Indian medical manuscript fragment Fragment 1

These images are two of several Chinese manuscript fragments dated to the 9th century found at the Buddhist library at Dunhuang, on the western end of China. Dunhuang was an important cross-cultural center of Buddhism along the land-based trade routes (now called the Silk Route). Manuscripts on Indian medicine in many Central Asian languages were also discovered there. These fragments deal with Indian traditional medical concepts of Tri-dosa, Mahabhuta and diseases resulting from abnormal Dosas.

The Chinese scholar Chen Ming, who has worked extensively on these fragments, suggest that the question answer format of the manuscript was a simple way of communicating unfamiliar Indian medical knowledge to the reader in medieval China (Chen Ming, The Transmission of Indian Ayurvedic Doctrines in Medieval China; A case study of Astanga and Tridosa Fragments from the Silk Road. Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University, 2005).

The wide dissemination of Indian botanical medical knowledge and medicines in the precolonial period is also illustrated by prescription using Indian medicines, dated to the 11-12th C, found at the depository of the Ben Ezra synagogue, al Fustat, Cairo. In their groundbreaking work "Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza, India Book" (Brill, 2008), S.D. Goitien and M.A. Friedman stated that “India trade was the backbone of the international economy in the Middle Ages” and that “medicinal substances were supremely important commodities.” The flourishing trade in Indian medicines highlighted by the documents found at the Ben Ezra synagogue involved close collaborations between Arab, Jewish and Indian traders during this period.