Precious Pills and the Politics of Tibetan Learning

The center for Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University presents a lecture on the history and meaning behind Tibetan alchemical medicines.

Dr. Stacey Van Vleet from the University of California, Berkeley, provided the following summary of her lecture:

"Precious pills" (rin chen ri bu) - a class of alchemical medicines made from refined mercury, precious gems and metals, and other rare and exotic materia medica - constitute the most prestigious technology of Tibetan medcicine, and a key ingredient in its remarkable popularity outside Tibet from the seventeenth century forward. In this talk I will argue that the renown of precious pills is due to their siginificance not just as technologies of medicine, but also as technologies of governance. Adopted by the Fifth Dalai Lama (r. 1642-1682) and subsequently across Inner Asia during the era of the Qing Empire (1644-1911), the technology of precious pills served as a crucial aspect of Buddhist statecraft, including the negotiation of effective and beneficial strategies for governing the social and natural worlds.