Materia Medica in Tibetan Medicine

This page will be further developed during the fall of 2003.

Environmentally, the Tibetan and Himalayan region is of crucial importance as Asia's principal watershed and the origin of many of Asia's major river systems, and as such it is a critical determinant in the weather systems across Asia. The flora of Tibetan regions alone includes more than six thousand plant species, many of which are unique to the area. The great environmental diversity of the area belies the fundamental misconception of the notion of Tibet as a sparse, desert-like environment. While the region does possess desert areas such as the Tarim basin, in fact even the relatively sparse highlands of Tibet (the chang thang) boast a wealth of medicinally valuable herbs and are home to rich grazing areas for a variety both domesticated and wild animals. Although seventy percent of Tibet is grassland, the wider Tibetan cultural areas contain a vast range of environmental regions, such as pastoral semi-deserts, steppes, conifer and birch forests, alpine meadows, and subalpine humid pastures, not to mention being home to the earth's highest mountains. In addition to hosting a wide range of animals, this area is also rich in mineral resources, such as coal, borax, chromium, lithium, uranium, iron, copper and semi-precious stones.

According to a complex classification schema, all plant, mineral and animal matter are characterized according to two main aspects of the substance's potency. The particular qualities attributed to a given substance are memorized by physicians as they are presented in traditional medical texts.

The first aspect determining potency has to do with how a given medicinal substance is linked to the five main elements of fire, water, earth, air, and space. The elemental make-up of the medicinal substance determines its nature, taste, primary qualities, and secondary qualities.

The nature of a substance is either warming, cooling, or neutral; plants with a cooling nature are used on hot disorders, and those with a warming nature are beneficial to cold disorders.

The taste of a substance may be sweet, sour, salty, bitter, hot or astringent. All medicinal substances are further characterized by primary and secondary qualities that are known to affect the humors of the body in various ways.

The eight primary qualities are heaviness, oiliness, coolness, bluntness, lightness, coarseness, heat, and sharpness.

The seventeen secondary qualities are smoothness, heaviness, warmth, oiliness, "stableness," coldness, bluntness, coolness, flexibility, fluidity, dryness, non-oiliness, heat, lightness, sharpness, coarseness, and mobility.

Second, medicinal materials are also classified according to their intrinsic potency or power. Here there are eight divisions, such as aromatic power, shape of drug, auspicious power, power from prayers, and so on.

According to the Four Tantras, raw medicinal materials are catagorized into seven types [1]:

Category	Example	Pharmaco-dynamics
Precious substances (rin po che)	Turquoise	Anti-toxin, hepatic, anti-phlogistic
Rocks and minerals (rdo)	Serpentine	Constipative, febrifuge
Soil and minerals (sa)	Sulphur	Haemostatic
Trees (shing)	Santalum album Linn.	Febrifuge (heart and liver)
Nectarous (rtsi)	Musk	Anti-toxin, vermifuge, nephritic, hepatic
Shrubs (thang)	Glycyrrhiza glabra Linn.	Antitussive, expectorant
Herbs (ngo)	Picrorhiza kurroa Royle	Hepatic, coagulant, febrifuge

Study videos:
Warehouse of Medicinal Materials
Warehouse of Medicinal Materials, Part Two
Obtaining Medicinal Materials
Medicinal Materials in the Warehouse, Part One
Medicinal Materials in the Warehouse, Part Two
Medicinal Materials in the Warehouse, Part Three

Learn more:
For more on the Tibetan environment, see the THDL Environment Collections. Kletter and Kriechbaum's Tibetan Medicinal Plants offers a good introduction to medicinal substances, an essay on the environmental habitats of medicinal plants in Tibetan regions, and sixty comprehesive plant monographs. Also see Tibetan Medical Paintings, pgs. 62-83; and Quintessence Tantras, pgs. 124-188.

NOTES:

[1] Chart adapted from Fundamentals of Tibetan Medicine According to the rgyud-bzhi (Dharamsala: Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute, 1981).