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When Practice Contradicts Texts: The Use of Panacea in Sowa Rigpa

Presenter:

· Barbara Gerke University of Vienna (Vienna, Austria)

Timeslot:

07/27 | 14:10-14:30 UTC+2/CEST

Abstract

This presentation addresses one of the key panel questions: How to bridge the gaps between premodern writings and the (post)modern predicaments facing contemporary medical practitioners relying on texts, as well as the researchers translating and interpreting them? It specifically looks at research situations where textual descriptions of the potency and efficacy of certain formulas contradict and challenge clinical experience.

Panacea are frequently presented in Tibetan medical texts with the aphorism “a hundred diseases, one cure”—in Tibetan né gya men chik (nad brgya sman gcig)—a poetic statement attributing unusually broad benefits to one formula. Such sayings have contributed to patients’ expectations when asking amchi for such formula prescriptions or buying them over the counter. Ethnographic encounters with amchi in Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, India, reveal that patients’ high expectations of panacea can be uncomfortable for the physician prescribing it, especially when the desired results fail to manifest. 

With textual and ethnographic examples concerning the popular formula “White Yogi Pill” or Druptop Rilkar (grub thob ril dkar), this paper raises questions relating to conflicting literal statements of formulary texts when researching the commodification of such drugs and their impact on daily clinical practice. How are ideas of potency expressed in literature and in practice? I suggest that bridging such gaps between text and practice requires careful application of both contextualized translations and ethnographic research in order to avoid misrepresentation of a medical tradition relying on such formulas.