[How did Persian and Other Western Medical Knowledge Move East, and Chinese West?

A Look at the Role of Rashīd al-Dīn and Others, rTsa in the Tibetan Manuscripts from Dunhuang]

[The name of Rashīd al-Dīn (1247–1317) is associated with the transmission of considerable medical lore from China to Mongol Iran and the Islamic World. In fact, Rashīd al-Dīn was only at one end of the exchange, and while Chinese medical knowledge, including lore about pulsing and the Chinese view of anatomy, went west, Islamic medical knowledge went east, where Islamic medicine became the preferred medicine of the Mongol elite in China. The paper traces this process and considers who may have been involved and what specific traditions in an ongoing process of medical globalisation., In the earliest extant specialist medical work sMan dpyad zla ba'i rgyal po (The Medical Investigation of the Lunar King, early 8th century CE) and the classical work of Tibetan medicine, rGyud bzhi (The Four Medical Tantras, generally dated by scholars to the 12th century CE), there are records of rtsa in its meaning of 'pulse taking'. The concept of rtsa in Tibetan medicine, as the Chinese mai, eventually came to combine notions of 'the vessels' and 'channels' of the body with diagnostic readings of 'pulsating vessels' at its surface. This article considers the earliest extant records of rtsa from Dunhuang and finds evidence of the separate development of these two aspects. These early records are unique inasmuch as they not only provide a source for history of medicine, but also represent Tibet and Tibetan culture as an important place for both cultural exchange and resistance, particularly in the transmission of medical knowledge and practice from China.]