Ancient Anatomy, circa 1687
Seventeenth-century Tibet witnessed a blossoming of medical knowledge, with the construction of a monastic medical college and the penning of several influential medical texts. Perhaps most striking was a set of 79 paintings, known as tangkas, which were intended to illustrate a comprehensive four-volume medical treatise called The Blue Beryl. Created between 1687 and 1703, these paintings are vibrant pieces of educational art that interweave practical medical knowledge with Buddhist traditions and Tibetan lore—depicting such things as the use of omens and dreams for making diagnoses, hundreds of medicinal herbs and medical instruments, and diagrams of human anatomy.
View full size JPG (427 KB)This front view of the human anatomy is meant to teach Tibetan doctors-in-training the classification of bones, the positioning of the internal organs, and other facts about the human body.Catalog #70.3/5470 Courtesy, Division of Anthropology, AMNH
The word tangka (or thangka) derives from Tibetan words meaning “rolled-up flat painting” or “written record.” Since their original creation more than three centuries ago, the 79 Blue Beryl tangkas have been painstakingly reproduced numerous times by physician monks as part of their medical training. The tangkas are still used for teaching in Nepali medical schools today. This front view of the human skeleton belongs to a set produced in Kathmandu in the 1990s under the guidance of self-taught Nepalese artist, Romio Shrestha. More than 40 assistants recreated the paintings using pigments derived from natural sources, such as mercury ore for red, the semiprecious stone lapis lazuli for blue, and sulfur salt for yellow.
