Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c6.s2.t3.38

v1.c6.s2.t3.38

*of Materia Medica* in 1578 after nearly 30 years of great effort. This was considered to be the ultimate work in the history of ancient traditional Chinese medicine. It had 52 volumes, divided into 16 parts and 56 categories and collected 1,892 medicines including 374 new medicines. The book collected widely from medical books and Buddhist explanation classics and added annotations of transliteration forms for Sanskrit medicine names from India and Central Asia. In terms of collected Indian medicines, the main original versions of *Compendium of Materia Medica* were *Supplement to Materia Medica* of Chen Cangqi in the Tang Dynasty and *Classified Materia Medica* was finished by Tang Shenwei in 1082, who was the folk doctor in the Northern Song Dynasty. Particularly the latter had many revised versions. It had 30 volumes, collected 1,746 medicines and was claimed as a great achievement integrating herbalism of previous generations and the Tang and Song Dynasty. *Compendium of Materia Medica* recorded multiple medicines related to India such as black pepper, nutmeg, asafetida, rhizoma picrorrhiza, aragbadha, emblic leafflower fruit, terminalia belerica, haritaki, long pepper, dutchmanspipe root and benzoin etc as well as rhizoma curculiginis offered by Brahmin monks to Emperor Xuanzong of Tang in the first year of Kaiyuan of the Tang Dynasty (713). It was named Asvagandha in Sanskrit and could dispel wind-evil, warm waist and feet, nourish