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the Sanskrit original of which seems to have been lost after it was translated into Tibetan in the 8th century A.D. There is, however, a Tibetan translation of the famous Aştāngahrdaya of Vāgbhata with an unknown commentary; and recently a new medical text incorporated in the well known canonical Buddhist work, called Suvarnaprabhāsasūtia, has been brought to light by J. Nobel, which is translated both in Tibetan and Chinese and acknowledged as belonging to the 3rd century A. D. The medical texts found in the Mss. remains discovered in Eastern and Southern Turkestan by Hoernle go back still further to the 2nd century A. D. and deal with a still older tradition, differing from that of Caraka. These and other facts leave no doubt about the acceptance of the Ayurvedic theories not only by the Tibetans but almost all inhabitants of Central Asia and were certainly known to the Chinese. Like the Arabs of the Middle East, the Tibetans have been good transmitters of knowledge between India and the Northern, Central and Estern parts of Asia including China. Descriptions and pictures of Indian medicinal herbs were made known in China through Buddhist works and there is a fair presumption that Indian theories regarding nerve-centres and breathing techniques as they were developed in the Indian Yoga and methods of pulse-diagnosis and of massaging for curing certain diseases had become the common property of what Prof. Hajime Nakamura has aptly called the “Indian Asia.” 3. (vi) Ayurveda and Chinese medicine.
Although no conclusive evidence of mutual borrowings between India and China is available, and although the double principle of Yin-Yang rules the Chinese medicine instead of the triple principle : wind-bile-phlegm (vāta-pitta-kapha) of the Ayurevda, it is worth nothing that it is the harmony of the basic principles which is to be restored by the physician to cure diseases and keep the body healthy. The sensitive hand of the Chinese physician, which can feel the 14 pulses on the surface of the body, 800 and more points on the skin which are related with the internal organs and the Chinese treatment of diseases by acupuncture and massage seem to have certain parallels in the Nādi-parikṣā (pulse examination) technique, the recognition
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