This edited volume is based on papers presented at two conference panels during the Fourteenth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies covering historical and anthropological research on Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine). In his brief yet thoughtful introduction to Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine, editor William A. McGrath identifies the general theme as “the transformation of medical concepts across traditions” (p. xi). He sets out four overarching aims for the volume: (1) answering the call for detailed analytical studies that “reveal the composite, variegated and dynamic nature of Tibetan medical traditions”;1 (2) expanding the scope beyond the canonical Four Tantras (Rgyud bzhi) “root text” and its commentaries while recognizing the complex tensions between centralization/orthodoxy and subaltern diversity; (3) challenging the disciplinary divide between philology and ethnography; and (4) exploring the relationships and “vicissitudes of semantics” (p. x) that cut across the medicine/religion dichotomy. Methodologically,...

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