page_title: Jīvaka
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Jīvaka / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: ไทย: ชีวกัมพวัน อารามของท่านหมอชีวกโกมารภัจจ์ บรมครูแห่งการแพทย์แผนโบราณ (แพทย์แผนไทย)ถ่ายที่: ราชคฤห์ ประเทศอินเดีย Remains of Jivakambavana, the monastery donated by Doctor Jivaka to the Sangha, so that Buddha and other monks might stay there when they were sick and needed treatment by him. Located at Rajgir, Bihar, India.
context_page_description: Jīvaka was the personal physician of the Buddha and the Indian King Bimbisāra. He lived in Rājagṛha, present-day Rajgir, in the 5th century BCE. Sometimes described as the "Medicine King", he figures prominently in legendary accounts in Asia as a model healer, and is honoured as such by traditional healers in several Asian countries.
  Accounts about Jīvaka can be found in Early Buddhist Texts in many textual traditions such as the Pāli and Mūlasarvāstivāda traditions, as well as later Buddhist discourses and devotional Avadāna texts. Textual traditions agree that Jīvaka was born as a foundling of a courtesan, but not who his parents were exactly. Regardless, Jīvaka was found and raised by people from the royal court of King Bimbisāra. As he grew up, Jīvaka decided to travel to Takṣaśilā, to learn traditional medicine from a well-respected teacher. He turned out to be a promising student, and after seven years, started his healing profession in Rājagṛha. His medical feats gained him a reputation and he was quickly appointed as the personal physician of King Bimbisāra and the Buddha.
context_section_description: Medieval Chinese accounts about Jīvaka tend be hagiographic in nature, and were used more in the proselytising of Buddhism than regarded as medical biography. Since healing knowledge and the proselytising of Buddhism were closely connected, praise for Jīvaka's medical prowess also meant praise and legitimisation of Buddhism. In Chinese texts about medicine from the Six Dynasties period (early medieval), Jīvaka figures most prominently of all physicians, and his stories influenced the stories about other legendary physicians, as well as being influenced by their narratives. In East Asia, Jīvaka was associated with gynaecology, and the name Jīvaka is related to ancient female pathology and paediatrics. Several medieval medical formulas were named after him, and he is referred to in numerous medical texts from at least the 4th century CE onward. In 6th-century texts of Chinese pharmacology, the adage "Everything on earth is nothing but medicine"  [sic] is attributed to him. In 10th-century Chinese medicine, many treatises were associated with or attributed to Jīvaka. There is also evidence that shows Jīvaka was regarded as an important figure for Indian Āyurvedic medicine: for example, Ḍalhaṇa, an Indian scholar who lived between the 11th and 13th centuries, wrote in a commentary on the Suśruta Saṃhitā that "Jīvaka's compendium" was regarded as an authoritative text on children's diseases, though this text has now been lost. This does not mean that Jīvaka was revered unanimously by all of Asia; several medieval Indian texts such as the Māṭharavṛtti, and the poems of Kṣemedra, depict him, as well as other physicians, as impostors. Among Indian texts, Buddhist texts tend to stand out in that they give much honour to the occupation of the physician, and medical knowledge was highly respected. The former may be related to the doctrine of salvation of Buddhism, in which the Buddha is often described as a doctor that cures the ills of the human race.
  Jīvaka was and is for many Buddhists and traditional healers an icon and a source of inspiration. The figure of Jīvaka is presented in ancient texts as evidence for the superiority of Buddhism in both the realm of the spiritual as well as the medical. The Jīvaka Sūtras and the Mūlasarvāstivāda version describe that when Jīvaka meets the Buddha, the latter makes a statement that "I treat internal diseases; you treat external diseases", the word treat (pinyin: zhi) in this context also meaning 'to reign over'. Throughout the medieval period, the accounts about Jīvaka were used to legitimate medical practices. In the early Buddhist texts which were translated in Chinese, Jīvaka was deified and described in similar terminology as used for Buddhas and bodhisattvas. He came to be called the "Medicine King", a term used for several legendary Chinese physicians. There is evidence that during the Tang dynasty (7th–10th century), Jīvaka was worshipped along the Silk Road as a patron deity of children's health. Today, Jīvaka is seen by Indians as a patriarch of traditional healing, and is regarded by Thai people as the creator of traditional Thai massage and medicine. Thai people still venerate him to ask for assistance in healing ailments, and he plays a central role in nearly all ceremony that is part of traditional Thai medicine. Many stories exist about Jīvaka's purported travels to Thailand.
  In the Sanskrit textual traditions, Jīvaka is the ninth of the Sixteen Arhats, disciples that are entrusted to protect the Buddha's teaching until the arising of the next Buddha. He is therefore described in Buddhist texts as still being alive on a mountain peak called Gandhamādana, between India and Sri Lanka. The monastery Jīvaka presented to the Buddhist community came to be known as the Jīvakarāma Vihāra, Jīvakāmravaṇa or Jīvakambavana, and was identified by the Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang (c. 602–64) with a monastery in Rajgir. The remains were discovered and excavated in the period from 1803 to 1857. The monastery is described by archaeologists as "... one of the earliest monasteries of India datin
caption: Remains of the Jivakarama Monastery in Rajgir
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