Key Figures
The physicians, scholars, and lineage holders who shaped Tibetan medicine — from the legendary Yuthog Yonten Gonpo to contemporary masters preserving the tradition.
Desi Sangye Gyatso
Regent of Tibet from 1679 to 1705 who wrote the Blue Beryl commentary on the rGyud-bzhi, commissioned the 79 medical thangkas, and founded Chagpori Medical College before being killed by Lhazang Khan's forces.
Drangti Palden Tsoje
Thirteenth- to fourteenth-century Tibetan physician of the Drangti hereditary medical family at Sakya Monastery who preserved and transmitted the rGyud-bzhi through the Mongol era, bridging the Yuthog tradition and the later Zur and Jang schools.
Jangpa Namgyal Dragzang
Fifteenth-century Tibetan physician who founded the Jang school (byang lugs) of Sowa Rigpa, author of authoritative commentaries on the rGyud-bzhi, and the figure whose scholastic pedagogy made rigorous memorization of the root tantras the standard for Tibetan medical training.
Khyenrab Norbu
Khyenrab Norbu was the founding director of Mentsikhang in Lhasa and the central preserver of Tibetan medicine across the first half of the twentieth century, training the lineage of physicians who would later carry the tradition through occupation and into exile.
Kyempa Tsewang
Late fifteenth- to mid-sixteenth-century Tibetan physician and prolific commentator on the rGyud-bzhi whose lucid line-by-line explanations became standard reference material for Tibetan medical students and fed into the seventeenth-century synthesis of Desi Sangye Gyatso.
Lobsang Dolma Khangkar
Lobsang Dolma Khangkar was the first woman to hold the position of chief physician at Men-Tsee-Khang in Dharamsala, heir to the hereditary Khangkar medical lineage, and the figure most responsible for establishing women's standing within the modern Tibetan medical tradition.
Tenzin Choedrak
Tenzin Choedrak was personal physician to the 14th Dalai Lama, survived twenty-one years in Chinese prisons and labor camps by reciting the rGyud-bzhi from memory, and directed Men-Tsee-Khang in Dharamsala after his release, becoming one of the central figures in the twentieth-century survival of Tibetan medicine.
Yeshe Donden
Yeshe Donden was personal physician to the 14th Dalai Lama from 1961 to 1980, the physician who introduced Tibetan medicine to the Western world, and the author of two foundational English-language books on the tradition; his 1973 pulse diagnosis at Yale-New Haven Hospital entered Western medical literature.
Yuthog Yonten Gonpo the Elder (Yuthog Nyingma)
Semi-legendary 8th–9th century physician to King Trisong Detsen, traditional founder of the Yuthog lineage and compiler of the earliest layer of the rGyud-bzhi from the Samye medical conference.
Yuthog Yonten Gonpo the Younger
12th-century Tibetan physician who produced the final canonical recension of the rGyud-bzhi and founded the Yuthog Nyingthig spiritual cycle that still serves as the inner practice of Sowa Rigpa.
Zurkhar Lodro Gyalpo
Sixteenth-century Tibetan physician who codified the Zur school of Sowa Rigpa and composed the Man-ngag Lhan-thabs, a practical clinical manual that became one of the most widely used texts in Tibetan medicine for the next four centuries.
Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje
15th-century founder of the Zur school of Sowa Rigpa whose Ten Million Relics of Instruction refined Tibetan pharmacology and established one of the two dominant interpretive lineages of the Four Tantras.