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Comparative Studies of Two Major Sets of Tibetan Medical Paintings: A Historical Perspective

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Abstract

Tibetan medicine, one of the time-honored medical systems in the world, has increasingly been receiving attention the world over. Tibetan medical paintings (TMP, tib. Sman thang) has become one of the focal points in the studies of this medical system. To date, there are many atlases and publications on TMP, which are principally based on the two major sets of TMP series existing today in the world, the Lhasa set and the Buryat set. It has been found that the Buryat set is based on the Lhasa set, which was brought in late 19th to the first half of the 20th century from Tibet to Buryatia, Russia. A careful investigation on the basic structure of the two sets reveals that there are many differences between the two sets of paintings, including the total number of the paintings involved, of which some are missing in one set, the details of the captions of some of the paintings, the existence of the 80th painting and its supervisor, and the overall order of the entire set, etc. The details of the differences are elaborated and discussed, and the prospective of developing the research to arrive at a standard and perfect TMP set in the future is also analyzed and anticipated.

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to express their cordial thanks to Dr. Barbara Gerke of the University of Vienna, for her careful reading and checking of our draft. She did a lot of work for the improvement of the academic level of our draft. Without her indefatigable works and useful suggestions, this article would certainly be impossible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. China Institute for History of Medicine and Medical Literature, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, 100700, China

    Yan Zhen & Jing-feng Cai

Authors
  1. Yan Zhen
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  2. Jing-feng Cai
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Contributions

Both Zhen Y and Cai JF read and collect material resources from historical and modern literature. Zhen Y drafted the English manuscript, and Cai JF checked, redacted and finalized the whole article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yan Zhen.

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Conflict of Interest

Both authors declare that there is no conflict of interest between them.

Supported by the Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences (No. 11WZS004), and the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Public Welfare Research Institutions of China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (No. ZZ110509, ZZ130513)

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Zhen, Y., Cai, Jf. Comparative Studies of Two Major Sets of Tibetan Medical Paintings: A Historical Perspective. Chin. J. Integr. Med. 25, 803–811 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11655-019-3163-y

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