The Medicine Buddha and Tibetan medicine (Gyushi)
The Four Tantras, their supposed author, Zurkharwa’s controversy and the medical paintings of the regent Sangyé Gyatso.
What the sources say
Belief
The Four Tantras (rGyud bzhi, “Gyushi”), the founding text of Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa), present themselves as the teaching of the Medicine Buddha, appearing as the sage Rigpé Yeshé in the celestial city of Tanaduk.
Sources 1
Established
The text as we know it is associated with the physician Yuthok Yönten Gönpo the Younger (12th century).
Sources 1
Debated
In the 16th century, the physician Zurkharwa Lodrö Gyelpo argued that the Four Tantras were composed in Tibet and were not the word of the Buddha. Janet Gyatso has studied this debate, which set religious authority against historical inquiry among Tibetan scholars themselves.
Sources 1
Established
In the late 17th century, the regent Desi Sangyé Gyatso wrote the great “Blue Beryl” commentary and commissioned a series of medical paintings illustrating the Four Tantras, opening with the Medicine Buddha.
Sources 1
Established
The “Lum” medicinal bathing of Sowa Rigpa was inscribed in 2018 on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Sources 2
Established
Sowa Rigpa is practised today in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia and China; Sienna Craig studies its circulation and commercialisation.
Sources 3
How to read the badges
Established Debated Hypothesis Belief
Established: attested in the sources and accepted by specialists. Debated: specialists disagree. Hypothesis: proposed, not demonstrated. Belief: what the religious tradition says, with no historical claim.
Sources
- Janet Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet, Columbia University Press, 2015. cup.columbia.edu
- UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, “Lum medicinal bathing of Sowa Rigpa” (2018). ich.unesco.org
- Sienna R. Craig, Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine, University of California Press, 2012. www.ucpress.edu
Links checked on 15 October 2026.