The Blue Beryl: the regent who had medicine painted
A regent of Tibet, a commentary in 1688 and seventy-nine large paintings: how Tibetan medicine was put into images, with the Medicine Buddha at the head.
In 1687–88, in Lhasa, the regent Desi Sangye Gyatso (1653–1705) wrote a monumental commentary on the Four Tantras: the Vaidūrya ngonpo, the “Blue Beryl”. The title evokes beryl (vaiḍūrya), the blue stone associated with the Medicine Buddha. The aim was to put the medical teaching back in order, which he judged scattered. It is not a devotional book: it is a study manual that comments on the text line by line.
A regent, a project
Desi Sangye Gyatso was regent of Tibet in the late seventeenth century. He was also a builder: he is credited with completing the Potala. In medicine, he founded in 1696 the Chakpori, a medical college on the Lhasa hill facing the Potala (some sources say 1694). See Chakpori and Men-Tsee-Khang.
The seventy-nine paintings
To accompany the commentary he had a series of seventy-nine large paintings made, finished in 1703, which illustrate the text: anatomy, embryology, plants, instruments, diets, diagnoses, and at the head the Medicine Buddha with his assistants. They have become one of the great monuments of medical painting in the world.
Why this series is famous
- The paintings are organised for teaching: each panel sums up a chapter.
- They are a source of iconography for many artists; one of them, the Medicine Buddha, is reproduced on this site.
- They were reproduced and commented on in 1992 in “Tibetan Medical Paintings” (Serindia).
What this is not
These paintings document the medical culture of Tibet at the time. They do not replace medical advice and this site makes no therapeutic use of them.
Uncertainties
The date of writing of the Blue Beryl varies by source (1685 or 1687–88); so does the founding of the Chakpori (1694 or 1696).
Sources
Rubin Museum of Art, Project Himalayan Art, “Desi Sanggye Gyatso’s Medical Paintings”; Yuri Parfionovitch, Gyurme Dorje and Fernand Meyer, Tibetan Medical Paintings, Serindia, 1992; Wikipedia, “Desi Sangye Gyatso”; Satyori, entries “Vaidurya sNgon-po” and “Desi Sangye Gyatso”.
Read the articleChakpori and Men-Tsee-Khang: three centuries of Tibetan medical colleges