Traditional Medicine of Tibet

choi

Eve M Kahn, Tibet's Long History of Alternative Medicine. New York Times, Mar 14, 2014 (In the column Antiques)
www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/arts/ ... ons-from-tibet.html

Note:

(a) "Instruction manuals and surgical tools from the last two millenniums have been gathered for “Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine,” an exhibition that opens on Saturday at the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea. As the show and its accompanying book (from the University of Washington Press) explain
(i) Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine. Rubin Museum of Art, Mar 15-Sept 8, 2014.
www.rubinmuseum.org/nav/exhibitions/view/2349
(ii) Rubin Museum of Art
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_Museum_of_Art
(museum opened in 2004; the building and a private collection of Himalayan art [from] Donald and Shelley Rubin)
(iii) Theresia Hofer (ed), Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine. University of Washington Press, 2014.

(b) "The Rubin has drawn on American and European collections to assemble about 140 objects [including] diagrams explain where burnt mugwort leaves should be applied to pressure points on the body"

mugwort
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugwort
(Mugwort is a common name for several species of aromatic plants in the genus Artemisia)

, including Artemisia argyi 艾草 ("通常用於針灸術的'灸'" zh.wikipedia.org)

(c) "A few documents date to the ninth century; they came from desert caves in western China. In the early 1900s, Europeans, including the Hungarian-British archaeologist Aurel Stein and the French explorer Paul Pelliot, helped empty the caves, exporting works to London and Paris institutions."
(i) Aurel Stein
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurel_Stein
(1862-1943; born in Budapest into a Jewish family; "In 1884 he went to England to study oriental languages and archaeology. He became a British citizen"/ "Stein's greatest discovery was made at the Mogao Caves also known as 'Caves of the Thousand Buddhas,' near Dunhuang in 1907. It was there that he discovered the Diamond Sutra [金剛般若波羅蜜多經, shortened to 金剛經], the world's oldest printed text which has a date (corresponding to AD 868)")

Diamond Sutra (Sanskrit: Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra; 金剛般若波羅蜜多經, shortened to 金剛經; 卷末印著「[唐懿宗李漼] 咸通九年四月十五日 王玠為二親敬造」; in British Museum)
(ii) Paul Pelliot
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Pelliot(1878-1945; "In Ürümqi, Pelliot heard about a find of manuscripts at the Silk Road oasis of Dunhuang from Duke LAN * * * arrived there months after Aurel Stein had already visited the site")
(A) Duke Lan  瀾 國公

載瀾
zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/載瀾
(1856－1916; English transliteration: Dzai Lan; 愛新覺羅氏; 光緒堂兄，封輔國將軍，晉輔國公; 八國聯軍 * * * 清廷議和，聯軍指載瀾為“首禍”之一，清廷遂奪載瀾爵位，定斬監候罪，後改發新疆監禁)
(B) Abbot Wang/Wang Yuanlu
王道士/王圓籙 (c 1849-1931)
藏經洞 的發現者

(d) "The [Dunhuang] artifacts arrived just as Tibetan medicine was coming to the attention of Westerners. A family of Tibetan medical practitioners named Badmayev had moved to Russia and begun promoting the techniques to elite customers. The Rubin exhibition’s book devotes a chapter to the family’s tragic wanderings. One descendant befriended the czars and ended up in Soviet prisons, and another was accused of being a Japanese spy and was executed along with most of his patients."

"One descendant befriended the czars and ended up in Soviet prisons"   That was Pyotr or Peter Badmayev (who adopted a Christian name after arriving at St Petersburg), who fell out of favor after the communist revolution, was jailed several times, released and died in his (Russian) wife's hands in 1920.

choi

Note (d) is revised, in part because when I wrote Pyotr died in the hands of his wife, I meant it literally: in the arms of his wife. I did not mean his wife murdered him. Also, new information about another Badmayev who was executed.


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(d) "The [Dunhuang] artifacts arrived just as Tibetan medicine was coming to the attention of Westerners. A family of Tibetan medical practitioners named Badmayev had moved to Russia and begun promoting the techniques to elite customers. The Rubin exhibition’s book devotes a chapter to the family’s tragic wanderings. One descendant befriended the czars and ended up in Soviet prisons, and another was accused of being a Japanese spy and was executed along with most of his patients."
(i) "One descendant befriended the czars and ended up in Soviet prisons"  

That was Pyotr or Peter Badmayev (who adopted a Christian name after arriving at St Petersburg)--who, having married a Russian woman and hobnobbed with top Russian officials, not to mention the Romanovs--fell out of favor after the communist revolution, was jailed several times, released and died in 1920.
(ii) “another was accused of being a Japanese spy and was executed along with most of his patients”

Martin Saxer, Journeys With Tibetan Medicine; How Tibetan medicine came to the West; The story of the Badmayev family. ("submitted as masters[sic] thesis at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Zurich, December 2004") at page 57
www.anyma.ch/journeys/doc/thesis.pdf
("Many of Nikolai's patients themselves were incriminated [under Stalin]. In 1937 the [Tibetan] temple in Leningrad was finally closed, and all the remaining lamas shot that same day [in this page: a photo of lamas lining up against a monastery wall to be shot]. * * * Despite all this, [Nikolai] Badmayev's clinic finally opened its doors in the winter of 1938 and for a short time treated patients. On April 10th[,1938] the clinic was shut down, and all members of the staff were arrested. [Nikolai] Badmayev was accused of being a Japanese spy. He was shot as were most of his patients")

Nikolai Badmayev was a nephew of Pyotr Badmayev.