025 CE. The use of myrobalans for black ink, however, appears in the chapter on tannin inks. This text includes one of the earliest descriptions of preparation of paper in Arabic. 91 Or 1081 J1. See S. D. Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders: Translated from the Arabic with Introduction and Notes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 207–212. 92 Ibid., 211. 93 Mark Cohen, Maimonides and the Merchants: Jewish Law and Society in the Medieval Muslim World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 58 and 94–95. 94 Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders, 207. This letter is not from the Genizah. 95 Ibid. 96 Mark Cohen, Maimonides and the Merchants, 95. 97 Mark Cohen, ‘The Burdensome Life of a Jewish Physician and Communal Leader: A Genizah Fragment from the Alliance Israelite Universelle Collection’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 16 (1993): 123–136. 98 Goitein and Friedman, India Traders of the Middle-Ages, 90. 99 Ibid., 90–117. 100 N. Allony, Jewish Library in the Middle Ages: Book Lists from the Cairo Genizah, ed. M. Frenḳel, H. Ben-Shammai and M. Soḳolow (Jerusalem: Makhon Ben-Zvi le-heḳer Ḳehilot Yiśraʾel ba-mizraḥ, 2006) [Hebrew].

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101 T-S Ar.41.1, #350 in Isaacs’s catalogue: Haskell D. Isaacs, with the assistance of Colin Baker, Medical and Para-Medical Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 102 T-S Ar.42.9, #410 in Isaacs’s catalogue, Medical and Para-medical Manuscripts, 33. 103 #562 and #649 in Isaacs’s catalogue, Medical and Para-medical Manuscripts. T-S Ar. 41.4 deals with signs of a moribund patient, derived from the Firdaws. 104 Bower Manuscript, Hoernle trans., 166. See also Jan Meulenbeld, A History of Indian Medical Literature, vol. 2A (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2000), 9, notes 107–109. 105 Bower Manuscript, Hoernle trans., 168. Much like the way the effectiveness of garlic is constructed elsewhere in the Bower Manuscript, see Dominik Wujastyk, The Roots of Ayurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 149–153. 106 The Basic Tantra, in The Basic Tantra and The Explanatory Tantra from the Secret Quintessential Instructions on the Eight Branches of the Ambrosia Essence Tantra (Dharamsala: Men-Tsee-Khang, 2008), 4–5. For a description see Yuri Parfionovitch and Gyurme Dorje (eds) Tibetan Medical Paintings: Illustrations to the Blue Beryl Treatise of Sangye Gyamtso (1653–1705) (New York: Abrams, 1992), vol. 1, 17–18 and vol. 2, 173–174. For other Indo-Tibetan narratives, see Bhagwan Dash ‘Harītakī: A Comparative Study of Literature in Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine’, Bulletin of the Indian Institute of History of Medicine 4, no. 1 (1974): 1–8; Bhagwan Dash ‘The Drug Terminalia Chebula in Ayurveda and Tibetan Medical Literature’, Kailash 4 (1976): 5–20. 107 Dēnkard, book III, chapter 157, 16. French translation in Jean de Menasce, Le Troisième Livre Du Dēnkart: Traduit du Pehlevi (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1973), 165. 108 Raoul Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha (Boulder: Shambhala, 1979), 82–84. 109 Kenneth G. Zysk, Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2010), 62–63; Birnbaum, Healing Buddha, 17–77. 110 Chih-hung Yen, ‘Bhaiṣajyaguru at Dunhuang’ (PhD diss., SOAS, University of London, 1997). 111 Gyurme Dorje, ‘The Buddhas of Medicine’, in Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine, ed. T. Hofer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014), 128–153. 112 Birnbaum, Healing Buddha, 90. 113 Ibid., 89–90 and 100. 114 For a translation and analysis of the Chapter on Medicine in the extant Vinaya Piṭakas where these are discussed, see Hin Tak Sik, ‘Ancient Indian Medicine in Early Buddhist Literature: A Study Based on the Bhesajjakkhandhaka and the Parallels in Other Vinaya Canons’ (PhD diss., Hong Kong University, 2015). See also Zysk, Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India, 73–83.

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115 Translation by Christoph Kleine, ‘Health Care in Indian Monasteries: Selections from Yijing’s Record of the Inner Law Sent Home from the Southern Seas’, in Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology or Premodern Sources, ed. Pierce Salguero (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 149. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid., 152. 118 Joseph Dan, Review of ‘A Hebrew Alexander Romance According to MS London, Jews’ College 145 by Wout Jac van Bekkum’, The Jewish Quarterly Review 86, no. 3/4 (1996): 435–438. The bibliography on this topic is enormous. To name just a few sources: Z. David Zuwiyya (ed.), A Companion to Alexander Literature in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Richard Stoneman et al. (ed.), ‘Alexander Romance in Persia and the East’, Barkhuis, vol. 15 (2012). On an early Mongolian version see Francis Woodman Cleaves, ‘An Early Mongolian Version of the Alexander Romance’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 22 (1959): 1–99. On the Alexander Romance in Islamic sources see ‘Iskandar the Prophet: Religious Themes in Islamic Versions of the Alexander Legend’, in Globalization of Knowledge in the Post-Antique Mediterranean, 700–1500 ed. Sonja Brentjes and Jürgen Renn (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 167–204. 119 Steven Bowman, ‘Alexander and the Mysteries of India’, Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies 2 (1999): 84. 120 Book of Asaf, BSB (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) Cod. hebr. 231, fol. 159r. 121 James Elkins, What Painting Is: How to Think about Painting, Using the Language of Alchemy (London: Routledge, 2000), 9–39; discussed in Tim Ingold, ‘Toward an ecology of materials’, Annual Review of Anthropology 41, no. 1 (2012): 434. 122 Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 165–182; Graham Harman, ‘Heidegger on Objects and Things’, in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005) 268–271; Graham Harman, ‘Technology, Objects and Things in Heidegger’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 34, no. 1 (2010): 17–25. 123 Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (London: Routledge, 2011), 214–215. 124 Ingold, ‘Toward an Ecology of Materials’, 436. 125 Ibid., 431. 126 Ibid., 434. 127 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 3.37 (ed. and trans. Pines, 2: 544), quoted and discussed in Gerrit Bos’s Introduction to Maimonides, Medical Aphorisms Treatises 22–25, edited, translated and annotated by Gerrit Bos (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2017), xx. I would like to thank Gerrit Bos for discussing this point with me and suggesting this reference.

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128 Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 218–221. 129 See the full list, ibid., 219. 130 On this treatise, see Gerrit Bos, ‘Maimonides on the Preservation of Health’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 4, no. 2 (1994): 213–235. 131 Ariel Bar-Sela, Hebbel E. Hoff and Elias Faris, ‘Moses Maimonides’ Two Treatises on the Regimen of Health Fī Tadbīr al-Ṣiḥḥah and Maqālah fī Bayān Baˋḍ alA`raḍ wa-al-Jawāb `anhā: Translated from the Arabic and Edited in Accordance with the Hebrew and Latin Versions’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 54, no. 4 (1964): 3–50. 132 See Alan Elbaum, ‘The Pursuit of Happiness: T-S Ar.44.201’, Fragment of the Month: September 2016, available: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/ departments/taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit/fragment-month/fragmentmonth-6 (accessed December 2019); Paul Fenton, ‘Review of Medical and Para-Medical Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections by Haskell D. Isaacs’, Revue des Études Juives 156 (1997): 392–395; Johann Christoph Bürgel, ‘Musicotherapy in the Islamic Middle Ages as Reflected in Medical and Other Sources’, Studies in History of Medicine 4 (1980): 23–28. On the use of triphala (iṭrīfal) among Indian sufis, see Fabrizio Speziale, Soufisme, religion et médecine en Islam indien (Paris: Karthala, 2010), 177 and 233–237; and Fabrizio Speziale, ‘The Relation between Galenic Medicine and Sufism in India during the Delhi and Deccan Sultanates’, East and West 53, 1/4 (2003): 157. 133 See, for example, the work of Ted Kaptchuk, a leading figure in Placebo Studies and Director of the Harvard Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS). 134 Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 80–84.

Chapter 4 1 Pasang Yonten Arya, ‘External Therapies in Tibetan Medicine: The Four Tantras Contemporary Practice, and a Preliminary History of Surgery’, in Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine, ed. Theresia Hofer (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2014), 64–89. 2 Ta’wil Mukhtalif al-Hadith, The Interpretation of Conflicting Narrations, ed. and trans. Gérard Lecomte, Le Traité des divergences du Ḥadīṯ d’Ibn Qutayba (Damascus: Institut Français du Damas, 1962), 362–365. 3 In a division of the six methods of healing, one is described as ‘healing by fire’. Dēnkard, book III, chapter 157. French translation in Jean de Menasce, Le Troisième Livre du Dēnkart: traduit du Pehlevi (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1973), 159.

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4 A Persian proverb recorded by al-Karkhī, quoted by Peter Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988), 115. 5 Ibn-Sīnā, Al-Qānūn fi’l-ṭibb, Book I: English Translation of the Critical Arabic Text (New Delhi: Jamia Hamdard, 1993), part IV, section 29, 378–379. 6 Ṣādeq Sajjādī, ‘DĀḠ’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1993, available online: http://www. iranicaonline.org/articles/dag-av (accessed October 2019). 7 ʻAlī-Akbar Saʻīdī Sīrjānī, ‘Dakira-ye Kwarazmsahi’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2011, available: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dakira-ye-kvarazmsahi-persianencyclopedia-of-medical-knowledge (accessed January 2020). 8 Sajjādī, ‘Dāḡ’. 9 Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 122. 10 Robert Herrlinger, History of Medical Illustration: From Antiquity to A.D. 1600 (Munich: Pitman Medical & Scientific Publishing, 1970), 16. 11 Vivian Nutton, Ancient Medicine (London: Routledge, 2004), 93. 12 For an overview, see Monica Green, ‘Crafting a (Written) Science of Surgery: The First European Surgical Texts’, Remedia, October 2015, available online: https:// remedianetwork.net/2015/10/13/crafting-a-written-science-of-surgery-the-firsteuropean-surgical-texts/ (accessed December 2019). On European medieval cautery, see Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1998), 76–82. See also: Herrlinger, Medical Illustration, 16–36. 13 Unlike the earlier period, the transmission of moxibustion knowledge across Eurasia from the seventeenth century onwards is quite well documented. See Shogo Ishino, ‘Technical Exchanges of Acupuncture-Moxibustion between Japan and Europe’, in History of Therapy: Proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on the Comparative History of Medicine – East and West, ed. Yosio Kawakita et al. (Tokyo: Ishiyaku, 1990), 89–115; Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine? A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), chapter 1, 41–78; Harold Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), esp. chapter 9, 339–377. 14 Bivins, Alternative Medicine? 41–78, and Cook, Matters of Exchange, 351. 15 Cook, Matters of Exchange, 351. 16 These were composed in Latin. See Cook, Matters of Exchange, 354, and 462, note 71 for English and German translations and studies. 17 On Ten Rhijne linking moxibustion with Hippocratic ideas, see ibid., 356 and 462, n. 77. On this question, see also Lu Gwei-Djen and Joseph Needham, Celestial Lancets: A History and Rationale of Acupuncture and Moxa (London: Routledge, 2002). 18 Mirko D. Grmek, ‘La Moxibustion en Méditerranée et en Extrême Orient’, Clio Medica 16, nos. 2 and 3 (1981/82): 113–122. 19 Grmek, ‘La Moxibustion en Méditerranée’.

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20 Anne-Marie Blondeau, Matériaux pour l’étude de l’hippologie et de l’hippiatrie tibétaines: à partir des manuscripts de Touen-houang (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1972). 21 PT 127, lines 117, 180 and possibly, 182. 22 PT 127, line 174. 23 PT 127, lines 177–179. 24 For example, PT 127, line 182. 25 Blondeau, Matériaux pour l’étude, 136. 26 See Vivienne Lo, ‘Spirit of Stone: Technical Considerations in the Treatment of the Jade Body’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 65, no. 1 (2002): 100–128. 27 See for example PT 1062, lines 34–35. The instruments are presumably made of iron. 28 Catherine Despeux, ‘Institutions médicales et thérapeutes à Dunhuang et à Turfan’, in Médecine, Religion et societe dans la Chine medievale: étude de manuscrits chinois de Dunhuang et de Turfan (3 vols, Paris: Collège de France, 2010), 54–56. 29 PT 127, line 88. 30 For an overview of the various Buddhist sources discussing the 101 and 404 illnesses, see Mark Tatz (trans.), Buddhism and Healing: Demiéville’s Article ‘Byō’ from Hōbōgirin (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985), 65–82. For the mentions in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, see Étienne Lamotte, The Teachings of Vimalakīrti, trans. Sara Boin (Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1994), 36; Robert A. F. Thurman, The Holy Teaching of Vimalakīrti: A Mahāyāna Scripture (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), 22 and 114. A Sanskrit text on the 404 illnesses was translated into Arabic in Abbasid times. See Dan Martin, ‘Greek and Islamic Medicines’ Historical Contact with Tibet: A Reassessment in View of Recently Available but Relatively Early Sources on Tibetan Medical Eclecticism’, in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, ed. Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 117–143; Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, ‘Early Arab Contact with South Asia’, Journal of Islamic Studies 5, no.1 (1994): 64. 31 Tatz, Buddhism and Healing, 72. See Paul Demiéville, ‘La Yogācārabhūmi de Sangharaksa’, Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 44, no. 2 (1951): 339–436. On the concept of 404 illnesses in a Chinese liturgy from Dunhuang, see Stephen F. Teiser, ‘Curing with Karma and Confession: Two Short Liturgies from Dunhuang’, in Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, ed. C. Pierce Salguero (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 322–335. See also Pierce Salguero, Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 72, on the 404 illnesses being a conventional way of saying ‘all illnesses’.

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32 See Martin, ‘Greek and Islamic Medicines’, 117–143, esp. 132. 33 First chapter of the rtsa rgyud, rgyud bzhi. Yonten Gyatso’s translation in ‘Nyes pa’, at 113. 34 PT 1044, l. 52: rgya gar gi rgyal po’I yul nas byung ba’i dpyad rnam gchIg las/; Luo Bingfen et al. (eds), Tun hong nas thon pa’i bod kyi gso rig yig cha gces bsdus (Pe cin [Beijing]: Me rigs dpe skrun khang, 2002), 238. 35 This point was made by Fernand Meyer, ‘Quelques traces parmi les sources de la medecine tibétaine: les manuscrits medicaux tibétains de Dunhuang’, Paper Delivered at the Colloque Franco-Japonais: Interactionset translations culturelles en Eurasie (EPHE et Université de Tokyo), Paris (12–13 December, 2002), unpublished. I would like to thank Fernand Meyer for sharing his paper with me. 36 This is found in chapter 30 of the Sūtrasthāna part. See K. R. Srikantha Murty (trans.), Vāgbhaṭa’ Aṣṭāñga Hṛdayam: Text, English Translation, Notes, Appendix and Indices (3 vols, Varanasi: Krishnadas Academy, 1991), vol. 1, 343–353, at 350. There is also a chapter devoted to cauterization (agnikarman) in the Suśruta (chapter 12). 37 Ronald Emmerick, A Guide to the Literature of Khotan (Tokyo: International Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1997), 1–3. 38 Ronald Emmerick, ‘The Historical Importance of the Khotanese Manuscripts’, in Prolegomena to the Sources on the History of Pre-Islamic Central Asia, ed. J. Harmatta (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1979), 167–177. 39 Rong Xinjiang, ‘Official Life at Dunhuang in the Tenth Century: The Case of Cao Yuanzhong’, in The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War And Faith, ed. Susan Whitfield (London: British Library, 2004), 57–62 and 60–1. 40 Quoted in Emmerick, ‘The Historical Importance of the Khotanese Manuscripts’, 169. For Emmerick’s edition, see Ronald Emmerick, Tibetan Texts Concerning Khotan (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 20–21. For the proposed dating, see F. W. Thomas, Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents Concerning Chinese Turkestan (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1935), 42. Thomas suggested that the text was composed in the Dunhuang area. 41 See M. Maggi, ‘Khotanese Literature’, in The Literature of Pre-Islamic Iran: Companion Volume I, ed. Ronald E. Emmerick and Maria Macuch (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), 330–417; and Emmerick, Literature of Khotan. 42 For an overview, see Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘The Silk-Roads as a Model for Exploring Eurasian Transmissions of Medical Knowledge: Views from the Tibetan Medical Manuscripts of Dunhuang’, in Entangled Itineraries of Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia, ed. Pamela Smith, (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2019), 47–62. 43 India Office Library MS Ch ii 003 - IOL KHOT pp. 87–110. 44 For an English translation, see Sten Konow, A Medical Text in Khotanese: Ch. II. 003 of the India Office Library (Oslo: Dybwad, 1941). See also A. F. R. Hoernle, ‘An

Notes

45

46

47 48

49

177

Ancient Medical Manuscript from Eastern Turkistan’, in Commemorative Essays Presented to Sir Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar (Poone: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1917), 415–432; R. E. Emmerick, ‘Contributions to the Study of the Jivaka-pustaka’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 42, no. 2 (1979a): 235–243. See R. E. Emmerick, ‘Notes on the Crosby Collection’, in Medioiranica: Proceedings of the International Colloquium Organised by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven from the 21st to the 23rd of May 1990, ed. W. Skalmowski and A. van Tongerloo (Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 57–64; (Ms.78+79; 104+105; 184+185; 190+191). The Crosby Collection are a group of approximately 150 fragments written in Khotanese and Sanskrit. They are named after the American Oscar Terry Crosby (1861–1947), who visited Khotan in 1903 and purchased them. They are currently housed in the Library of Congress. See Ronald Emmerick, ‘Crosby, Oscar Terry’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1993, available online: http://www.iranicaonline.org/ articles/crosby-oscar-terry-born-ponchatoula-louisiana-21-april-1861-d (accessed March 2019). Maggi, ‘Khotanese Literature’. A text combined with drawings where demons causing children’s illnesses are depicted together with a collection of formulas against demons. Khotanese with Chinese parallel text (ms Ch 00217 c, a, b); M. Maggi, ‘A Chinese-Khotanese Excerpt from the Mahāsāhasrapramardanī’, in La Persia e l’Asia centrale da Alessandro al X secolo (Roma: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1996), 123–137. Reproductions in R. Whitfield et al. (eds), Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Route (London: British Museum Publications, 1990), 90–91, no. 69. Discussed in Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Medicine, Astrology and Divination’. PT 127, line 182; Luo Bingfen et al. (eds), Tun hong nas thon pa, 223. According to the editors of this text, this sentence probably refers to both bloodletting and cauterization/moxibustion: Luo Bingfen et al. (eds), ibid, note 158. The word phug can mean: pierce. Previous translations of this sentence have appeared in AnneMarie Blondeau, Matériaux pour l’étude de l’hippologie et de l’hippiatrie tibétaines: à partir des manuscripts de Touen-houang (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1972), 7; and Géza Uray, ‘The Old Tibetan Sources of the History of Central Asia up to 751 A.D.: A Survey’, in Prolegomena to the Sources on the History of Pre-Islamic Central Asia, ed. János Harmatta (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1979), 304. Both were unsure about the meaning of the term, but proposed iron cautery. See Ligeti’s analysis of PT 1283: Louis Ligeti, ‘À propos du “Rapport sur les rois demeurant dans le nord”’, in Études Tibétaines dédiées à la mémoire de Marcelle Lalou, ed. Ariane Macdonald (Paris: Librairie d’Amerique et d’Orient, 1971), 166– 189. For additional sources on Turks see Jacque Bacot, ‘Reconnaissance en Haute Asie septentrionale par cinq envoyés ouïgours au VIII siècle’, Journal Asiatique 244 (1956): 137–153; Harmatta (ed.), Prolegomena to the Sources on the History of

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Pre-Islamic Central Asia; Vladimir Minorsky, Sharaf al-Zaman Tahir Marvazi on China, the Turks and India (London: Royal Asiatic society, 1942); on Khazaria, see Norman Golb and Pritsak Omeljan, Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982). 50 For an overview, see Peter B. Golden, ‘The Conversion of the Khazars to Judaism’, in The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives, Selected Papers from the Jerusalem 1999 International Khazar Colloquium, ed. Peter B. Golden, Haggai Ben-Shammai and András Róna-Tas (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 123–162. 51 Peter B. Golden, ‘Some Thoughts on the Origins of the Turks and the Shaping of the Turkic Peoples’, in Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World, ed. Victor H. Mair (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 136–157. 52 Denis Sinor, ‘The Establishment and Dissolution of the Türk Empire’, in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 315–316. 53 Colin Mackerras, ‘The Uighurs’, in Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Inner Asia, 317–342. 54 Mackerras, ‘The Uighurs’, 333. 55 Mark Dickens, ‘Syriac Christianity in Central Asia’, in The Syriac World, ed. Daniel King (London: Routledge, 2019), 583–624. 56 Bazin, Les Systemes Chronologiques, 229. For the Uighur Dunhuang manuscripts, see James Hamilton, Manuscrits Ouïgours du IX–X siècle de Touen-Houang: Textes établis, traduits, et commentés par James Hamilton (2 vols, Paris: Peeters, 1986). 57 Bazin, Les Systemes Chronologiques, 229. 58 Chen Ming, ‘La Médecine dans la région de turfan à l’époque médiévale interactions entre chinois et hu’, in Despeux (ed.), Médecine, religion et société, 641–709. For the Sanskrit manuscripts see Heinz Bechert and Klaus Willie (eds), Sanskrithandschriften aus den Turfanfunden (9 vols, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1965–2004). Medical manuscripts are found for example in vol. 7 (1995), 59–60; vol. 8 (2000), 86–87; 106–107; 109–110; 132–133, 156, 158–159. 59 The following overview is based on Rachmati, ‘Zur Heilkunde der Uiguren I’, 451–473; Rachmati, ‘Zur Heilkunde der Uiguren II’, 401–448; Zieme, ‘Notes on Uighur Medicine’, 308–322. 60 Dieter Maue, ‘An Uighur Version of Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 4 (2008): 113–173. 61 Vivienne Lo, ‘Quick and Easy Chinese Medicine’, in Medieval Chinese Medicine, ed. Vivienne Lo and Christopher Cullen (London: Routledge, 2005), 227–251, and Vivienne Lo, ‘Manuscrits de Dunhuang et de Khotan sure la moxibustion’, in Despeux (ed.), Médicine, religion et société, 239–284. 62 Vivienne Lo, ‘Manuscrits de Dunhuang et de Khotan’. 63 PT 1044, line 26–27. 64 Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Medicine, Astrology and Divination’.

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65 Vivienne Lo and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Travelling Light: Sino-Tibetan Moxa-cautery from Dunhuang’, in Imagining Chinese Medicine, ed. Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 66 PT 1044, lines 53–54. 67 For religion see, for example, Sam van Schaik and Jacob Dalton, ‘Where Chan and Tantra Meet: Tibetan Syncretism in Dunhuang’, in Whitfield (ed.), The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith, 63–71; Carmen Meinert, ‘The Conjunction of Chinese Chan and Tibetan Rdzogs chen Thought: Reflections on the Tibetan Dunhuang Manuscripts IOL Tib J 689–1 and PT 699’, in Contributions to the Cultural History of Early Tibet, ed. Matthew Kapstein and Brandon Dotson (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 239– 301. For history see, for example, Takeuchi Tsuguhito, ‘A Passage from the Shih chi in the Old Tibetan Chronicle’, in Soundings in Tibetan Civilization, ed. Barbara Aziz and Matthew Kapstein (New Delhi: Manohar, 1985), 135–146; Imaeda Yoshiro, ‘Towards an Interpretation of the Word chis’, in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh Richardson, ed. Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi (Oxford: Aris & Phillips, 1979), 131–132; Imaeda Yoshiro, ‘L’Identification de l’original chinois du Pelliot tibétain 1291 – traduction tibétaine du Zhangguoce’, Acta Orientalia Hungarica 34, nos. 1–3, (1980): 53–68. See also: Stein, ‘Tibetica Antiqua VI’, 273–335. 68 Last section of chapter 26 of the phyi rgyud- the fourth tantra. Translated in Yang Ga, ‘The Sources for the Writing of the Rgyud bzhi, Tibetan Medical Classic’ (PhD diss., Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2010), 262. 69 See Keiji Yamada, The Origins of Acupuncture, Moxibustion, and Decoction, (Kyoto: Nichibunken, 1998), 1. 70 D. C. Epler, ‘Bloodletting in Early China and its Relations to the Origin of Acupuncture’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 54 (1980): 361. 71 Wang Shumin and Gabriel Fuentes, ‘Chinese Medical Illustration: Chronologies and Categories’, in Imagining Chinese Medicine, ed. Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 29–50. 72 Shumin and Fuentes, ‘Chinese Medical Illustration’. 73 Lo and Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Travelling Light’, 271–290. 74 British Library Or.8210/S.6168 and BNF Pelliot chinois 2675. 75 Lo, ‘Quick and Easy Chinese Medicine’, and Lo ‘Manuscrits de Dunhuang et de Khotan’. 76 On the early cautery images in Italian and English manuscripts, see Peter Murray Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1998), figs 5, 18, 68–70. These include Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS plut 73.41, fol. 127 verso and fol. 122 recto; Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 1382, fol. 2 verso and fol. 19 recto; and London, British Library, MS Sloane 2839, fol. 1 verso. For a discussion of these European cautery images, see 76–82. 77 For a brief description of PT 1058, see Marcelle Lalou, ‘Texte médical tibétain’, Journal asiatique 233 (1941–1942): 209–211.

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78 For a discussion on indication lines, see Herrlinger, History of Medical Illustration, 19 and 54–60. 79 Francesca Bray, ‘Introduction’, in Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China: The Warp and the Weft, ed. Francesca Bray, Vera DorofeevaLichtmann and Georges Métailié (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1–78. 80 The following is based on Reinhold Müller, ‘Ein Beitrag zur ärztlichen Graphik aus Zentralasien (Turfan)’, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 15 (1923): 21–26; G. R. Rachmati, ‘Zur Heilkunde der Uiguren II’, SPAW (1932): 401–448, at 431; and my personal communications with Dieter Maue. 81 For previous studies, see Müller, ‘Ein Beitrag zur ärztlichen Graphik’, 21–26. (= Festschrift K. Sudhoff zum 70. Geburtstage überr. v. seinen Freunden, Mitarbeitern und Schülern.). The complete text was published, translated and commented on only in 1932, see Rachmati, ‘Zur Heilkunde’, 22. See also Lo and Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Travelling Light’. 82 Dieter Maue, personal communication. 83 This was already suggested by Müller, ‘Ein Beitrag’. 84 Dieter Maue, personal communication. 85 On the key role of illustrations in the seventeenth century transmission of Japanese moxibustion knowledge to Europe, for example, see Cook, Matters of Exchange, esp. 354–355. 86 Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine (New York: Zone Books, 2002), 8. 87 On Daoist visual representations of the body, see Catherine Despeux, ‘Visual Representations of the Body in Chinese and Daoist Texts from the Song to the Qing Period (Tenth to Nineteenth Century)’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 1, no. 1 (2005): 10–52. On Tibetan visual images of the body linked with ritual purposes, see Bryan J. Cuevas, ‘Illustrations of Human Effigies in Tibetan Ritual Texts: With Remarks on Specific Anatomical Figures and Their Possible Iconographic Source’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21, no. 1 (2011): 73–97. 88 See Gavin Kilty (trans.), Desi Sangyé Gyatso, Mirror of Beryl: A Historical Introduction to Tibetan Medicine (Boston: Wisdom, 2010), 201, 250, 262. 89 Janet Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 43.

Chapter 5 1 See Thomas Allsen’s groundbreaking work, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), and Michal Biran, ‘The Mongol Empire in World History: The State of the Field’, History Compass 11, no. 11 (2013): 1021–1033.

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2 Nicola Di Cosmo, ‘Connecting Maritime and Continental History: The Black Sea Region at the Time of the Mongol Empire’, in The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography, ed. Peter Miller (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), 182. 3 Pamela Smith, ‘Nodes of Convergence, Material Complexes and Entangled Itineraries’, in Entangled Itineraries: Materials, Practices, and Knowledges across Eurasia, ed. Pamela Smith (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2019), 5–24. 4 On the diplomatic embassies between Europe and the Mongols, see for example: Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West 1221–1410 (Harlow: Pearson, 2005); Antti Ruotsala, Europeans and Mongols in the Middle of the Thirteenth Century: Encountering the Other (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2001). 5 Devin DeWeese, ‘The Influence of the Mongols on the Religious Consciousness of Thirteenth Century Europe’, Mongolian Studies: Journal of the Mongolia Society 5 (1978 and 1979): 41–78. On Prester John see also C. F. Beckingham and B. Hamilton (eds), Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996); B. Hamilton, ‘The Lands of Prester John: Western Knowledge of Asia and Africa at the time of the Crusades’, Haskins Society Journal 15 (2004): 126–141; Peter Jackson, ‘Prester John redivivus: A Review Article’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 7 (1997): 425–432. 6 See Thomas Allsen, ‘Medicine’ in Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia, 141–160; Paul Buell, ‘How did Persian and other Western Medical Knowledge Move East, and Chinese West? A Look at the Role of Rashīd al-Dīn and Others’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 3, no. 2 (2007): 279–295. 7 Often referred to as ‘Nestorians’ but on why the term ‘Nestorian’ in this context should be replaced by either ‘Church of the East’ or ‘Church of Persia’, see Peter L. Hofrichter, ‘Preface’, in Jingjiao: The Church of the East in China and Central Asia, ed. Roman Malek (Sankt Augustin: Monumenta Serica, 2006), 11–14. On Islamic medicine in the Mongol era see Buell, ‘How did Persian and other Western Medical Knowledge Move East’; Shinno Reiko, ‘Promoting Medicine in the Yuan Dynasty (1206–1368): An Aspect of Mongol Rule in China’ (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2002) and The Politics of Chinese Medicine under Mongol Rule (London: Routledge, 2016); Leigh Chipman, ‘Islamic Pharmacy in the Mamlūk and Mongol Realms: Theory and Practice’, Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 3, no. 2 (2007): 265–278; Angela Schottenhammer, ‘Huihui Medicine and Medicinal Drugs in Yuan China’, in Eurasian Influences on Yuan China, ed. Morris Rossabi (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013), 75–102. 8 On ‘Īsā/Isu’a see Kim Ho Dong, ‘A Portrait of a Christian Official in China under the Mongol Rule: Life and Career of ‘Isa Kelemechi (1227–1308)’, in Christianity and Mongolia: Past and Present, ed. Gaby Bamana (Ulaanbaatar: Antoon Mostaert Center, 2006), 41–52; Tu-chien Weng, ‘Ai-hsieh: A Study of his Life’ (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1938); Shinno, ‘Promoting Medicine in the Yuan Dynasty’,

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47–48 and The Politics of Chinese Medicine, 138; Allsen, Culture and Conquest, 149–151; Buell, ‘How did Persian and other Western Medical Knowledge Move East’. 9 See Dror Weil, ‘Cross-Asian Movement of Knowledge: Huihui Yaofang and its Persian Sources’ (tentative title, forthcoming). I would like to thank Dror Weil for discussing his work with me. See also: Paul Buell, ‘Medical Globalization in the Mongol Era’, in Mongol Sudlalyn Ogulluud: Essays on Mongol Studies, ed. Ts. Ishdorj (Ulaanbaatar: ‘Bembi San’ Khevleliyn Gazar, 2007), 138–147, and ‘Food, Medicine and the Silk Road: The Mongol-Era Exchanges’, Silk Road 5, no. 2 (2007): 22–35; Kong YC, Chen DS, ‘Elucidation of Islamic Drugs in Hui Hui Yao Fang: A Linguistic and Pharmaceutical Approach’, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 54, nos. 2 and 3 (1996): 85–102. 10 See my ‘Galen in Asia?’, in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Galen, ed. Petros Bouras-Vallianatos and Barbara Zipser (Leiden: Brill, 2019). 11 Morris Rossabi, ‘Tabriz and Yuan China’, in Aspects of the Maritime Silk Road: From the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea, ed. Ralph Kauz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010), 97–106. 12 Marco Polo, The Travels, translated and with an Introduction and Notes by Nigel Cliff (London: Penguin-Random House [2015] 2016), 28–29; for Odoric of Pordenone on Tabriz, see Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, ‘Civitas Thauris: The Significance of Tabriz in the Spatial Frameworks of Christian Merchants and Ecclesiastics in the 13th and 14th Centuries’, in Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th–15th Century Tabriz, ed. Judith Pfeiffer (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 251. For Ibn Battuta, see H. A. R. Gibb (trans.), Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325–1354 (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969), 101. 13 Allsen, Culture and Conquest, 56. 14 Rossabi, ‘Tabriz and Yuan China’. 15 Quoted by Preiser-Kapeller, ‘Civitas Thauris’, 261; from: Marino Sanudo Torsello, The Book of the Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross, trans. Peter Lock (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 50. 16 Pfeiffer (ed.), Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge, 6. 17 See Luciano Petech, ‘Les Marchands italiens dan l’empire mongol’, Journal asiatique 250, no. 4 (1962): 549–574. 18 For details, see Morris Rossabi, Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the First Journey from China to the West (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1992), 69. 19 For Ilkhanid Buddhism see Samuel M. Grupper, ‘The Buddhist Sanctuary-vihāra of Labnasagut and the Il-Qan Hülegü: An Overview of Il-Qanid Buddhism and Related Matters’, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 13 (2004): 5–77; Johan Elverskog, Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road (Philadelphia and Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 56–116; Roxann Prazniak, ‘Ilkhanid Buddhism: Traces of a Passage in Eurasian History’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 56,

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no. 3 (2014): 650–680; Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Rashīd al-Dīn’s Life of the Buddha: Some Tibetan Perspectives’, and Anna Akasoy, ‘The Buddha and the Straight Path. Rashīd al-Dīn’s Life of the Buddha: Islamic Perspectives’, in Rashīd al-Dīn as an Agent and Mediator of Cultural Exchanges in Ilkhanid Iran, ed. Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (London: Warburg Institute Press, 2013), 197–211 and 173–196 respectively. 20 See Grupper, ‘The Buddhist Sanctuary’. 21 The Blue Annals say in reference to rGyal ba rin po che: ‘Having heard about the fame of his accomplishments, king Hu-la from sTod presented on three occasions great offering to him.’ ’Gos lo tsā ba gzhon nu dpal, The Blue Annals, trans. G. Roerich (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1996), 580. For a detailed study of Tibetan sources on Hülegü, see Elliot Sperling, ‘Hülegü and Tibet’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 44 (1990): 145–157. 22 See my ‘Rashīd al-Dīn’s Life of the Buddha’. 23 Grupper, ‘The Buddhist Sanctuary’. 24 Rashid al-Din, Jami’u’t-Tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles. A History of the Mongols, trans. W. M. Thackston (3 vols, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998–99), 619–620. 25 See Peter Jackson, ‘Baḵšī’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, available online: https://www. iranicaonline.org/articles/baksi-a-buddhist-lama (last accessed: March 1, 2020); B. Spuler, ‘Bakhshī’, Encyclopedia of Islam, second edition. Available: https:// referenceworks.brillonline.com/ (accessed: March 2020); Victor H. Mair, ‘PersoTurkic Bakshi=Mandarin Po-Shih: Learned Doctor’, in Journal of Turkish Studies, ed. Sinasi Tekin and Gonul Alpay Tekin, vol. 16 (1992): 117–127; Emel Esin, ‘Four Turkish Bakhshi Active in Iranian Lands’, in The Memorial Volume of the Vth International Congress of Iranian Art & Archaeology: Tehran-Isfahan-Shiraz, 11th-18th April 1968, vol. 2, ed. M. Y. Kiani and A. Tajvidi (Tehran: Ministry of Culture and Arts, 1972), 53–73; Gerard Clauson, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth Century Turkish (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 321; Gerhard Doerfer, Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1965), vol. 2, 271–277; Rashīd al-Dīn, Histoire des Mongols de la Perse, trans. and annotated by É. Quatremère ([Paris, 1836] Amsterdam: Oriental Press, 1968), 184–198. 26 For the Tibetan context: Leonard van der Kuijp, ‘“Baγši” and Baγši-s in Tibetan Historical, Biographical and Lexicographical Texts’, Central Asiatic Journal 39 (1995): 275‒302; Berthold Laufer, ‘Loan Words in Tibetan’, T’oung Pao 17, nos. 4–5 (1916): 485–487. 27 Jackson, ‘Baḵšī’. 28 Reuven Amitai, ‘Hülegü and the Wise Men: Topos or Reality?’ in Pfeiffer (ed.), Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge, 15–34. 29 Qiao Yang, ‘Like Stars in the Sky: Networks of Astronomers in Mongol Eurasia’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 62, nos. 2 and 3 (2019):

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388–427; Aydin Sayili, The Observatory in Islam: and its Place in the General History of the Observatory (Ankara: Türk Tarīh Kurumu Basimevī, 1960), 189–223. 30 For the different possible dates of his birth see Nourane Ben Azzounna, ‘Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh al-Hamadhānī’s Manuscript Production Project in Tabriz Reconsidered’, in Pfeiffer (ed.), Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge, 187–200. 31 See our introduction to Rashid al-Din as an Agent and Mediator of Cultural Exchanges in Ilkhanid Iran. The following biographical notes are based on Birgitt Hoffmann, ‘Speaking about Oneself ’, in Akasoy, Burnett and Yoeli-Tlalim (eds), Rashid al-Din as an Agent and Mediator of Cultural Exchanges in Ilkhanid Iran, 1–14. 32 On Rashīd al-Dīn, see Akasoy, Burnett and Yoeli-Tlalim (eds), Rashid al-Din as an Agent and Mediator. 33 For an overview of his scholarship see Akasoy, Burnett and Yoeli-Tlalim (eds), Rashid al-Din as an Agent and Mediator; Josef van Ess, Der Wesir und Seine Gelehrten (Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, 1981); Stefan Kamola, ‘Rashīd al-Dīn and the Making of History in Mongol Iran’ (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2013); Dorothea Krawulsky, The Mongol Īlkhāns and their vizier Rashīd al-Dīn (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011). 34 See Akasoy ‘The Buddha and the Straight Path’ and Yoeli-Tlalim ‘Rashīd al-Dīn’s Life of the Buddha’. 35 See for example: J. Boyle, ‘Rashīd al-Dīn: The First World Historian’, Iran 9 (1971): 19–26. 36 On the chronology of Rashid al-Din’s works see van Ess, Der Wesir, 55–60. 37 Hoffmann, ‘Speaking about Oneself ’, 3. 38 Ibid., 5. 39 Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, translation in Allsen, Culture and Conquest, 83. 40 Allsen, ‘Medicine’, in Culture and Conquest. 41 Vivienne Lo and Wang Yidan, ‘Blood or Qi Circulation? On the Nature of Authority in Rashīd al-Dīn’s Tānksūqnāma (“The Treasure Book of the Ilkhan on Chinese Science and Techniques”)’, in Akasoy, Burnett and Yoeli-Tlalim, Rashid al-Din as an Agent and Mediator, 127–172. 42 Allsen, ‘Medicine’, in Culture and Conquest, 145–146. 43 Hoffmann, ‘Speaking about Oneself ’, 4. 44 A. K. S. Lambton, ‘The Āthār wa Aḥyā’ of Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl Allāh Hamadānī and his Contribution as an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturalist’, in The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, ed. R. Amitai-Preiss and D. O. Morgan (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 126. 45 Ibid.

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46 Studies on the Tanksūqnāma include: Persis Berlekamp, Vivienne Lo and Wang Yidan, ‘Administering Art, History and Science in the Mongol Empire: Rashid al-Din and Bolad Chengxiang’, in Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons, and Poets at the Great Islamic Courts, ed. Amy Landau (Baltimore, Seattle and London: Walters Art Museum in association with University of Washington Press, 2016), 53–85; Lo and Yidan, ‘Blood or Qi Circulation?’; Persis Berlekamp, ‘The Limits of Artistic Exchange in Fourteenth-Century Tabriz: The Paradox of Rashid al-Din’s Book on Chinese Medicine, Part I’, Muqarnas 27 (2010): 209–250; F. Klein-Franke and Zhu Ming,‘Rashīd al-Dīn as a Transmitter of Chinese Medicine to the West’, Le Muséon 109 (1996): 395–404; J. Rall, ‘Zur persischen Übersetzung eines Mo-chüeh, eines chinesischen medizinischen Textes’, Oriens Extremus 7 (1960): 152‒157. 47 Berlekamp, ‘The Limits of Artistic Exchange’, 210. 48 Yoichi Isahaya, ‘Sino-Iranica in Pax Mongolica: The Elusive Participation of Syriac-Rite Christians in the Ilkhanid Translation Project’, in Marco Polo and the Silk Road (10th–14th Centuries), ed. Rong X. and Dang B. (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2019), 341–362. 49 These concern changes in political alliances. See Isahaya ‘Sino-Iranica in Pax Mongolica’ for an overview of these different explanations. 50 K. Jahn, ‘Some Ideas of Rashīd al-Dīn on Chinese Culture’, Central Asiatic Journal 28, nos. 3 and 4 (1984): 161–175. 51 Berlekamp, Lo and Wang, ‘Administering Art, History, and Science’. 52 Miya Noriko, ‘“Knowledge” in East and West during the Mongol Period’, Acta Asiatica 110 (2016): 19–37. 53 Endo’s table appears in: M. Endo, ‘Chinese Phonology of Early 14th Century as Reflected in the Persian Translation of the Maijue by Wang Shuhe’, in Hashimoto Mantaro kinen chugokugogaku ronsyu [In Memory of Mantaro J. Hashimoto], ed. A. Oi-kan Yue and Endo M. (Tokyo: Uchiyama Books, 1997), [Japanese] 30–32; reproduced by Isahaya in ‘Sino-Iranica in Pax Mongolica’. 54 See my ‘Re-visiting “Galen in Tibet”’, Medical History 56, no. 3 (July 2012): 355–365. 55 Dpa’ bo gtsug lag phreng ba, Dam pa’i chos kyi ’khor lo bsgyur ba rnams kyi byung ba gsal bar byed pa mkhas pa’i dga’ ston (2 vols, Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1986), 889. 56 Paul Pelliot did not support the Greek source of the word which has been suggested by others. See Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo: Ouvrage Posthume, vol. 1 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1959), 49. See also: Laufer, ‘Loan-Words’, 492–493; Li Tang, East Syriac Christianity in Mongol-Yuan China (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011), 51–57; James Hamilton and Niu Ru-Ji, ‘Deux inscriptions funéraires turques nestoriennes de la Chine Orientale’, Journal Asiatique 282 (1994): 147–164; James Hamilton, ‘Le Texte turc en caractères

186

57

58

59 60

61 62

Notes syriaques du grand sceau cruciform de Mar Yahballaha III’, Journal Asiatique 260 (1972): 155–170; Christoph Baumer, The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity (London: I.B.Tauris, 2006), 219. On the Tibetan: Leonard van der Kuijp, ‘“Baγši” and Baγši-s’, 282–283, note 18. Van der Kuijp says that to his knowledge this is the earliest attestation of this Mongol word in Tibetan. Rashid al-Din uses it in his Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, transcribed in Persian as ‫اركاوون‬. For the use of this term by Vardan the Armenian, recounting this visit to the court of Hülegü, see Robert Thomson, ‘The Historical Compilation of Vardan Arewelc’i’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 43 (1989): 220–221 (ark`awun). On the Chinese term ‘Yelikewen’ referring to Christians under the Mongol era, see Yin Xiaoping, ‘On the Christians in Jiangnan during the Yuan Dynasty according to The Gazetteer of Zhenjiang of the Zhinshun Period 1329–1332’, in Hidden Treasures and Intercultural Encounters: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia, ed. Dietmar Winkler and Li Tang (Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2009), 305–319. Paul Buell has suggested that this form of the word came to the Tibetan via Sogdian and Middle Mongolian. Paul D. Buell, ‘Some Aspects of the Origin and Development of the Religious Institutions of the Early Yüan Period’ (MA diss., University of Washington, 1968), 155, n. 311. I would like to thank Paul Buell for making his thesis available to me. Manuscripts of As’ila wa ajwiba: Hagia Sophia no. 2180; Bibliothek der Selimiye Moschee in Edirne no. 1930; National Bibliothek Teheran (Mecelle-I Mihr. VIII, N 4–5) and in the Topkapi Palace Library (Istanbul) no. 1930. According to Klein-Franke, the oldest manuscript of this text is preserved in Istanbul (Istanbul, Ahmet III, 1930) which bears the colophon: 10. Rabī` I 715 AH/June 14th 1315. See Felix Klein-Franke, ‘The Relation between Knowledge and Belief in Islam. Annotations to Rashīd ad-Dīn’s “Book of Questions and Answers”’, Le Muséon 113 (2000): 205–219. A. Terzioğlu, ‘Die Ilkhanischen Krankenhäuser und die Einflüsse der islamischen Medizin auf Byzanz zu dieser Zeit’, Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine (1974): 288–296. A. Terzioğlu, ‘Die Ilkhanischen Krankenhäuser’. The following is a translation by Jonathan Brack. I would like to thank Jonathan Brack for kindly providing a translation of this passage, and discussing it with me. A previous translation appears in: Zeki Velidi Togan, ‘İlhanlı Bizans kültür münasebetlerine dair vesikalar (A Document concerning Cultural Relations between the Ilkhanide and Byzantiens)’, İslâm Tetkikleri Enstitüsü Dergisi 3, nos. 3 and 4 (1959–1960): 315–378 (=1-39), 9–15, 11. Jonathan Brack, personal communication. Rashīd al-Dīn, Faḍl Allāh Abū al-Khayr, Asʾila va ajviba-yi rashīdī, vol. 2, ed. R. Shaʿbānī (Islamabad, 1993), 52–53. Translation by Jonathan Brack.

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63 On Chioniades see: L. G. Westernik, ‘La Profession de foi de Grégoire Chioniadès’, Revue des études byzantines 38 (1980): 233–245; Anne Tihon, ‘Chioniades, George’, New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 2, ed. Noretta Koertge (Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2008), 120–122; Maria Mavroudi, ‘Exchanges with Arabic Writers during the Late Byzantine Period’, in Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557), Perspectives on Late Byzantine Art and Culture, ed. Sarah T. Brooks (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), 62–75; F. Jamil Ragep, ‘New Light on Shams: The Islamic Side of ΣÀMΨ ΠOYXÁPHΣ’, in Pfeiffer (ed.), Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge, 231–247; Joseph Gerard Leichter, ‘The Zīj as-Sanjarī of Gregory Chioniades: Text, Translation and Greek to Arabic Glossary’ (PhD diss., Brown University, 2004), 2–6; van Ess, Der Wesir, 52; David Pingree, “Chioniades, Gregory”, The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 1, ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 422–423; David Pingree, “Gregory Chioniades and Palaeologan Astronomy”, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 18 (1964): 135–160. 64 Ragep, ‘New Light’. 65 Westernik, ‘La Profession de foi de Grégoire Chioniadès’. 66 Maria Mavroudi, ‘Exchanges with Arabic Writers’, 62–75. See also Ragep, ‘New Light’, 231–247; Leichter, ‘The Zīj as-Sanjarī’, 2–6. 67 Raymond Mercier, ‘The Greek‚ Persian Syntaxis and the Zīj-I Īlkhānī’, Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences 34 (1984): 35–60. 68 Tihon, ‘Chioniades, George’. See also van Ess, Der Wesir, 52. 69 Pingree, ‘Chioniades, Gregory’, 422–423. 70 Rashīd al-Dīn, Asʾila va ajviba-yi rashīdī, 52–53. 71 Maria Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achment and its Arabic Source (Leiden: Brill, 2002), esp. 392–429; Dimitri Gutas, ‘Arabic into Byzantine Greek: Introducing a Survey of the Translations’, in Knotenpunkt Byzanz: Wissensformen und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen, ed. Andreas Speer and David Wirmer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 252–254; Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, ‘Cross-Cultural Transfer of Medical Knowledge in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Introduction and Dissemination of Sugar-Based Potions from the Islamic World to Byzantium’, Speculum (forthcoming); Anthony Kaldellis, ‘Catalogue of Translations into Byzantine Greek from Texts in Any Other Language, 300–1453 AD, version III’, available:https://www.academia. edu/36711128/Kaldellis_Catalogue_of_Translations_into_Byzantine_Greek_ version_III_ (accessed June 2018). 72 Bouras-Vallianatos, ‘Cross-Cultural Transfer of Medical Knowledge’. 73 Kaldellis, ‘Catalogue of Translations’. 74 As part of the fourteenth-century Ambrosianus Q 94 sup. Tihon, ‘Chioniades, George’. On other Byzantine remedy texts translated from Persian into Greek,

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see David Bennett, Medicine and Pharmacy in Byzantine Hospitals: A Study of the Extant Formularies (London: Routledge, 2017), 121–139. 75 I thank Maria Mavroudi for discussing this text with me, and for sending me a copy of her: Maria Mavroudi, ‘Islamic Divination in the Context of its “Eastern” and “Western” Counterparts’, in Falnama: The Book of Omens, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, October 24, 2009–January 24, 2010, ed. M. Farhad with S. Bağcı (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2009), 222–229 and 324–329. 76 Rashīd al-Dīn, Asʾila va ajviba-yi rashīdī, vol. 2, 52–53. Translation by Jonathan Brack. I would like to thank Jonathan Brack for kindly providing a translation of these passages and discussing them with me. A previous partial translation appears in: Togan, ‘İlhanlı Bizans kültür’, 315–378 (=1-39), 11. 77 Bryer, The Empire of Trebizond, 339. 78 Anthony A. M. Bryer, The Empire of Trebizond and the Pontos (London: Variorum Reprints 1980), chapter 4; Preiser-Kapeller ‘Civitas Thauris’, 260. 79 Quoted in Preiser-Kapeller, ‘Civitas Thauris’, 260. 80 Farhad Daftary and Wilferd Madelung (eds), Encyclopaedia Islamica (Leiden: Brill, 2008–2011). This is a selection of articles translated from Kāẓim Musavī Bujnūrdī (ed.), Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Buzurg-i Islāmī (The great Islamic encyclopaedia) (Tehran, 1996). The entry on Āṣaf b. Barakhyā is in vol. 3 (2011): 829–831. 81 Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Exploring Persian Lore in the Hebrew Book of Asaf’, Aleph 18, no. 1 (2018): 123–146. 82 Serpil Bağci, ‘A New Theme of the Shirazi Frontispiece Miniatures: The Dīvān of Solomon’, Muqarnas 12 (1995): 101–111. Asaf is depicted to the left of Solomon (i.e., seated to his right), both in those from the Aqqoyunlu era, where Solomon shares the throne with Bilqis (the Queen of Sheba) (figs. 1 and 2 in Bağci’s article) and in those from the Safavid era, where the two monarchs occupy separate thrones, ibid., figures 3–6. 83 Indeed at this time, Asaf was such a popular figure that a sixteenth-century Ottoman vizier, Lütfi Paşa (d. 1563), entitled his book on the qualities of a good vizier Asafnāme. 84 C. Beckwith, ‘Tibetan Science at the Court of the Great Khans’, Journal of the Tibet Society 7 (1987): 5‒11. See also Buell, ‘How did Persian and other Western Medical Knowledge Move East’, and Buell, ‘Tibetans, Mongols and the Fusion of Eurasian Cultures’, in Islam and Tibet, 189‒208. 85 See for example: Arthur Waley (trans.), The Travels of an Alchemist: The Journey of the Taoist Ch’ang-Ch’un from China to the Hindukush at the Summons of Chingiz Khan (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1931). 86 See Buell, ‘How did Persian and other Western Medical Knowledge Move East’, and Buell, ‘Tibetans, Mongols and the Fusion of Eurasian Cultures’, in Islam and Tibet, 189‒208.

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87 On the Tibetan technique of processing mercury along with sulphur and other substances to create a ‘detoxified’ mercury sulphide, see Barbara Gerke, ‘Biographies and Knowledge Transmission of Mercury Processing in Twentieth Century Tibet’, Asia 69, no. 4 (2015): 867–899. 88 IOL Tib J 756, lines 18–20. mtsal is an old form for: mtshal. For an overview of IOL Tib J 756, see Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Between Medicine and Ritual: Tibetan “Medical Rituals” from Dunhuang’, in Tibetan and Himalayan Healing: An Anthology for Anthony Aris, ed. Charles Ramble and Ulrike Roesler (Kathmandu: Vajra Publications, 2015). 89 Four Tantras (rgyud bzhi) [1982] 2000, Second Tantra, chapter 23. For an overview of bcud len in the Four Tantras, see Barbara Gerke, ‘“Treating the Aged” and “Maintaining Health”: Locating bcud len Practices in the Four Medical Tantras’, The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 35 (2012 and 2013): 329–362. On bcud len see also: Cathy Cantwell, ‘Reflections on Rasāyana, bcud len and Related Practices in Nyingma (Rnying ma) Tantric Ritual’, History of Science in South Asia 5, no. 2 (2017): 181–203 and Jamyang Oliphant, ‘Extracting the Essence: bcud len in the Tibetan Literary Tradition’ (PhD diss., Oxford University, 2016). 90 For an overview, see Carmen Simioli, ‘Alchemical Gold and the Pursuit of the Mercurial Elixir’, Asian Medicine 8 (2013): 41–74, and that special issue of Asian Medicine more generally. See also: Carmen Simioli, ‘The “Brilliant Moon Theriac” (Zla zil dar ya kan): A Preliminary Study of Mercury Processing according to the Vase of Amṛta of Immortality (’Chi med bdud rtsi bumpa) and Its Influence on Tibetan Pharmacological Literature’, Revue d’Études Tibétaines 37 (2016): 391–419. 91 The Armenian sources are discussed by Samuel M. Grupper, ‘Buddhist sanctuaryvihāra of Labnasagut and the Il-Qan Hülegü: An Overview of Il-Qanid Buddhism and Related Matters’, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 13 (2004): 31–35. Kirakos Gandzaketsi, Istoriia Armenii (Moscow: 1976), quoted in Grupper, ‘Buddhist sanctuary-vihāra’, 31. 92 Peter Jackson, The Mongols & the Islamic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 237, quoting from Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh (364 in Thackston’s translation). 93 Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, translated in Reuven Amitai, ‘Hülegü and his Wise Men: Topos or Reality?’, in Pfeiffer (ed.), Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge, 15–34. 94 Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, Compendium of Chronicles, trans. Thackston, vol. 3, 574. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid.

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97 See Antolic-Piper, ‘Roger Bacon’, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available: http://www.iep.utm.edu/bacon-ro/(accessed December 2019). 98 William Newman, ‘An Overview of Roger Bacon’s Alchemy’, in Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, ed. Jeremiah Hackett (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 317–336. 99 Newman, ‘An Overview of Roger Bacon’s Alchemy’, 335. 100 Ibid., 324. 101 This is discussed in Roger Bacon’s De erroribus medicorum. See ibid. 102 Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, Science and Civilization in China, Volume 6: Biology and Biological Technology, Part VI: Medicine, ed. Nathan Sivin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 59. 103 The Ilkhans exchanged embassies with the English and the French – exchanges which indeed went both ways. Devin DeWeese, ‘The Influence of the Mongols on the Religious Consciousness of Thirteenth Century Europe’, in Mongolian Studies 5 (1978 and 79): 41–78; Prazniak, ‘Ilkhanid Buddhism’. 104 Jarl Charpentier, ‘William of Rubruck and Roger Bacon’, Geografiska Annaler, vol. 17 (Supplement: Hyllningsskrift Tillagnad Sven Hedin, 1935), 255–267. See also: Mary Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 112. 105 On this meeting see Charpentier, ‘William of Rubruck and Roger Bacon’, 255–267. Their meeting has been dated to 1257 by Peter Jackson and by Charpentier. See Peter Jackson (trans.), The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke, 1253–1255, introduction, notes and appendices by Peter Jackson with David Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing [1990] 2009), 47. Pelliot has suggested that the two met as late as ten years after William of Rubruck’s return from the Mongol court in 1255 – as late as 1265. Paul Pelliot, Recherches sur les Chrétiens d’Asie centrale et d’extrême-orient, with additional notes by J. Dauvillier (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1973), 233. 106 Roger Bacon, Opus Majus, trans. Robert Belle Burke (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), vol. 1, 416. 107 DeWeese, ‘The Influence of the Mongols’, 59. 108 Ibid. 109 Bacon, Opus Majus, vol. 2, 806. 110 Ibid., 626. 111 Ibid., 621. 112 Marco Polo wrote his account together with Rustichello of Pisa, in their year in prison in 1298. Marco Polo, The Travels, 266. 113 Christopher Cullen, ‘Reflections on the Transmission and Transformation of Technologies: Agriculture, Printing and Gunpowder between East and West’, in Science between Europe and Asia: Historical Studies on the Transmission, Adoption and Adaptation of Knowledge, ed. Feza Günergun and Dhruv Raina (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 13–26.

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114 Joseph Needham et al., Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 5, Part 7: Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Military Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 115 Allsen, ‘Mongol as Vectors’, 151. See also: Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘The Role of the Mongols in the Introduction of Gunpowder and Firearms in South Asia’, in Gunpowder: The History of an International Technology, ed. Brenda J. Buchanan (Bath: Bath University Press, 1996), 33–44 and Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘The Coming of Gunpowder to the Islamic World and North India: Spotlight on the Role of the Mongols’, Journal of Asian History 30, no. 1 (1996): 26–45. 116 For an overview of scholars who support the idea, along with her argument against it, see Kate Raphael, ‘Mongol Siege Warfare on the Banks of the Euphrates and the Question of Gunpowder (1260–1312)’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 19, no. 3 (2009): 355–370. 117 For Islamic sources see Ahmad Yousif Al-Hassan, ‘Chemical Technology in Arabic Military Treatises’, in From Deferent to Equant: A Volume of Studies in the History of Science in the Ancient and Medieval Near East in Honor of E.S. Kennedy, ed. David A. King and George Saliba (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1987), 153–66. The quoted MS is Istanbul Suleymaniye Beṣir Aga 441. Quoted also in Pamela Smith, ‘Knowledge in Motion: Following Itineraries of Matter in the Early Modern World’, in Cultures in Motion, ed. Daniel T. Rodgers, Bhavani Raman and Helmut Reimitz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 109–133. 118 Joseph Needham; Lu Gwei-Djen; Ling Wang, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 5, Part 7, 48–50. 119 Quoted in Ahmad Yousif Al-Hassan, ‘Chemical Technology in Arabic Military Treatises’, 157; Pamela Smith, ‘Knowledge in Motion’, 122. 120 Prazniak, ‘Ilkhanid Buddhism’. For Bacon’s references to the Mongols, see Bacon, Opus Majus, vol. 1: 287, 323, 385, 388 and vol. 2 789, 806. 121 Newman ‘An Overview of Roger Bacon’s Alchemy’, 323–332. 122 İlter Uzel, Şereffeddin Sabuncuoğlu: Cerrāḥiyyetü’l-Ḫāniyye (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevī, 1992), vol. 1, 49–50. According to Uzel, the epitaph reads: ‘God, whose power and strength is dear to us, has inspired His humble servant Abdullah, son of Anber, to build his hospital in the year 708 [1308], during the reign of the Great Sultan Oljaite Mehmed [Uljeitu]-May God grant him continuous power and strength-and during the exalted reign of the Great Khatun, İldus, the Queen of Queens.’ 123 Bruno De Nicola, ‘Letters from Mongol Anatolia: Professional, Political and Intellectual Connections among Members of a Persianised Elite’, Iran 56, no.1 (2018): 77–90. 124 Pierre Huard and Mirko Drazen Grmek, Le Premier Manuscrit Chirurgical Turc: rédigé par Charaf ed-Din (1465) (Paris: Les Editions Roger Dacosta, 1960). 125 Uzel, Şereffeddin Sabuncuoğlu, 64.

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126 As Huard and Grmek have suggested, the title simply alludes to the fact that the adaptation of the book was made after a Persian manuscript from the Mongol era. 127 Huard and Grmek, Le Premier Manuscrit chirurgical Turc, 53. 128 These terms come specifically from Tibetan pulse diagnosis, as it appears in the pulse diagnosis section of the Four Tantras. 129 On encryption, see Leigh Chipman, ‘Cryptography in the Late Medieval Middle East: From Mosul to Venice?’, in Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann and Robert Morrison (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), 67–84. On the importance of cross-cultural oral transmission of knowledge, see George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 95. His comment was particularly concerning astronomy, but studies of other fields attest to a wider phenomenon. 130 Mary Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991). 131 Mary B. Campbell, ‘The Utter East: Merchant and Missionary Travels during the “Mongol Peace”’, in The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 112. 132 Rashīd al-Dīn, Tānksūqnāma-yi Īlkhān dar Funūn-i ‘Ulūm-i Khiṭāʾī, MS Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Aya Sofya 3596, 9r (translation courtesy of Yoichi Isahaya and Jonathan Brack). 133 Isahaya, ‘Sino-Iranica in Pax Mongolica’. 134 Lo and Yidan, ‘Blood or Qi Circulation?’. 135 Bloom, Paper before Print, 178–189. 136 Vivienne Lo and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Travelling Light: Sino-Tibetan Moxa-cautery from Dunhuang’, in Imagining Chinese Medicine. 137 Lo and Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘Travelling Light’. 138 Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, ‘A Tibetan Image of Divination: Some Contextual Remarks’, in Imagining Chinese Medicine, ed. Vivienne Lo and Penelope Barrett (Leiden: Brill, 2018). 139 Elverskog, Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road, 104–115. 140 Roxann Prazniak, ‘Siena on the Silk Roads: Ambrogio Lorenzetti and the Mongol Global Century, 1250–1350’, Journal of World History 21, no. 2 (2010): 177–217, and Roxann Prazniak, Sudden Appearances: The Mongol Turn in Commerce, Belief, and Art (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019), esp. chapter 3, ‘Siena in Tuscany (Land of the Franks)’. 141 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia, ed. Mehdi Amin Razavi (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996), 234.

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Afterword Donald Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 1998), 6. 2 Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988). 3 Donald Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, Introduction. 4 This section is based on the chapter ‘Views on Shambhala’ of my, ‘Contemporary Oral Teachings of Kālacakra in Exile: a Dialogue between Tradition and Change’ (PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2004); and my ‘Shambhala’, in Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements, ed. Peter B. Clarke (London: Routledge, 2006), 526–528. 5 See H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy (2 vols, London: The Theosophical Publishing Company, 1888), vol. 2, 319, and H. P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence: Being Chosen Fragments from the ‘Book of the Golden Precepts’, Reprinted from the original edition with notes and comments by Alice Leighton Cleather and Basil Crump (Peking: Chinese Buddhist Research Society, 1927), 29 and 104–105. 6 For George Roerich’s account of the expeditions, see George N. Roerich, Trails to Inmost Asia: Five Years of Exploration with the Roerich Central Asian Expedition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931). For a ‘spiritual’ account of the expedition, see Nicholas Roerich, Shambhala: In Search of the New Era (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, [1930] 1990). 7 George N. Roerich, ‘Studies in the Kālacakra I’, Journal of the Urusvati Himalayan Research Institute of the Roerich Museum 2 (1932): 11–23. For a discussion on George Roerich’s contribution to the study of Kālacakra, see John R. Newman, ‘The Outer Wheel of Time: Vajrayāna Buddhist Cosmology in the Kālacakra tantra’ (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1987), 141–144. 8 John McCannon, ‘By the Shores of White Waters: The Altai and Its Place in the Spiritual Geopolitics of Nicholas Roerich’, Sibirica: Journal of Siberian Studies 2, no. 3 (2002): 166–189, and John McCannon, ‘Searching for Shambhala: The Mystical Art and Epic Journeys of Nikolai Roerich’, Russian Life 44, no. 1 (2001): 48–56. 9 On various aspects of the western perception of Shangri-La, see Thierry Dodin and Heinz Räther (eds), Imagining Tibet: Perceptions, Projections and Fantasies (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001), and Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, chapter 7. 10 Timothy Carroll, ‘Could this be the way to Shangri-La?’, Daily Telegraph, 29 July 2002. 11 On the cultural-colonial context of the Genizah discovery, see Ella Shohat, ‘Taboo Memories, Diasporic Visions: Columbus, Palestine, and Arab-Jews’, in Taboo 1

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Memories, Diasporic Voices (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 201–232. I would like to thank Jacqueline Rose for suggesting this source. 12 Annette Yoshiko Reed, ‘Beyond the Land of Nod: Syriac Images of Asia and the Historiography of “The West”’, History of Religions 49, no. 1 (2009): 48–87. 13 Reed, ‘Beyond the Land of Nod’, 55–56.

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Index Abbasid Empire 10, 11, 18, 28, 31–2, 35–6, 67–8, 111 Abulafia, David 16 Abū Sahl ibn Nawbakht 31, 33 Akasoy, Anna xi, 4, 15 Al-Bīrūnī 17, 69–70 Al-Razi (Rhazes) 17, 67, 77 Allsen, Thomas 121 alchemy 5, 8, 82, 105, 116–21, 124 Alexander the Great 5, 30, 68, 81 Alexander Romance 30, 81, 124 ‘Ancient Letters’ (Sogdian) 11, 67 antediluvian knowledge 28–9, 33 Arabic book lists 77 Cairo Genizah 2 eighth century letters on paper 11 history of science 31, 33 Hülegü 108 Judaeo-Arabic 2, 60, 74–5 Kalīla wa-Dimna 50 Life of the Buddha, see under Rashīd al-Dīn medical texts 2, 64–5, 67, 69, 77, 83, 86, 106 musk 15 myrobalans (ihlīlaj) 63–5 Questions and Answers 112–13 Tibet 15 translations from Greek 21, 114 translations from Sanskrit 67–70 translations into 111 translations into Latin 21, 129 views of the Orient 29 see also translation; mediating languages Aramaic 2, 21, 27, 33, 66 art 7, 12, 17, 29, 47, 71, 82, 107, 116, 125–6 Asaf ben Berakhya (Asaf the Jew) 28, 113, 115–16, see also Book of Asaf Asclepius 28, 32 Aṣṭāṅgahṛdaya saṃhitā 68, 89 Avicenna, see Ibn Sīnā Ayurveda 36–7, 50, 67, 90

Babylonian knowledge 29, 31 Babylonian medicine 9, 28, 87 Bacon, Roger 105, 117–21, 124 Bactrian (language) 19, 24, 48, 57, 68 bakhshi 107–8, 116–17 Battle of Talas 10 Bhaiṣajyaguru, see Medicine Buddha Ben-Ezra synagogue 2 Ben-Sira book 2 birch bark 41, 43–5, 60 Black Sea 16, 103–4, 121 Blavatsky, Helena 127–8 de Blois, François 50 book formats 47, 59 Book of Asaf (Sefer Asaf, Sefer Refu’ot) 4, 21, 26–34, 39, 58, 66, 82, 116, 144n.4 Book of Curiosities ix, 13, 71, 75, 137n.57 map of the Indus River 15 Bower, Hamilton 42–3 Bower Manuscript 4, 13, 41–61, 64, 78, 128 bridging languages, see mediating languages Buddhism Bactrian 68 burial of texts 46 Europe 118, 127 Ilkhanid 5, 107–8 India 47, 58, 112 Khotanese texts 90 Kucha 41–2, 44–7 Life of the Buddha, see under Rashīd al-Dīn medicine 16, 24, 31 New Age 128 papermaking technology 10–11, 47 relations with Islam 68 Silk Roads 7, 18–19 Sogdian texts 67 Tocharian A and B (Agean and Kuchean) texts 48

232

Index

transmission into Central Asia 44 Uighur 92, 107 Vinaya 81 William of Rubruck 118 see also Bower Manuscript, Kālacakra Tantra, Medicine Buddha, Shambhala, Tanjur, Xuanzang buried texts 2, 19, 34, 43, 46, 128 Byzantium 73–4, 91, 106, 112–15 in Tibetan sources 35 Cairo Genizah 2, 5, 12–16, 26, 60, 63, 66, 71–7, 83, 128 Carakasamhitā 36, 64, 67, 70 Carling, Gerd 49 cautery 85–7, 89, 91, 122, see also moxacautery Chang’an 8, 35 (map) Chen Ming 13 Chioniades, Gregorios 113–15 Christianity, Eastern 7, 20–1, 26, 92, 105, 107, 139n.79, 139n.80. Church of the East, see Christianity, Eastern cinnamon 74, 83 cloves 74, 83 colonialism 127–8 Confucius 52, 55 contact zone 4, 41–61 di Cosmo, Nicola 16, 103, 120 ‘cultural meridian’ 50, 64, 123–4 Dēnkard 31, 33, 79, 85 Desi Sangye Gyatso, see Sangye Gyatso dice 51, 56 (image), 57–61, 57 (image), see also divination Dioscorides 28, 64–5 divination 8, 28, 36 dice 41–2, 51–61 links with medicine 51, 58–60 Dotson, Brandon 51, 55 Dunhuang, Cave 17 (‘library cave’) 1 Chinese medical texts 37, 94–5, 97, 123 parallels with Genizah manuscripts 1–2, 12–16 polyglot 17–18 Tibetan medical texts 36–7, 53, 55, 87–9, 91, 93–4, 96, 100–1, 116, 123

Tibetan divination texts 52–5 Tocharian B medical text 50 Egypt 13, 15, 27, 30–1, 33, 58, 60, 64, 71, 73–5, 82, 87 embodied knowledge 123–4 Enoch 119 (book of) 28 Fifth Dalai Lama 34, 38, 53 Friedman, Mordechai Akiva 13, 73, 77 Fustat 2, 13, 60, 71, 74, 76–7, 129 Galen 28, 34–9, 64–5, 77, 106, 112 Galenic medicine 21, 106 Geller, Mark 9 genizah 2, see also Cairo Genizah Ghāzān Khan 107–10 Gibson, Margaret 1 Ginzburg, Carlo 59 Goitein, Shlomo Dov 13, 71–3, 77 gold 18, 85 Great Game 42, 44 Grünwedel, Albert 20, 44 Gunder Frank, Andre 2, 22 gunpowder 7, 120–1, 124 Hansen, Valerie 7–8, 46, 59 Hārūn al-Rashīd 63, 68, 111 Hebrew Alexander Romance 30, 81–2 Ben-Sira 1–2 book lists from the Genizah 77 genizah 2 Indic materia medica 31, 64, 66 Kalīla wa-Dimna 50 lot books 60 medical texts 2, 21, 26, 30 vehicle for cross-cultural transmissions 33 view of the orient as a source of knowledge 29–31 see also Book of Asaf, mediating languages Hippocrates 9, 28, 77 Hoernle, Rudolf 43–5, 48, 54, 90 Hülegü 107–8, 110–11, 116–17, 120 humours 50, 66 nyes pas 50–1, 89 doṣas 50–1, 88

Index Ibn al-Nadīm 11 Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) 17, 77, 85 Canon of Medicine 23, 37 illustrations of the human body 5, 95–101, 123, 125–6 immortality 42, 51, 117–18, 120–1, 128, see also alchemy India Asiatic Society of Bengal 43 British Government in 17, 42–4 Cairo Genizah 13, 16, 71–7, 83 colonized 127 Eastern Christianity 20 Hebrew sources 29–31, 81–2 Jewish and Muslim traders 65 Kalīla wa Dimna 50–1 links with Khotan 90 Maimonides 5, 63, 76–7 maps of the Book of Curiosities 15 myrobalans 63–83 Rashīd al-Dīn 109–10 Sefer Asaf 30–1, 33 source of knowledge 29–31, 127 source of life-prolonging drugs 51, 117, 119 source of medical knowledge 5, 13, 24, 26–31, 89, 92, 110 source of medical knowledge in Tibetan texts 34, 36–9, 95 source of wondrous drugs 5, 28, 51, 63–4, 119 Tabriz, gateway 107 trade route to China 18 transmission of knowledge 48–9 Xuanzang 47 Indian Ocean 15–16, 71, 72, 74–6 Indus River 15 (map), 45, 71 Ingold, Tim 82, 84 Ink-making 75 Irk Bitig 51, 54 (image), 56, 59 iron 85, 89, 91, 93 Islam 7, 63, 70 Central Asia 11 Ghāzān Khan 107–9 Islamic medicine 38–9, 65, 105–6 papermaking technology 10 Rashīd al-Dīn 110 relations with Buddhism ix, 68 Silk Roads 7 Tibet xii, 5, 36, 63

233

Japan 16, 44, 46 Japanese medicine 85–7, 95 Jews Asaf the Jew, see Asaf ben Berakhya medicine amongst 26 professions in Islamic lands 73 Rashīd al-Dīn 108, 110–11 traders 18, 71–7 see also Judaism, Hebrew, Book of Asaf Jivaka Pustaka 66, 90 Josephus Flavius 29 Jubilees (book of) 28 Judaism 2, 7, 32, 91 medicine 32–3 Kālacakra Tantra ix, 127–8 Kalīla wa-Dimna 50–1 Kashgar 20, 35 (map), 43–4, 104 (map) Khotan 10, 35 (map), 44, 47, 51, 57, 90, 112–13 Khotanese (language) 18–19, 24, 64, 66–7, 90 Khotanese manuscripts from Dunhuang 90 Khotanese medical knowledge/texts 34, 66, 90–1 Kizil caves 45, 47–8 Kong tse, see Confucius Korea 10, 68, 85 Kucha 8, 10, 13, 35 (map), 41–9, 59, 78 papermaking 47 translation activities 47 Kuchean (language, Tocharian B) 18, 47–9 Kumtura 41, 45–7 Kuriyama, Shigehisa 100 Latour, Bruno 22 Lewis, Agnes 1 Lo, Vivienne 37, 93 Lopez, Donald 127 Lost Horizon x, 128 lost knowledge 28–9, 32–4, 41, 127–8 Louise-Pratt, Mary 4 magic squares 125 Maimonides 5, 30, 63, 73, 76–7, 82–3 Mair, Victor 23 Manichaeism 7, 55–6, 67, 92 Maue, Dieter 92, 98 Mazar Tagh 10, 51, see also Khotan mediating languages 4, 18–21, 24, 33, 39, 129

234

Index

Medicine Buddha (Bhaiṣajyaguru) 5, 33, 63, 79, 80 Mediterranean Sea 16, 50, 71, 73–4, 103, 129 ‘Mediterraneans’ 16 mercury 116–19 military technology 120, 124 Moxa-cautery 5, 12, 20, 36–7, 55, 85–101, 123, 125, see also cautery musk 3, 4, 7, 18, 63, 69, 74, 83 Musk Route/s 4–5, 15–16 myrobalan 3, 5, 15, 30, 63–84, 100 in Buddhist texts 79–81 nard 31, 74, 83 Nestorians, see Christianity, Eastern new thalassology 16 ophthalmology 38, 42, 67, 83, 86, 89 oral knowledge 123–4 Orient, as a source of knowledge 29–31, 127–30 Hebrew 29–31 origin narratives 4, 23, 25–39, 58, 144n.3 palaeography 45, 47 paper China 11–12 early exemplars from Central Asia 9–11 genizah 2 hemp 10 illustrations of the human body 5, 125 impact on production of medical knowledge 12, 96, 125 ink 75 Kucha 47 long-distance traders 11 nose bleed 11 papermaking 7, 9–12, 47, 125 ‘Paper Trail’ 5, 7, 9–12 Rashīd al-Dīn on Chinese type 11–12, 125 Samarqand 10–11 see also book formats Pelliot, Paul 12, 14, 49 Pelliot tibétain (PT) 127 (Tibetan medical manuscript from Dunhuang) 36–7, 53, 55, 87–9, 91, 93–4, 100 Pelliot tibétain (PT) 1044 (Tibetan medical manuscript from Dunhuang) 37, 87, 89, 94, 100

Pelliot tibétain (PT) 1058 (Tibetan medical manuscript from Dunhuang) 87, 96, 100–1 Persian Asaf ben Barakhya 115–16 astronomy 113–14 bakhshi 108 Chinese medicine 111–12 Chioniades’ knowledge of 114 into Greek 114–15 Judaeo-Persian 18 Kalīla wa-Dimna 50–1 mediating language 19, 21, 24, 50, 66 medical knowledge 26, 34, 64, 85–6, 105–6 pharmacology 66–7, 69, 114–15 Rashīd al-Dīn’s Questions and Answers 112–13 Sanskrit into 66 Sino-Persian translations 111–12 Tibetan 34–5 views of the orient 29 see also Dēnkard, translation, mediating languages Pfeiffer, Judith 107 pharmacology 63–84, 101, 110 Byzantine 114 Tibetan 78 Polo, Marco 104, 106–7, 119–20, 124 Prazniak, Roxann 125 printing 7, 12, 125 pulse diagnosis 26, 93, 95, 104–5, 110, 115, 123 Qaraqorum 105, 116, 118 qi 93, 95, 124 Rafa’el (angel) 27 Rashīd al-Dīn 11–12, 63, 104–17, 124–5 Life of the Buddha 107 Reed, Annette Yoshiko 129 Rezakhani, Khodadad 7 rhubarb 3, 63 rlung (wind) 50, 94 Said, Edward 3 Samarqand 10, 20 paper from 10–11 Sangye Gyatso (Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho) 34, 36, 38–9, 53, 100–1

Index Sanskrit 13, 18, 21, 31, 41, 44–5, 47–50, 63–70, 78, 83, 89–90, 92–3, 108, 129 translations into Arabic 69–70 Schechter, Solomon 1–2, 13–14, 26 secrecy 120–1 Sefer Asaf, see Book of Asaf Sefer Refu’ot, see Book of Asaf Șereffeddin Sabuncuoğlu 121–3, 125 sexagenary cycle 53 Shambhala 127–30 Russian interest 127–8 Shangri-La 127–30 Siddhasāra 13, 68 Khotanese version 90 Silk 7–8 Silk Roads 1, 5–11, 6 (map) archaeology of 4, 7, 9–10, 17–18, 41, 43–5 languages 11, 18–21, 24, 48–51, 59, 64, 66–7, 90–1, 112 manuscripts 1, 3–4, 7, 10–14, 18, 20, 24, 36–7, 41, 43–55, 66, 79, 85, 87–92, 94–8, 100–1, 116, 123, 128, see also Bower Manuscript, Pelliot tibétain (PT) 127, Pelliot tibétain (PT) 1044, Pelliot tibétain 1058 Maritime Silk Road 8, 16 Russian interest 42–4 Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) 8 vernacularization of knowledge 12 Sims-Williams, Nicholas 21, 51 Sivasundaram, Sujit 22 Smith, Pamela 9, 103, 123 Sogdian (language) 11, 18–21, 24, 51, 59, 64, 66–7, 90–2 Sogdiana 11 Sogdians (people) 11, 66–7 influence of Ayurveda in medicine 67 Manichaeism 92 traders 67 translators 67 Solomon (King) 113, 115–16 Stein, Aurel 10–11, 17, 44, 51, 56, 66–7, 90 Stein, Rolf 19–20 Strickmann, Michel 55, 59 Suśrutasamhitā 64, 67–8 Syriac 1, 18–19, 26, 28–9, 31, 50, 112, 129 mediating language 20–1, 24, 33, 66, 112 medical texts 21, 27, 33, 64, 66, 69, 92

235

Tabriz 104–15, 121, 129 Taklamakan Desert 8, 10, 17, 19, 35 (map), 59, 60 Talmud 1, 30, 32 Tanjur (bstan ’gyur) 38, 49, 70 Tanksūqnāma 12, 111–12, 124–6 Termez 57, 59–60 Tibet Empire 13, 17, 33, 35 (map), 36, 52 histories 4, 33–9, 52–3, 58, 106, 112 links with the Islamic world 35–6 lost wisdom 127 Tibetan (language) 18, 21, 52 divination texts 51–6 Ilkhanid court 108 mediating language 18–20, 24 Tibetan medicine exchanges with the Islamic world 15, 23 Galen 34–9 Gyushi (rgyud bzhi, Four Tantras) 33–4, 78, 88, 95, 116 histories/ origin narratives 4, 33–4 ‘humours’ (nyes pas) 50 illustrations of the human body 5 links with Chinese medicine 20 mercury-based remedies 116 Mongol Empire 110, 116 moxibustion manuscripts from Dunhuang 5, 12–13, 36–7, 85–101, 123, 125, see also Pelliot tibétain 127, Pelliot tibétain 1044, Pelliot tibétain 1058 myrobalans (a-ru-ra) 78 pharmacology 78 pharmaceuticals 63 Yogaśataka 49, 70 Timothy I, Patriarch 20, 92 Tocharian A and B (Agnean and Kuchean, languages) 18–19, 24, 48–50, 64, 70, 92 trade Black Sea 16, 103 Ilkhanate 104–7, 115, 126 Indian Ocean 13, 71–7 Indic materia medica 72–7 myrobalans 64–5, 71–7 Silk Roads 7–8, 17–18, 59 see also Sogdians (people), Jews- traders

236

Index

translation Alexander Romance 81 Arabic into Greek 114 Arabic into Latin 86, 129 Chinese into Persian 111–12 ‘cultural translation’ 109 divine into human language 28–9 Dunhuang 18–20, 129 Greek into Arabic 65 Ilkhanid court 109 ‘Īsā the Translator 106, 112 Kucha 47 paper, impact of 12, 47–8 Persian into Chinese 106 Persian into Greek 114–15 Sanskrit into Arabic 67–70 Sanskrit into Khotanese 90 Sanskrit into Tibetan 70, 89 Sanskrit into Tocharian 49–50, 92 Sanskrit into Uighur 92 Sefer Asaf 30 Sogdians 67 vernacularization of knowledge 12, 49 see also mediating languages Trebizond 113–15, 121 tree/trees of life 28, 32 Turfan 5, 8, 10, 13, 20, 21, 51–2, 55, 67, 87, 91–3, 98–9, 123 Turfan Collection 44–5, 48 Turkic medicine 85, 89, 91–3, 122–3, see also Uighur medicine

Turkish 18, 122–3, 125 Turks 59, 91–2, 109–10 Uighur (language) 18–19, 24, 49, 112 culture and science 91–2 Uighur medicine/medical texts 5, 12, 34, 92–3, 98–101, 110, 123, 125 Uighur (people) 18, 90–2 Eastern Christianity 92 Uighur Empire 92 urine analysis 26, 37, 95 Van Bladel, Kevin 31, 68 Vinaya 81 Von le Coq, Albert 20, 44, 51 Von Richthofen, Ferdinand 5, 7 Wang Yuanlu 1, 17 Weil, Dror 106 William of Rubruck 104–5, 118, 120–1, 124 Wonder Literature 124 Xuanzang 47, 58, 68, 93 Yijing (divination text) 53, 55 Yijing (monk) 81 Yogaśataka 49–50, 70 Zhang Zhung 36–7 Zla ba’i rgyal po (Lunar King) 23, 37

237

238

239

240