Abstract

The circulation of materia medica and medical knowledge along the hubs of the Silk Roads has been traced by historians and scholars of medicine since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the history of Eurasian pharmacology, theriac represents one of the most remarkable examples of the transfer and transformation of medical and pharmacological knowledge across epochs and cultures. This highly esteemed medical compound dates to the Hellenistic era and was designated in antiquity as the prime antidote to bites from venomous animals and inanimate poisons. It was modified and reformulated over the centuries until it achieved the status of a universal panacea, spreading to Central Asia and then to East Asia. Tibetan sources attest to the earliest reception of theriacs at the end of the imperial period: the Dunhuang manuscript IOL tib J 756 (mid-ninth to tenth century) mentions a compound called “dar ya kan”—a word deriving from the Persian tiryāq or the Arabic diryāq—which is part of a long section on antidotes to poisons. It was during the Mongol expansion in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that diverse theriac multi-compounds appeared in the Tibetan medical and alchemical literature. As we shall see, within these sources, the recipes were embedded in a Buddhist framework and were presented as ultimate remedies and protections against pestilence and poisons. Through the analysis of selected sources, this contribution will trace the history of theriacs in the Tibetan context, from their reception to the elaboration of distinctive practices that originated in the cross-cultural Indian Buddhist and non-Buddhist tantric milieus, and were further developed in Tibet from the later eleventh or twelfth century onward, bringing together diverse technologies (yogic, metallurgical, alchemical, and medico pharmacological) devoted to the attainment of immortality, life prolonging effects, and ultimate Buddhahood.

Biography

Carmela Simioli is a Tibetologist trained in Tibetan and Chinese language and philology, specialized in the history and literature of medicine and alchemy. She earned her doctorate in Tibetan Studies from the University of Naples "L'Orientale". From 2006 to 2008, she lived in Lhasa, where she completed a two-year course in Tibetan Language (obtaining a Certificate of Advanced Knowledge of Modern Tibetan) at Tibet University (Xizang Daxue). Following her PhD, Carmela has held various research positions. She was the recipient of a four-year scholarship generously funded by the Khyentse Foundation USA, which enabled her to continue translating Tibetan medical and ritual sources within the framework of the project titled “Theriaca and Alchemical Elixirs: A History of Buddhist Tantric and Medical Literatures on Epidemics and Poisons in Premodern Tibet (Tenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries)”. Her current research project deals with the transference and transformation of Greco-Arab medical and alchemical knowledge into Tibet. She is affiliated with the Department of Asian and Mediterranean Studies at “L'Orientale”, where she teaches Tibetan language and literature in the Bachelor’s Degree Program in Oriental and African Languages and Cultures. In addition to teaching, Carmela has served as an interpreter for Tibetan lamas and doctors since 2011, later becoming an in-house translator and interpreter at the Istituto Samantabhadra in Rome. She is also a founding member of the Italian Association of Tibetan, Himalayan, and Mongolian Studies (AISTHiM) and serves as a contributing translator for the Khyentse Vision Project, focusing on the nineteenth-century medical writings of Jam dbyangs mkhyen brtse dbang po. Her recent publications include: “Theriac Recipes (dar ya kan) as Ultimate Cure Against Epidemics in Two Medico-Alchemical Works of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries”, Revue d'études tibétaines 77, no. 7 (May 2025); “Consecrated Medicines and Protective Rituals: A Reflection on the Many Traditions Represented in the Relics by Zur mkhar bam nyam nyi rdo rje”, Religions (2025); and The Multidimensional Nature of the Mercury Procedures as Described in Ten Million of Quintessential Instructions, The Relics (Man ngag bye ba ring bsrel) of Zur mkhar bam nyam nyid rdo rje, published in Fate and Immortality in Asia: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Serie Orientale Roma (2024). She is currently working on a monograph devoted to the literary corpus attributed to O rgyan pa Rin chen dpal (thirteenth c.), with a particular focus on his translation and interpretation of Indian alchemical texts and his root work on the six-limbed yoga.