Abstract
This introductory essay reviews gendered productions, transmissions and practices of Tibetan medicine; it both discusses the representation of women in medical literature and illustrations, and addresses Tibetan medicine’s relations with reproductive healthcare. So far, in the history of Tibetan medicine, called Sowa Rigpa (the 'science of healing', gso ba rig pa), most of its practitioners and authors have been men. Both the learning and practice of Sowa Rigpa and its associated texts have been closely connected to monastic institutions. This however, is only part of the (his)story. Sowa Rigpa was also learnt outside monasteries, within medical lineages, where knowledge and practice was often transmitted from father to son, uncle to nephew, and, as we shall see, from father to daughter, uncle to niece, and mother to daughter and son. Here we suggest the concept of the 'house' that derives from anthropological kinship theory as a useful and encompassing tool for analysing the transmission and practice of Tibetan medicine outside lay and monastic institutions, for it draws out the relations between what in Tibetan are termed medical lineages (sman gyi rgyud) and medical houses (sman grong). Further, we discuss whether, as has been suggested in earlier work by Gyatso and Havnevik (2005), Tibetan medicine has posed a relatively open field for women and, if so, how women’s status in medicine compares to their positions in other domains of Tibetan socio-cultural life and religious institutions.
Highlights
The spectacular set of 79 medical paintings, produced at the height of the Tibetan Buddhist state by the regent sDe-srid Sangs-rgyas rGya-mtsho (‘Desi Sangye Gyatso’, 1603–1705), provides many images of men and women, in all walks of life, in a wide assortment of everyday activities, as they relate to human flourishing—and malady
With hereditary rank being so fundamental to social position and possibilities,59 many of these female doctors belonged to the upper social strata, which would indicate a relationship to other well-known men
How rigorously was gender difference defined, and what were the implications of such difference? Was there a distinction between the ways gender identity and difference were represented textually and the way they might have been depicted visually? More broadly, what cultural significance could the depiction of the bodies of men and women convey? To what degree could female images—like male ones—serve to represent the general human predicament? How important was gender identity in the depiction of medical knowledge at all?
Summary
While before the mid-twentieth century Tibetan medicine may have been an exceptional field in terms of fostering female expertise in comparison with other Tibetan cultural institutions, we still know very little about female and male doctors’ lives and work. She points out that in the literature describing the growth of the embryo, the female body disappears from the text, signifying that the main focus is not on women’s health, but rather on the nature of human rebirth within a Buddhist philosophical framework In their contributions to this volume, Cuomu and Bright posit another possible reason for the scarcity of works on women’s medicine and childbirth in the Tibetan medical literature, namely the centrality of monasteries to medical knowledge production and practice. This is seen for example in the avoidance of the infamous line, ‘by having less merit [one] obtains the female body’.128 In one of his books on women’s disorders, which has been analyzed by Adams,129 Palden Trinley, a doctor at Lhasa Mentsikhang, writes at great length about gender discrimination of what he calls the ‘feudal system’, i.e. pre-1950 Tibetan society, explaining it in social and cultural rather than medical terms. Broad topics such as public health, clinical trials and knowledge transmission in Tibetan medicine,131 her focus in Tibetan language publications has been on gynaecology and obstetrics.132 Beyond confirming gender stereotypes in Tibetan medicine, the pattern of increasing numbers of female doctors publishing primarily on reproductive health indicates a future development whereby Tibetan medicine is more strongly incorporated within maternal and child healthcare
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