Logo

The Bhesajjamanjusa, composed in Sri Lanka in the thirteenth century is the only known medical work available in Pali. It has drawn from about eighty medical treatises, some of which are Astangahrdaya, Astangasamgraha, Susrutasamhita, Carakasamhita, Siddhasara, Madhavanidana Carakadatta and Vangasena. It contains materials for study of bio-medical ethics, ethno-medicine, ethno-botany, medical anthropology, Pali lexicography and history of traditional medicine in South Asia. It is significant because it is the only treatise of medical terms, revealing deeper understanding of the Indo-Sri Lankan relations regarding medical science. In a comparison of the terminology of Sanskrit and Singhalese medical texts, the main treatise of Pali medicine has the medical terms as generally identical. The present edition makes the Pali text available in Devanagari script for the first time based on an edition of the Roman script, published from Pali Text Society, Oxford. The six Indexes, i.e. the Index of the first lines of the gatha-s or verses, of the alphabetical arrangement of words, of the diseases, of the materiamedica, of the vanaspati or medical herbs and trees, and of the samanyasuci or other general words are appended at the end of the present edition.