مسالك الابصار في ممالك الامصار 309.e118: منكه الهندي

A physician through whom bodies are protected and through whom the best of portions are fully granted. Were old age to return to him, he would restore to it the garment of its youth and exchange the shroud of grey hair for its cloak. He settled souls in their bodies and brought soundness back to their corruption, so that they settled firmly, removed harm, and made peace with the bodies, no longer recoiling from them nor drawing away from their union. Thus they cast off the after-effects of sickness and seized the heels of the incurable disease even when it had swallowed [the patient], and through him health was found when meeting it had become rare, and the term was prolonged when hope of its continuance had been lost.

Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa said: "He was very learned in medicine, good at treatment, subtle in management, a philosopher among those pointed to in learning, and a master of the language of India and the language of the Persians. It was he who translated the book of Shānāq on poisons into Persian. He lived in the time of al-Rashīd and came to Iraq in his days; then he learned Arabic and used to translate into it.

Among the reports about the caliphs is that al-Rashīd fell gravely ill with an illness in which the physicians' medicine was of no avail. Abū ʿUmar al-Aʿjamī said to him: 'O Commander of the Faithful! In India there is a physician called Mankah, the foremost of their ascetics and philosophers; if you were to send for him, perhaps God would grant you healing at his hands.'

So he equipped someone to bring him a gift to help him with his journey, and had him brought to him. He treated him and he recovered, so he assigned him an ample stipend and sufficient wealth. Then, while he was passing by al-Khuld, he came upon a man who had spread out his cloak and laid many drugs upon it, and stood describing a compounded electuary. He said: 'This is a medicine for such-and-such,' and he enumerated many sicknesses and various ailments, until he left no complaint without mentioning that this medicine was its cure. Mankah smiled and said: 'In any case the king of the Arabs is ignorant, for if the matter is as this man says, what led him to have me carried from my country to him, take me far from my family, and bear the great cost of my provisions, when he finds this before his very eyes and in front of his gaze?

And if it is not as he says, why does he not kill him? For the religious law has permitted the blood of this man and those like him, since if he is killed it is one soul by whose death many souls live, while if he is left with this ignorance he kills souls every day. This is a corruption of mind and a weakness in kingship.'

And among them: