Mona Schrempf
University of Westminster, EASTmedicine, Faculty of Science and Technology, Wellcome Trust grant “Beyond Tradition: Ways of knowing and styles of practice in East Asian medicines, 1000 to the present”, affiliated researcher
Free University of Berlin, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Member of AG Medical Anthropology
Researcher and Lecturer in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Independent Curator
Asian Medicine, Editorial Board http://www.brill.nl/asian-medicine
International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine, General Secretary http://www.iastam.org
Co-founder of IASTAM Sowa Rigpa Group http://s505242920.onlinehome.us/?page_id=458
Supervisors: Prof Dr Angelika Messner, Prof. Dr. Vincanne Adams, Prof. emer. Dr Per Kvaerne, Prof Dr William Sax, and Prof. emer. Dr Geoffrey Samuel
Address: Saarbruecken/ Berlin, Germany
Asian Medicine, Editorial Board http://www.brill.nl/asian-medicine
International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine, General Secretary http://www.iastam.org
Co-founder of IASTAM Sowa Rigpa Group http://s505242920.onlinehome.us/?page_id=458
Supervisors: Prof Dr Angelika Messner, Prof. Dr. Vincanne Adams, Prof. emer. Dr Per Kvaerne, Prof Dr William Sax, and Prof. emer. Dr Geoffrey Samuel
Address: Saarbruecken/ Berlin, Germany
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lay tantric practitioners from Bhutan locally known as “great meditators.”1
He is a speaker of the Dzala language from the remote Khoma valley in the far
northeast of this small Himalayan country.2 Tshampa Tseten is a follower of
the Nyingma or “Ancient” school of Tibetan-style Buddhism that is well
established in the eastern part of the country.3 Tshampa are meditators who
practice within hereditary or teacher–student lineages of the Nyingma school,
acquiring their knowledge through classical Tibetan Buddhist methods of
empowerment, teaching, and oral transmission. Tshampa play an important yet
often underestimated social role in the everyday life of rural communities,
including through their attention to the health and well-being of individual
patients.4 Tshampa Tseten uses both ritual techniques and medicinal herbs to
heal his patients and thus is also part of a large and diverse spectrum of ritual
healers found throughout Bhutan.5
Aim of the study: This study documents and correlates the rarely explored ethnopharmacological and chemical identification of various minerals and their ethnomedicinal uses in BTM formulations for the first time.
Material and methods: A five stage cross-disciplinary process was conducted as follows: (1) a review of classical literature of Sowa Rigpa texts (Tibetan medical texts, pharmacopoeias and formularies) that are still in use today; (2) listing of mineral ingredients according to Sowa Rigpa names, followed by identification with common English and chemical names, as well as re-translating their ethnomedical uses; (3) cross-checking the chemical names and chemical composition of identified Sowa Rigpa minerals with various geological mineral databases and mineral handbooks; (4) authentication and standardization of Sowa Rigpa names through open forum discussion
with diverse BTM practitioners; (5) further confirmation of the chemical names of identified minerals by consulting different experts and pharmacognosists.
Results: Our current study lists 120 minerals as described in Sowa Rigpa medical textbooks most of which we were able to chemically identify, and of which 28 are currently used in BTM herbo-mineral formulations. Out of these 28 mineral ingredients, 5 originate from precious metal and stone, 10 stem from earth, mud and rocks, 8 are salts, and 5 concern ‘essences’ and exudates.
Conclusions: Our study identified 120 mineral ingredients described in Sowa Rigpa medical textbooks, out of which 28 are currently used. They are crucial in formulating 108 multicompound prescription medicines in BTM presently in use for treating more than 135 biomedically defined ailments.
ritual healer, a spirit-medium named Jomo Dolma who
lives in eastern Bhutan. Her autobiographical narrative
oscillates between the reality of a difficult child- and adulthood
and her experiences of a dream-like state of ”another” world
through which she is guided by helper spirits until she finally
becomes a female ritual healer called jomo at age 45. Frequently ill already as a child, she slowly builds up a strong relationship of
mutual respect and trust with a group of four children. They are
her helper spirits whom she plays with until they eventually
become her future protective deities. These spirits enable her to
cope with her own illnesses and later on also to fight illness causing evil spirits afflicting her patients.
lay tantric practitioners from Bhutan locally known as “great meditators.”1
He is a speaker of the Dzala language from the remote Khoma valley in the far
northeast of this small Himalayan country.2 Tshampa Tseten is a follower of
the Nyingma or “Ancient” school of Tibetan-style Buddhism that is well
established in the eastern part of the country.3 Tshampa are meditators who
practice within hereditary or teacher–student lineages of the Nyingma school,
acquiring their knowledge through classical Tibetan Buddhist methods of
empowerment, teaching, and oral transmission. Tshampa play an important yet
often underestimated social role in the everyday life of rural communities,
including through their attention to the health and well-being of individual
patients.4 Tshampa Tseten uses both ritual techniques and medicinal herbs to
heal his patients and thus is also part of a large and diverse spectrum of ritual
healers found throughout Bhutan.5
Aim of the study: This study documents and correlates the rarely explored ethnopharmacological and chemical identification of various minerals and their ethnomedicinal uses in BTM formulations for the first time.
Material and methods: A five stage cross-disciplinary process was conducted as follows: (1) a review of classical literature of Sowa Rigpa texts (Tibetan medical texts, pharmacopoeias and formularies) that are still in use today; (2) listing of mineral ingredients according to Sowa Rigpa names, followed by identification with common English and chemical names, as well as re-translating their ethnomedical uses; (3) cross-checking the chemical names and chemical composition of identified Sowa Rigpa minerals with various geological mineral databases and mineral handbooks; (4) authentication and standardization of Sowa Rigpa names through open forum discussion
with diverse BTM practitioners; (5) further confirmation of the chemical names of identified minerals by consulting different experts and pharmacognosists.
Results: Our current study lists 120 minerals as described in Sowa Rigpa medical textbooks most of which we were able to chemically identify, and of which 28 are currently used in BTM herbo-mineral formulations. Out of these 28 mineral ingredients, 5 originate from precious metal and stone, 10 stem from earth, mud and rocks, 8 are salts, and 5 concern ‘essences’ and exudates.
Conclusions: Our study identified 120 mineral ingredients described in Sowa Rigpa medical textbooks, out of which 28 are currently used. They are crucial in formulating 108 multicompound prescription medicines in BTM presently in use for treating more than 135 biomedically defined ailments.
ritual healer, a spirit-medium named Jomo Dolma who
lives in eastern Bhutan. Her autobiographical narrative
oscillates between the reality of a difficult child- and adulthood
and her experiences of a dream-like state of ”another” world
through which she is guided by helper spirits until she finally
becomes a female ritual healer called jomo at age 45. Frequently ill already as a child, she slowly builds up a strong relationship of
mutual respect and trust with a group of four children. They are
her helper spirits whom she plays with until they eventually
become her future protective deities. These spirits enable her to
cope with her own illnesses and later on also to fight illness causing evil spirits afflicting her patients.
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/15734218/10/1-2
Ambivalence”, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 34, Décembre 2015, pp. i-viii.
practices, technologies and outcomes—across cultural, national, geographic terrain. Tibetan medicine is not
only known as a scholarly medical tradition among other Asian medical systems, with many centuries of
technological, clinical, and pharmacological innovation; it also survives today as a complex medical resource
across many Asian nations—from India and Bhutan to Mongolia, Tibet (TAR) and China, Buryatia—as well as in
Western Europe and the Americas. The contributions to this volume explore, in equal measure, the impacts of
western science and biomedicine on Tibetan grounds—i.e., among Tibetans across China, the Himalaya and exile
communities as well as in relation to globalized Tibetan medicine—and the ways that local practices change
how such “science” gets done, and how this continually hybridized medical knowledge is transmitted and put
into practice. As such, this volume contributes to explorations into the bi-directional flows of medical
knowledge and practice.
PART TWO Medical Pluralism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
PART THREE Experiences of Medicine, Illness, and Social Change
Part One examines the impacts of various modernities in Tibet, the Himalayan borderlands and the Tibetan exile, including standardisation and scientization of Tibetan medicine.
Part Two investigates the transmission and professionalisation of medical knowledge and its role in identity construction. Part Three traces connections between various body images, practices, and cosmologies in Tibetan societies and how mental and physical illnesses are understood.
Part Four critically presents new or little known histories, commentarial practices, textual narratives and oral sources for investigating the history of Tibetan medicine.
and fresh empirical and interdisciplinary perspectives on
the multiple and complex dimensions of non-European
figurations of modernity. Historians, anthropologists and
scholars of comparative education studies discuss
colonialism in Africa and Southeast Asia, education in
Latin-America, ethnicity and secular morality in post-Mao
China, and hero construction and heritage in soviet Central
Asia and Africa. The book deals with colonial, post-colonial
and post-revolutionary contexts as well as with the
intertwined dynamics of globalisation and localisation.
8 May, 1.30pm–10 May, 6pm
Venue:
Cayley Room RS152
University of Westminster/ Regent Campus
309 Regent Street
London
W1B 2HW
Convenor: Dr. Mona Schrempf, EASTmedicine, Division of Herbal and East Asian Medicine
This three-day workshop, co-funded by the British Academy/ Leverhulme Small Research Grant, the Sino-British Fellowship Trust and IASTAM (International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine) aims at discussing and developing an interdisciplinary and multilingual digital knowledge base with the aim of providing a useful analytic tool for documenting and analysing Tibetan medical formulas, focusing on the treatment of rlung (‘wind’) or ‘stress-related’ disorders. The aim is to culturally translate, relate and analyse formula and substitution patterns, distinct ideas of efficacy and safety and different disease categories/ body images in relation to ways of different ways of knowing and styles of practice.