Reshaping Medical Learning

The Ma‘dan al-šifā’-i Sikandar-šāhī is an extensive Persian handbook of Ayurvedic medicine made for Miyān Bhuwa ibn Ḫawāṣṣ Ḫān, a vizir of Sultan Sikandar Lodī (r. 1489-1517) to whom the book was dedicated. Miyān Bhuwa allocated considerable resources to achieving this translation project and hired scholars to translate the many parts of Ayurvedic books used to compile the Persian text. This article explores the reasons behind the production of the Ma‘dan al-šifā’ and proposes a new reading of certain features of this book. It enquires into its authorship and suggests that Miyān Bhuwa most likely only assembled the translations made from Ayurvedic texts. It discusses the epistemic and the practical issues raised in the preface, which criticizes the adequacy of Greco-Arabic thought in the Indian environment and the style of Ayurvedic texts, as well as the parallels with the Ṭoḍarānanda, a Sanskrit encyclopedia written in the late 16th century. The last part of the article looks at the conceptual structure of the Ma‘dan al-šifā’ and how the Sanskrit sources and their models shaped the organization of the sections of the Persian book. Moreover, it suggests that the overall framework of the book relied on the overlap of models of presentation of medical knowledge, a device meant to negotiate between the models of the Sanskrit sources and those of the Muslim readers.