Dataset of materia medica in Sowa Rigpa: Tibetan medicine botanicals and Gawé Dorjé’s classification system

Abstract

This article provides the most updated dataset of Latin botanical identifications for the materia medica in Tibetan medicine, known as Bö Luk Sowa Rigpa (Tib. Bod lugs gso ba rig pa), or the “Tibetan knowledge field of healing,” often denoted in English simply as Sowa Rigpa. As one of the major scholarly Asian traditional medical systems, Sowa Rigpa is the principal health resource for populations across Tibetan regions of China, Mongolia, Bhutan, Nepal, India, and culturally-related areas of Russia. The geography represented by this medicinal plant dataset extends across the entire Tibetan plateau, its adjacent ranges, the wider transregional Himalayas, central Asia and much of the Indian subcontinent. Data collection drew from textual analysis of the seminal works of the Tibetan medical canon, including the Four Medical Treatises, Crystal Orb and Rosary among others; as well as the contemporary definitive work Stainless Crystal Mirror of Materia Medica by Gawé Dorjé. Study authors applied the same classification system as Gawé Dorjé, yet reanalyzed specimens according to a database cataloging research on regional herbarium botanical specimens, geographic distributions and regional plant chemistry studies, and confirming proper identification with the most current modern botanical taxonomies. Subsequently, almost 700 of the most commonly used materia medica were selected for compilation. Thus, this dataset represents updated botanical identifications and confirmations from both early and contemporary sources. Botanical specimen names were entered into spreadsheet format with Gawé Dorjé’s categories listed alongside Deumar Tendzin Püntsok's early standard. Enclosed raw data are written in Unicode Tibetan font to retain fidelity to entries in the classical texts, with parallel columns in standard Wylie Tibetan transliteration and phonetic transcription. Latin botanical names are updated for each materia medica specimen using Kew's Medicinal Plant Names Services (Kew-MPNS) with missing entries supplied by World Flora Online (WFO) and Flora of China (FoC). This dataset is the first publicly available comprehensive ethnobotanical identification of Sowa Rigpa materia medica with Latin binomial nomenclature. This dataset was developed to inform botanical and pharmacological analysis of the Tibetan medical materia medica repertoire as well as make comparative analyses of related materia medica in other Asian medical systems.