Aphrodisiacs, Rejuvenating Recipes and Spellbinding Formulas preserved in the Brang ti Great Measure of Gold: The Case of Medicinal Herpetofauna and Their Long enduring History in Tibetan Medico-Alchemical Sources

This paper examines premodern Tibetan aphrodisiacs and rejuvenating therapies as found in the gSer bre chen mo, an authoritative fourteenth century medical anthology principally compiled by Brang ti dPal ldan rgyal mtshan of the Sa skya medical school. This complex corpus appears to be the result of a meticulous work of redaction to preserve medical, alchemical and ritual practices of diverse cultural origins, culled from a variety of earlier medical and tantric sources in order to build a systematic and exhaustive compendium. An interesting example of how this heterogeneous knowledge has been inherited and rearranged is represented by a series of pharmacological formulas, which are said to be drawn from the Tsa ra ka ’bum sde (Caraka’s Collection in Hundred Thousand Verses) and other not identifiable āyurvedic and tantric works. The key constituents of these recipes are animal-derived ingredients such as lizards, salamanders, snakes mixed with otter and cat meat, ram testicles, sparrow head and eggs, bezoars, crazy honey along with many other herbal and mineral substances purported to be endowed with wondrous healing virtues. The remedies are considered to be multipurpose as can be inferred from the wide variety of therapeutic applications. The analysis of the mentioned recipes and the related procedures, which moved across written works, will allow us to examine the authorial strategies to ensuring continuity with the tradition through an adaptive reuse of earlier sources and eventually evaluate the crucial role of the gSer bre chen mo in the transmission of these operative disciplines in the Tibetan context.