Ancient anatomical drawings preserved in Tibet / by L.A. Waddell.

  • Waddell, L. A. (Laurence Austine), 1854-1938.
Date:
[1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ancient anatomical drawings preserved in Tibet / by L.A. Waddell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    Supreme Physician, the King Beautiful as Baid^ya (beryl or lapis lazuli).” This myth possibly incorporates that of the Assyrian healing (.?) deity, Enu-restu, who is also associated with this stone. In this form he is a favourite object of worship by most modern Buddhists, and is the popular Binzuru Santa of the Japanese.* The ancient Buddhist canon contains several treatises on the healing art which are ascribed to the Buddha himself, and these, with their commentaries, form the basis of the art as practised at the present day in Tibet. The source of this Indian Buddhist medical lore has not yet ‘been clearly traced. Ancient Greek influence j>robably accounts for some of the analogies exhibited to the old humoral pathology, with its flow of the bile and the phlegm. In Buddha’s day, in the fifth century b.c., Taxila, near the modern Rawalpindi, in Northern India, was especially famous as a centre of medical learning, and one of its most celebrated physicians at that time was Jivaka. Certainly, one and a half centuries later, after Alexander's invasion in 325-27 b.c., Greek influence was strong there for several centuries before the scriptures of either of the two great branches of Buddhism were reduced to writing. And it was from this neighbourhood that the Sanskrit text of the Buddhist canon, from which the Tibetan version is translated, was first collated and issued. The Indian Buddhi.st origin of this particular set of pictures is attested by a painted row of twelve monks at its top, as founders of the art, and bearing Indian names of monks of Buddha’s Order. They are divided into two groups, one of which is labelled : “ Line of the ancient founders (or compounders).” This group commences with a Sakya, but he does not clearly appear to be the great Muni himself, as he bears the title of “ the great Abbot,” and is surnamed the “ mighty,” which is used in Tibet as the equivalent of the Indian Iswara, or Siva, an epithet not usually applied to Buddha. The second is called the “ King Punya,” who * See my “Buddhism of Tibet,” pp. 3S3-54-