Buddhism, Medicine, and the Affairs of the Heart: Āyurvedic Potency Therapy (Vājīkarana) and the Reappraisal of Aphrodisiacs and Love Philters in Medieval Chinese Sources

Abstract

This article examines how discursive frames modify forms of knowledge and practice. More precisely, it considers the problem of categories in early and medieval Chinese sources through the lens of recipes designed to facilitate intercourse. In pre-Buddhist Chinese sources, such prescriptions traditionally fell either under the rubric of ‘nourishing life’ (yangsheng 養生) longevity practices or spellbinding (zhuzu 祝詛). While recipes that appear in the former bracket—referred to in this study as ‘aphrodisiacs’—were couched in a discourse of healing and classified as a medical undertaking, those associated with spellbinding—referred to as ‘love philters’—were filed under the heading of mantic arts and divination in bibliographic treatises. With the arrival of Āyurvedic medicine in China via Buddhist sources, this partition grew increasingly blurred. Āyurvedic medical taxonomy in general, and its discipline of potency therapy (vājīkarana) in particular, did not distinguish between aphrodisiacs and love philters since both ultimately facilitate intercourse, albeit through different means. The imprint of Āyurvedic categories in China can be ascertained in Buddhist manuscript sources from Dunhuang, but also, more surprisingly, in widely circulated medieval non-Buddhist medical treatises. However, in contrast to the emblematic medical treatises of the middle period and surveyed manuscript Buddhist materials, canonical Buddhist texts appear to have shied away from the topic of aphrodisiacs and upheld the indigenous Chinese understanding of love philters as spellbinding and mantic art.