The quantitative comparison study of medicines from the literature “Sman Ming Rgya Mtsho”

Abstract

Objective: The current study was conducted to investigate the contents of the “Sman Ming Rgya Mtsho”, one of the classic works of ancient Tibetan medicine, written at the beginning of the 14th century, and its influence on the science of pharmacology through determining the exact number of medicines.

Methods: Within the scope of the study, the contents of the book “Sman Ming Rgya Mtsho” were studied using the methods of study of literature, analysis, synthesis, and comparison methods, and the number of plants, animals, and mineral medicinal raw materials mentioned in the book was determined and compared with other pharmaceutical literature.

Results: “Sman Ming Rgya Mtsho” is written as a poem in the form of seven words of Tibetan praise, clear and comprehensible, easy to memorize, and concise in terms of content. To express the content within seven words, it is written using ancient vocabulary. At the end of the novel, “I have preached the special power of 813 such medicines. These are mostly found in the snowy countries such as China, and Tibet”. But after counting the medicine, we separated the two colors of the same plant with the same power in the text based on the different origins of the plants and different potency in other literature, and by counting the different colors of the same herb with the same potency, a total of 819 medical terms were obtained. Comparing it to the books “Four Tantras of Tibetan Medicine (gso rig rgyud bzhi)”, “Jing Zhu Bencao (shel gang shel phreng)”, “MengYao ZhengDian (mdzes mtsher mig rgyan)”, and “ShiYaoXue (sman ngos shes byed)”, there are more medicinal raw materials, and numerous medicines that do not appear in these books are mentioned in the “Sman Ming Rgya Mtsho”.

Conclusion The “Sman Ming Rgya Mtsho” is one of the four special medicinal texts on ancient Tibetan medicine, but it was also written before Tibetan and Mongolian textbooks which are written after the three previous “BenCao (sngo ‘bum)” and the “Four Tantras of Tibetan Medicine” and it is a specific work of medicine that is a continuation of the previous literature.