ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Roads

257 Pages·2021·4.016 MB·English

by  Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim

ReOrienting Histories of Medicine
ii
ReOrienting Histories of Medicine
Encounters along the Silk Roads
Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2021
Copyright © Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, 2021
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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
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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
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For Asher, Avigail and Jonathan
vi
Contents
Illustrations viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii
Transliterations and abbreviations xv
Introduction: Medical encounters along the Silk Roads 1
1 Narrating Eurasian origins of medical knowledge 25
2 Of dice and medicine: Interactions in Central Asian
‘contact zones’ 41
3 Myrobalans: The making of a Eurasian panacea 63
4 Tibetan moxa-cautery from Dunhuang: Practices and images
on the move 85
5 Medicine of the Bakhshis: Cross-pollinations in Buddhist Iran 103
Afterword 127
Notes 131
Bibliography 195
Index 231
Illustrations
Figures
0.1 Paul Pelliot examining Dunhuang manuscripts 14
0.2 Solomon Schechter examining Genizah manuscripts 14
2.1 Dice divination text of the Bower Manuscript 54
2.2 Irk Bitig 54
2.3 Tibetan dice divination from Dunhuang 54
2.4 Oblong dice from Sirkap made of ivory and bone 56
2.5 Oblong die from near Termez 57
2.6 Central Asian oblong dice (Mount Mugh and Panjakent) 57
2.7 Ivory oblong die from Fustat 60
3.1 Arab ship on the Indian Ocean 72
3.2 Medicine Buddha holding myrobalan 80
4.1 Tibetan moxibustion chart from Dunhuang 96
4.2 Chinese moxibustion chart from Dunhuang 97
4.3 Uighur moxibustion chart from Turfan 98–9
5.1 Mountains of Tibet from Rashīd al-Dīn’s Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh 109
5.2 Turkish cautery chart 122
Maps
0.1 Map of the Silk Roads 6
0.2 Map of the Indus River from the Book of Curiosities 15
1.1 Map of the Tibetan Empire 35
5.1 Map of the Mongol Empire 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 millennia-
old 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 Savage-
Smith 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,