Kloos, Stephan, Tibetan Medicine Among the Buddhist Dards of Ladakh

Abstract

This chiefly medico-sociological study is based on the author’s M.A. thesis submitted to Vienna University in 2002. It makes use of material collected during four months of field-work in the Dha1-Hanu area of Ladakh, Kashmir, in summer and autumn 2001. This high-mountain region was probably colonized some 1000 to 800 years ago by Dards immigrating from Gilgit and speaking a dialect of the Indo-Aryan Shin. ā language still traceable in the villages of Dha and Garkun, but the use of which is said to have been banned by a 16th-century royal edict2 in favour of the Sino-Tibetan Ladākhi idiom. Buddhism was not introduced there until the early 19th century when a hermit named dKon-cog dbaṅ-po built a monastery of ’Bri-guṅ-pa affiliation in Hanu in 1825. Hanu proper is a northern side valley to the left of the Indus valley, in which three major villages are situated: Hanu Thang, Hanu Yogma, and Hanu Gongma (the lastmentioned one at about 10,500 feet or 3,200 metres). It had been for centuries the main route from Ladakh to Baltistan but is now blocked at the Chorbat Pass (16,730 feet or 5,100 metres3) by the cease-fire line between India and Pakistan. In the wake of the 1999 Kargil conflict, which also affected this solitary tract of land, it was declared strictly out of bounds to all non-residents, foreign and otherwise, except for