Book Review

摘要

One of the most important scholars of Tibetan and Buddhist studies of the past generation, Janet Gyatso charts what is new territory for her in the history of medicine with . This is a beautifully produced, amply illustrated, and well documented history of Sowa Rikpa (the ‘Science of Healing’) that charts Tibetan medicine’s secularising (albeit incomplete) divergence from Buddhism by the seventeenth century. Previously, Gyatso had been primarily interested in the visionary dimensions of Tibetan Buddhism starting with her Berkeley PhD thesis on the fifteenth-century visionary saint Tangtong Gyalpo (1981). This focus continued with her first edited book : (1992), which focused on Buddhist notions of memory ( ). Her contribution was about how dhārańı̄ sounds and letters functioned as auditory and visual mnemonics for basic truths and teachings. She then, with Hanna Havnevik, edited (2005), a major contribution to Tibetan gender history. Her work on the visionary and gendered dimensions of Tibetan Buddhism came together in her first monograph, (1998), in which she examined the autobiographical dimensions of visions as well as the enigmatic female figure ( ) who appeared within them.