Buddhism and Medicine

An Anthology of Premodern Sources

C. Pierce Salguero

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780231544269
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

From its earliest days, Buddhism has been closely intertwined with medicine. Buddhism and Medicine is a singular collection showcasing the generative relationship and mutual influence between these fields across premodern Asia. The anthology combines dozens of English-language translations of premodern Buddhist texts with contextualizing introductions by leading international scholars in Buddhist studies, the history of medicine, and a range of other fields.

These sources explore in detail medical topics ranging from the development of fetal anatomy in the womb to nursing, hospice, dietary regimen, magical powers, visualization, and other healing knowledge. Works translated here include meditation guides, popular narratives, ritual manuals, spells texts, monastic disciplinary codes, recipe inscriptions, philosophical treatises, poetry, works by physicians, and other genres. All together, these selections and their introductions provide a comprehensive overview of Buddhist healing throughout Asia. They also demonstrate the central place of healing in Buddhist practice and in the daily life of the premodern world.

Healing Rites

25. Help for the Sick, the Dying, and the Misbegotten

A Sanskrit Version of the Sūtra of Bhaiṣajyaguru

GREGORY SCHOPEN

There is considerable evidence in China, Japan, and Tibet that the buddha Bhaiṣajyaguru—more fully, Bhaiṣajyaguruvaiḍūryaprabha—and the sūtra translated here that is devoted to him were connected with medicine and healing. In China, for example, at the site of Longmen alone there are at least fifteen inscriptions that record that images of this Buddha were made by donors, and sometimes these inscriptions tell us why donors did this. In one instance, it is explicitly stated that it was because the donor had been cured of an illness from which he had suffered. For Japan, there is especially rich evidence indicating that images of this Buddha were made, this text was recited, and its rituals were performed when various emperors or other worthies fell ill.1 (For an example of a ritual text associated with this deity in medieval China, see chapter 28§8. For a Tibetan example of his association with medical teachings, see chapters 60 and 61, although also compare with chapter 62. For Japan, see chapter 22. For Cambodia, chapter 24.)

In India, by contrast, there is little if any evidence at all for this Buddha outside of normative religious texts. We know that the sūtra devoted to him was available in more or less variant Sanskrit forms in the sixth or seventh centuries at Gilgit (now in northern Pakistan), and probably at Bamiyan (in Afghanistan) at roughly the same time. We have five manuscripts from the former, and two that are probably from the latter. There is also a single leaf of a Sanskrit version that is probably from Khadalik (in Central Asia). A glance at a map will indicate that if this material can be taken as Indian at all, it comes only from the extreme fringe of the Indian cultural sphere, and even then we have no certain idea why our text was copied there or how it was used. In India itself, the text seems to be quoted—indeed, in one instance misquoted—in only one text, Śāntideva’s Collection of Instructions (seventh or eighth centuries). Two sources have been cited that could indicate a late connection between this Buddha and Indian medical texts, but both are open to doubt.2 There appear, moreover, to be no references to this Buddha anywhere in Indian inscriptions, and not a single certain representation of him in the Indian art historical record. Like the Buddha Amitābha, another major figure in East Asian and Tibetan Mahāyāna Buddhism, this Buddha appears to have had little importance in India.

For India, then, all we have for this Buddha is the Sanskrit text devoted to him. Although outside of India it has been read as presenting a Buddha connected with medicine and concerned with healing, there is very little in the Indian text itself that could support this. Even those working in East Asia have sometimes acknowledged that the text appears to be concerned with something else—that “it gives a map of the forty-nine days of the funeral rite … that allows one to guide the spirit of a recently deceased family member …,” and that any “cure is therefore metaphoric.”3 Indeed, the first possible outcome of the ritual it details might be more easily linked in India—at least typologically—with earlier Brahmanical rites for conquering death,4 and much later, Tantric rituals for “reviving the dead,”5 not curing the sick.6 But even then, if the Indian text is read without reference to how it was used or understood elsewhere, but in light of a large number of other middle- or late-Indian Mahāyāna sūtras or dhāraṇī sūtras, it would appear to be primarily concerned with—in effect—annulling or abrogating the laws and consequences of karma, only one of which was sickness.7

Given that apart from generic words for sickness or illness and the name given to the Buddha, the text is totally devoid of medical vocabulary or concepts, it might be reasonable to suggest that developments outside India were based on little more than a (mis)interpretation or an overly determined reading of the first part of the Buddha’s name: “the Master of Medicine.”8 Once again, we may have here another case, like that of the Buddha Amitābha or the dominance of the Mahāyāna, where developments outside India may have had little to do with what occurred in India itself, another instance in which developments in China and Japan in particular have largely determined how an Indian text has been read.9

FURTHER READING

Birnbaum, Raoul. 1989. The Healing Buddha. Rev. ed. Boulder: Shambhala.

Schopen, Gregory. 1978. The Bhaiṣajyaguru-Sūtra and the Buddhism of Gilgit. PhD diss., Australian National University.

____. 2009. “On the Absence of Urtexts and Otiose Ācāryas: Buildings, Books and Lay Buddhist Ritual at Gilgit.” In Écrire et transmettre en Inde classique, ed. G. Colas and G. Gerschheimer, 189–219. Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient.

Suzuki, Yui. 2012. Medicine Master Buddha: The Iconic Worship of Yakushi in Heian Japan. Leiden: Brill.

A SANSKRIT VERSION OF THE SŪTRA OF BHAIṢAJYAGURU10

[0] Homage to all Buddhas and aspirants to awakening (i.e., bodhisattvas).

[1] Thus have I heard at one time when the Blessed One was wandering through the countryside and arrived at Vaiśalī. He stayed in Vaiśalī at the base of a tree that had the sound of music, with a large community of monks, with eight thousand monks and thirty-six thousand bodhisattvas. Surrounded and attended by kings, ministers, Brahmins, householders, devas, āsuras, garuḍas, kinnaras, and mahoragas,11 he taught the Dharma.

[2] Then, through the Buddha’s might,12 Mañjuśrī, the Son of the King of Dharma,13 rose from his seat, put his robe over one shoulder, placed his right knee on the ground, bent down his cupped hands toward the Blessed One, and said this to the Blessed One: “Might the Blessed One please declare the names of the Tathāgatas and the extent of the excellence of their former vows,14 through the hearing of which one would clear away15 all obstructions from one’s former actions,16 out of concern for individuals17 in the last time, in the last period, when a counterfeit of the Good Law is current!”18

[3] Then the Blessed One gave his approval to Mañjuśrī, the True Heir Apparent: “Well done, well done Mañjuśrī! You, Mañjuśrī, are compassionate. Having generated an immeasurable compassion, you make this request of me for the sake of ind...