Comparative Study of Mongolian sources of Manchu Anatomy / Монголын Анагаах Ухаан

ABSTRACT

@#In 1687 the first contingent of French Jesuits Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730) and others arrived in Manchu Qing dynasty, then under the reign of Kangxi (Enkh-Amgalan khaan). Bouvet and Gerbillon elected to remain in Beijing. Five years after they came, Kangxi was forty years of age (in 1692), he had malaria and could not be cured by medicine. A Jesuit priest presented quinine to Kangxi who was cured by this medicine. Having personally sampled and benefited from Western medicine, the Emperor became very interested in the foreigners’ science. He ordered Bouvet to prepare for his instruction a treatise on anatomy. The anatomy project was not resumed, for Bouvet soon departed for France. The task was later completed by another Jesuit, Dominique Parennin (1665-1741), who arrived in China in 1698. To serve as the blueprint for his assignment, Parennin chose the text of one of the standard works on anatomy in Europe at that time, written by Pierre Dionis, which he considered to be the most exact and clear. However, for the illustrations he preferred the text of the Dane, Thomas Bartholin [1]. Thus, the “Manchu anatomy” created based on the books of European anatomy in Manchu dynasty. </br> The significance of this research work is that Manchu anatomy was the first attempt to try to combine Western and Oriental medicine and also to be a modern anatomy base of the methods of traditional medicine. On the other hand, it can be said it is the first initiation to combine principles and views of Western medicine and Traditional Mongolian medicine. </br> The book “Manchu anatomy” was translated from Manchu language into Mongolian by Mongolian scholars as the title of “Imperially-Commissioned Complete Record on the Body.” We consider that this translation is completed one including 2 volumes and 6 chapters. Currently, it is impossible to tell the exact time when it was translated. However, we hope that to determine the exact time of the translation could be found further study. Later, in 1929, another version of Mongolian script was published in Inner Mongolia by the name of “Imperially-Commissioned ge ti ciovan lu bichig.” But it is not completed translation. </br> End of study we concluded that the “Manchu anatomy” is not only anatomical book based on European anatomical book but also it covers some knowledge of Oriental medicine. For example, Tibetan and Sanskrit names of medicine and their ingredients are in this book. Mongolian medicinal names originated from the animals, especially the names of internal organs which are not used in European countries. Most commonly, human body in this book divided into 5 vital organs and 6 hollow organs in accordance with black astrology of Oriental Medicine and expressed the connection among the embryo, body, and structure in the Western medical theory.