ABSTRACT
BackgroundThe goal of this research is to clarify the synonyms of mineral-oriented medicine that were written in the “The Beautiful, Wondrous Eye-Ornament” sutra (Tib: Mdzes mtshar mig rgyan) by Jambaldorj. The text is famous for its fanciful illustrations, including mnemonic trees of Tibetan medical theory, minerals, plants and animals, surgical instruments, and charts of the body. It was written in Tibetan with quadrilingual captions - Tibetan, Mongolian, Manchu, and Chinese - accompanying the materia medica section.MethodsThe research was conducted through the method of original manuscript analysis, listing and sorting mineral oriented medicine, the comparison method and the interpretation of clarifying synonym names by the handwriting and paleographic methods. Both tools are carefully designed not only to provide a high level of accuracy, but also to provide a clean and concise justification of the inferred results.ResultsWe listed all 90 mineral-oriented medicine that were written in “The Beautiful, Wondrous Eye-Ornament” sutra. Jambaldorj divided all mineral raw materials into three groups: Gem medicine, Stone medicine and Earth medicine. The first two groups were divided into melting and un-melting; the last group was divided into artificial and to be self formed subgroups. This classification was similar to the 20th Chapter of “The Explanatory Tantra” in “Four Medical Tantras”.ConclusionThis research suggests that the clarified synonyms of mineral-oriented medicine had a relationship with the external appearance, chemical and physical characteristics, distributions, medicinal taste, capacity and the medicinal usage of minerals.