History of Science in South Asia (Journal)
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Tibetan Bonpo Mendrup: The Precious Formula’s Transmission
No full textThe article presents the traceable history of the Tibetan Bonpo mendrup ritual practice in textual sources, as it has been recorded by the Bonpos themselves. These records are put into context with the current performance of the practice by the Bonpo exile community.
The study aims to embrace all the relevant Bonpo historical material accessible, and thus deals with documents of a wide time spam, from the eleventh or twelfth century onwards until the early twentieth century. The Bonpo mendrup is a healing, longevity, rejuvenation and enlightenment-seeking contemplative meditational practice of the Tibetan tantric tradition with a strong emphasis on its medicinal component. It embodies various spheres of knowledge and their principles, as the Indian tantrism, a strong Buddhist cosmological organisational and soteriological framework, the Tibetan medical tradition, with embedded elements of alchemy and Tibetan indigenous religious notions. As the studied sources reveal, its origin can be traced to the intellectually vibrant times in Tibet of around the twelfth century, where all these fields of expertise came together. Thus the case provides an example of such a complex composed of tantra, medicine and alchemic influences specific for Tibet.
Since then, the Bonpo mendrup can be followed by varied records in a number of Bonpo literary sources of different genres. These are compared with the present form of the ritual. The sources support the ritual’s anticipated transmission and practice throughout the history. They show that different ideas apply to its origin, and particularly its revelation as a treasure text, and that the ritual existed in varied forms, and was shared and imparted among different lineages of Bon. The most important finding is that the practice is actually traceable throughout the history, and likely have never ceased to be active over the centuries from the very early times until today. 
Stretching Out Life, Maintaining the Body: Part I - Vayas in Medical Literature
No full textThe representation of the process of human life is at the heart of questions about longevity, rejuvenation practices and possibly those which aim at immortality. The key term for “age” in medieval India is vayas, which means “vigour”, “youth” or even “any period of life”, that is to say exactly the same meaning as ours (duration of life). As a criterion for the examination of the patient, vayas is invariably divided into three periods: childhood, intermediate age and old age, precisely defined in the ayurvedic saṃhitās. It seems that vayas might be a relevant gateway to the cross-disciplinary understandings of age in medieval India, and therefore to the conditions of its (relative) mastery.
 
Garga and Early Astral Science in India
No full textThis article forms a preliminary report on the work by an international group of scholars on Garga, an important early authority on astral science (jyotiṣa). Reviewing past research on the texts associated with this figure, we focus especially on the earliest text, the Gārgīyajyotiṣa (ca. first century CE?), a compendium of material on astral and terrestrial omens, ritual, horoscopy, and astronomy, that prefigures Varāhamihira\u27s well-known Bṛhatsaṃhitā. The contributions include text-critical observations based on select chapters, remarks on astral omens and their relevance to the possible dating of the text, and a discussion of the text\u27s potential for the study of Hindu ritual. The article also begins to disambiguate the broader Garga corpus by including a chapter summary of a somewhat later Gargasaṃhitā, containing mainly astronomical materials
Rasāyana in Classical Yoga and Āyurveda
No full textThe present chapter deals with rasāyana in the discipline of Yoga. More specifically, it focuses on the meaning of the word rasāyana in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (PYŚ, late fourth or early fifth century CE), the oldest surviving Sanskrit exposition of Yoga as a soteriological system of thought from a Brāhmaṇa perspective. By interpreting the two difficult and slightly obscure text passages of the PYŚ that mention rasāyana in the light of its older commentaries and on the basis of additional references to rasāyana and related conceptions in early classical āyurvedic and upaniṣadic literature, the chapter concludes that for Patañjali rasāyana was a magically longevity potion prepared from unidentified herbs. The PYŚ neither refers to rasāyana as a branch of Āyurveda nor to alchemy. Some commentators of the PYŚ, however, interpret Patañjali\u27s mentioning of rasāyana differently. While Vācaspatimiśra in the later half of the tenth century follows the PYŚ closely, the eleventh-century commentator Bhoja relates rasāyana to alchemy. Finally, the eighth-century (?) commentator Śaṅkara relates Patañjali\u27s rasāyana to Āyurveda. Even though this interpretation is probably at odds with the PYŚ, it is not at all a far fetched, since the obtainment of various superpowers played an important role in āyurvedic rasāyana from the time of earliest sources onwards
Notes on Some Sanskrit Astrological Authors
No full textThis paper supplements and corrects the information given in the works of David Pingree regarding four major authors on Tājika or Sanskritized Perso-Arabic astrology from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century: Tejaḥsiṃha, Yādavasūri, Bālakṛṣṇa and Balabhadra. It further contributes information on a fifth such author, Tuka, not discussed by Pingree
Acts of Improvement: On the Use of Tonics and Elixirs in Sanskrit Medical and Alchemical Literature
No full textIn Sanskrit medical literature, rasāyana is defined as one of eight subject areas of medicine. The proclaimed aim of rasāyana therapies is to preserve or promote health and well-being, but also to prolong life, to halt degeneration caused by aging, to rejuvenate and to improve cognitive function. The term “rasāyana” describes the therapies that together constitute this branch of medicine; the methodology and regimen of treatment; and the medicinal substances and formulations used in these therapies.
In Indian alchemical literature, the Sanskrit term “rasāyana” is predominantly used to describe the final stages of alchemical operations, i.e. all that is involved in the taking of elixirs for attaining a state of spiritual liberation in a living body. Rasāyana in this sense describes a series of related processes, including the preparation of the elixir; the preparation of the practitioner; the intake of the elixir and finally, the process of transformation the practitioner undergoes after intake of the elixir.
In my paper, I present examples of rasāyana sections from a selection of medical and alchemical treatises to explore their connections and divergences. I also discuss how the connections between medical and alchemical rasāyana sections reflect the development of iatrochemistry in alchemical literature
The Units of Time in Ancient and Medieval India
No full textThis is a preliminary survey of time units used or mentioned in ancient and medieval works written in Sanskrit and other Indian languages. The fields of the works surveyed are Jyautiṣa, Paurāṇika, Uttara-vaidika, Smārta, Bauddha, and Jaina literatures, including Chinese translations of Bauddha works. No small portion of the data presented in the following sections has already been taken up and explained in the works mentioned at the end of this section, but I newly collected the data from the original sources and arranged them in my own way according to my own interest
Reflections on Rasāyana, Bcud Len and Related Practices in Nyingma (Rnying Ma) Tantric Ritual
No full textThe Tibetan term, bcud len, "imbibing the essence juice", is considered an equivalent for the Sanskrit term, rasāyana. But in Tibetan Buddhist ritual manuals, both terms occur, apparently with slightly different connotations. Practices classified as bcud len are frequently relatively short, and seem primarily designed for the use of individual yogis, usually as a subsidiary practice to complement their main tantric meditation. The production of bcud len pills which are said to sustain, rejuvenate and extend the life of the body, or even to bring immortality, is often an integral part of the practice. The term, rasāyana, is used in Tibetan transliteration (ra sā ya na), not as a title or classification for a specific ritual practice or recipe for pills, but rather to refer to the processes of alchemical transformation of substances within complex ritual "medicinal accomplishment" (sman sgrub) performances which are generally communal. In this case too, pills are produced, of the broader "sacred elixir dharma medicine" (dam rdzas bdud rtsi chos sman) type. This paper will consider a range of the practices, and of substances used in the sacred medicinal compounds.  
The Bakhshālī Manuscript: A Response to the Bodleian Library\u27s Radiocarbon Dating
No full textPopular attention has recently been captured by the results of the Bodleian Library\u27s 2017 project of radiocarbon dating portions of the birch-bark fragments constituting what is known as the Bakhshālī Manuscript. In this paper, we disagree with the interpretation of the findings announced by the Bodleian team. In particular, we argue that the earliest dated folio of this manuscript is unlikely to be the date of the whole text. Rather, the latest dateable folio is logically the date of the scribal activity. This fits well with past estimates of the date of the Bakhshālī Manuscript based on historical, philological and palaeographic arguments.. And we argue that the Bakhshālī Manuscript does include written zeros that function as arithmetical operators, i.e., as numbers in their own right, and not merely as place-holders, as asserted by the Bodleian team. Finally, we express regret that the Bodleian Library chose to announce scientific results without peer-review and through a press release to newspapers and a YouTube video
Yogis, Ayurveda, and Kayakalpa: The Rejuvenation of Pandit Malaviya
No full textHow should we read claims about health and well-being which defy common sense? Are claims of extreme longevity to be viewed as fraudulent, or as pushing the boundaries of possibility for the human body? This article will consider the narrative and context around a particularly well-publicized incident of rejuvenation therapy, advertised as kāyakalpa (body transformation or rejuvenation), from 1938. In this year, the prominent Congress Activist and co-founder of Banaras Hindu University, Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861–1946), underwent an extreme – and very public – rejuvenation treatment under the care of a sadhu using the name of Shriman Tapasviji (c.1770?-1955). The first half of the article will explore the presentation of Malaviya’s treatment and how it inspired a focus on rejuvenation therapy within Indian medicine in the years immediately following. Exploring this mid-twentieth century incident highlight some of the themes and concerns of the historical period, just out of living memory, but in many ways similar to our own