Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c6.s2.t3.5

v1.c6.s2.t3.5

science to later generations. According to *Study on Five Internal Organs* by Zhang Zhongjing, Dunhuang manuscript collected by the French National Library, the alchemy of Huainan Gehong was very effective and mysterious and had remained a secret recipe for later generations and the prescriptions of *Ji Yan* were widely used by people. It shows that Geng Hong’s alchemy or way of becoming immortal is highly valued by later generations. After his death, his *Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies* was further supplemented by Tao Hongjing, a famous medical scientist in the Liang Dynasty of the Northern and Southern Dynasty, and the new book, totalling 101 chapters, was renamed as the *Supplement of Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies for One Hundred and One Diseases* by Huayang Hermit. The “One Hundred and One Diseases” in the title is based on a theory in Buddhist texts that, a man’s body is made up of four major elements namely “earth”, “water”, “fire” and “wind”, and the discordance and imbalance of one of them will cause one hundred and one kinds of diseases. It demonstrates that traditional Chinese medicine scientists in the Northern and Southern Dynasty had acquired preliminary understanding of the Indian medical theory of Buddhism and took it down in their own writings.