Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c6.s2.t4.24

v1.c6.s2.t4.24

Wang Tao made good use of collection of books in Hong Wen Library (created in Tang Dynasty) and widely collected the ancient and current discourses on prescriptions. A lot of books on which the quotations of *Arcane Essentials from the Imperial Library* were based were lost and therefore, this book is the only way for people to understand how those lost books had absorbed the outside culture and how they were transformed. *Arcane Essentials from the Imperial Library* recorded immense information on outside medical science, the most important part of which is the 21ˢᵗ volume *Tianzhu Scriptures on Eye Preface One*, written by a Longshang Taoist priest whose surname is Xie, living at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty to the most prosperous period of Tang. It's said that Xie acquired knowledge from a Serindia monk in Qizhou (now Jinan City, Shandong Province). *Tianzhu Scriptures on Eye* is a miniature of ophthalmology knowledge in India including the Four Element Theory of Buddhism and traditional technique for couching cataracts which is not merely the very important and valuable historical materials for later generations to understand the Indian ophthalmology knowledge but also boasts essential clinical value for today's ophthalmic medical practice. *Arcane Essentials from the Imperial Library* quotes so many things from *Jinxiao Prescriptions* which are basically the effective time-honoured one from the beginning of the Tang Dynasty to the prosperous Tang period. Among them, the Brahmin monk therapy for diseases caused by wind, therapy for heat-toxicity by alchemical medicine and disease that hands and feet are unable to coordinate, *Alternanthera Sessilis Cream* which originally belongs to Brahmin's prescriptions and Liaosan, 50-year Red Eye and Bingtaichi prescription in *Essential Prescriptions Compiled by Cui Zhiti* which are strictly based on medicine in west regions of Tang as well as the Gentiana Macrophylla Cow Milk Soup in *Xu Renze’s Prescriptions* are all the best examples of outside prescriptions transmitting and gaining popularity in China during the Tang Dynasty. Several prescriptions in *Jinxiao Prescriptions* include some drugs which obviously are foreign drugs such as the He Lile, Persian verdigris, sweet basil, arrowhead, and long pepper. Most of the prescriptions we see in *Arcane Essentials from the Imperial Library* are similar with those in *Yajur* (Life) Veda classics of India, representing the great influence of ancient Indian medicine on traditional Chinese medicine in Tang Dynasty.