Introduction (traditional medicine)

There is no doubt that people want to be healthy. Who doesn’t? People are now showing greater interest in health and body matters than previously. They are more actively engaging in activities that help improve their health, such as doing physical exercises, living a less stressful lifestyle, consuming healthy diets or products, and so on. They do so hoping to be healthy in their lives. However, according to Buddhism, life is bound with suffering, including sickness. Life cannot be without pain or illness. The first of the Four Noble Truths (Pāli: cattāri ariyasaccāni; Sanskrit: catvāri āryasatyāni) of Buddhism–the Truth of Suffering (Pāli: dukkha ariyasacca; Sanskrit: duḥkha āryasatya)–illustrates different types of suffering.^[1] Among these, four relate to our physical bodies: birth, ageing, sickness, and death. These four sufferings (as well as other sufferings such as those due to contact with what is unpleasant, separation from what is pleasant, and not getting what one wants) are common to all human beings (Saṃyutta Nikāya (Saṃyutta Nikāya) V. 421). We cannot escape them, can we? Even the Enlightened One, the Buddha, himself had physical afflictions of ageing and sickness. For sure, no one can be excluded from suffering.

Due to sickness, people search for ways to relieve it (and to maintain health). In the long history of human civilisation, there have been records and literature discussing diseases and their treatments. Different healing traditions have been developed in different cultures. They provide various explanations for illnesses and diverse interventions for curing them. They result in a variety of health beliefs and therapeutic practices in the different cultural worlds (Kleinman 1993, 15; Sullivan 1989, 1-3). These bodies of knowledge and their applications at treating diseases constitute the scope of medicine.

What is “medicine”? What exactly does this term refer to? According to dictionaries,^[2] it has three major meanings: (i) the substance or remedy to cure illness and to restore/maintain health, which refers to treatment or therapeutic substance usage, including drug, herb or even magical substances in some cultures; (ii) the art or science of treating and preventing disease, which refers to the discipline of medicine enterprise;and (iii) the medical establishment or profession, which refers to the social institution or medical system. Further, medicine is “a coherent structure of health beliefs and the institutionalization of decisive therapeutic practices” and an “organized therapeutic practice” (Kleinman 1993, 15).

There are several shared characteristics for medicine, which include:

1. categorisation of illnesses;
2. ways that combine complaints into culturally meaningful syndromes;
3. aetiological interpretations of pathology;
4. healing roles and careers;
5. therapeutic actions to the patients; and
6. various types of therapies (Kleinman 1993, 15).

In brief, it denotes the characteristics relating to classification of diseases, study and practice of diagnoses, causes and cures of illnesses, and healthcare profession. Medicine is thus “a domain of knowledge and the application of that knowledge” by the healers (Saethre 2008, 63).

According to the meanings of medicine described above, specific medical ideas and practices as well as the germane social institutions of healthcare constitute a medical system. A medical system or tradition includes its method of classification of diseases, health specialists, and therapies for different illnesses (Saethre 2008, 63). There are different medical systems or traditions, such as Western medicine or biomedicine, Āyurvedic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, Tibetan medicine, Islamic medicine, Galenic medicine, folk medicine, and even shamanistic medicine preserved in many different societies in the world.

Religion often plays an important role in medicine. In many cultures, religions commonly have provided medical ideas of sickness and healing. Healing practices were religious rituals, and healers the religious specialists (Hinnells and Porter 1999, xi-xiv; Kinsley 1996, 1-4). Religions also have contributed to healthcare. For instance, in the Middle Ages in European history, hospitals were built and administered by churches. Many physicians were clergy, and nurses came from religious orders (Koenig, McCullough, and Larson 2001, 3). Another example was the provision of medical treatments/drugs and the establishment of medical centres by devoted Buddhist rulers such as Emperor Aśoka (reign 268-232 Before Common Era) in ancient India and King Duṭṭhagāmaṇī (101-77 Before Common Era) in ancient Sri Lanka (Kitagawa 1989, 19, 21). Religion thus has had a long and significant historical relationship with medicine. Furthermore, religious literature often contains medical information. For example, ordinary diseases and congenital conditions (as well as cases of demonic possession) are described in the Gospels (although almost all these conditions were cured by miraculous healings performed by Jesus and his disciples, and rarely were remedies mentioned) (Ferngren and Amundsen 2005).^[3] Islamic texts, such as the Qur’ān and the ḥadīth (sayings and doings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad), also contain much information relating to health, disease and medicine (Gallagher 2005, 3831). Hence, medical lore can be found in religious literature.

Does Buddhist literature contain any medical information? If yes, which texts are they? The answer is affirmative. There is much information about ancient Indian medicine found in many Buddhist texts, including both canonical and noncanonical scriptures which belong to different stages in the history of Buddhism (such as early Buddhism, Mahāyāna Buddhism, and Vajrayāna Buddhism), as well as texts of the Theravāda, the Chinese and the Tibetan Buddhist traditions.^[4]

In the Buddhist literature, there is a Vinaya (monastic discipline) text which is rich in medical material. It is the Bhesajjakkhandhaka of the Theravāda Vinaya, and its parallel receptions in other Vinaya versions.^[5] This text, available in several extant Vinaya canons, is an informative source for studying ancient Indian medicine recorded in early Buddhist literature. It records numerous cases of diseases and remedies for them, as well as copious medicinal substances.^[6] However, such medical data in various versions of this text are succinct and difficult to understand. Moreover, they have not been comprehensively investigated. This text therefore is an essential source for the present study that will attempt to examine extensively and interpret the medical information contained in the text, with the cases of diseases and remedies and the medicinal substances forming the foci. In the following section, scholarly literature which studies this text will be reviewed and the insufficiency of the works will be shown.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Discourse on Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion) of the Saṃyutta Nikāya (Saṃyutta Nikāya V. 420 ff.). The other three Noble Truths are: the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering; the Noble Truth of Cessation of Suffering; and the Noble Truth of the Way Leading to the Cessation of Suffering.

[2]:

For example: Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford English Dictionary), 3rd ed., s.v. “medicine” [accessed July 30, 2012, http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/115715];also Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 32nd ed., s.v. “medicine.”

[3]:

Thanks to Fr. Dr. Ari Dy who showed me a website where information on using medicines for healing in the Christian literature is mentioned, though such information is scanty. See Presentation Ministries 2014.

[4]:

Some examples of these texts are the (Mahā-) Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta ((Greater) Discourse on the Establishments of Mindfulness) (Dīgha Nikāya (Dīgha Nikāya) II. 290-315; Majjhima Nikāya (Majjhima Nikāya) I. 55-63), the Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sūtra (Discourse on Golden Light) (Chinese: Jinguangming jing 金光明經) (Taishō Tripiṭaka 663; 664;665), the Xiuxing daodi jing 修行道地經 (Discourse on the Path and Stage of Practice) (Taishō Tripiṭaka 606), the Foshuo baotai jing 佛說胞胎經 (Discourse on the Buddha’s Exposition of Embryo) (Taishō Tripiṭaka 317), the Fo wei Anan shuo chutai hui 佛爲阿難説處胎會 (Occasion on the Buddha’s Exposition to Ānanda on Abiding in the Womb) (Taishō Tripiṭaka 310(13)), the Foshuo ru taizang hui 佛説入胎藏會 (Occasion on the Buddha’s Exposition on Entering the Womb) (Taishō Tripiṭaka 310(14)), the Foshuo foyi jing 佛說佛醫經 (Discourse on the Buddha’s Exposition of Buddhist Medicine) (Taishō Tripiṭaka 793), the Foshuo yiyü jing 佛說醫喻經 (Discourse on the Buddha’s Exposition of the Simile of Medicine) (Taishō Tripiṭaka 219), and so on. Salguero’s dissertation (2010) provides a detailed list of Buddhist texts containing medical doctrines and/or healing practices in the Taishō Tripiṭaka.

[5]:

The different versions of this text will be described in Section 1. 3 on methodology in this chapter.

[6]:

Description of the contents of the Chapter on Medicine will be found in Section 2. 2. 3 in Chapter Two.