Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: This essay will consider the relationship between eating and maintaining health or curing illness, as seen in Tibetan pre-modern texts.In particular, it will focus on selected "ritually" enhanced food practices that are aimed at treating illness and improving one's psycho-physical health and power.It begins with a look at practices that model hunger as an illness for both humans and non-humans, observing a resulting blurring of boundaries between food and medicine.The essay proposes continuity along a range of "culinary" practices, focusing in particular on "ritual cake" ( gtor ma) offerings and "nectar" (bdud rtsi) recipes involving creation of pills and healing foods.The essay posits a "culinary aesthetics" of healing and personal enhancement and introduces speculation about Tibetan understandings of food as medicine that may shape our understanding of the relationship between medical and religious thinking and practice in Tibet.
Source: Asian Medicine
Author: Frances Garrett
Institution: University of Toronto
Language: English
Topic: History of Medicine Studies
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2034529956