Title : Bawraq Armani in the Huihui Yaofang: Provenance labels and material identity in a silk road ophthalmic prescription
Abstract:
Alkaline substances played an important role in premodern ophthalmic therapies, yet their names, material identities, and therapeutic applications often changed during cross-cultural transmission. This paper focuses on an ophthalmic prescription in the Yuan-period Huihui Yaofang 回回药方, a Chinese medical text translated and compiled from Arabic-Persian medical sources. The prescription treats a fistula-like lesion at the canthus and records a key ingredient transcribed in Chinese as “Bola yi A’ermani” 博剌亦阿而马尼, here interpreted as bawraq Armānī. By examining this term, the paper explores how alkaline drugs were transmitted, renamed, and materially reinterpreted across Arabic, Ayurvedic, and Chinese medical traditions. In Arabic pharmacology, bawraq could denote borax, but it was also used more broadly for alkaline salts and mineral substances. From Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine onward, “Armenian borax” became a recognized category. However, this name should not be read simply as a mineralogical indication of provenance. Compared with better-attested premodern sources of borax in Tibet, northern India, and Persian saline regions, “Armenia” may have functioned as a geographical or qualitative label, or as a marker associated with circulation through Caucasian and northwestern Iranian trade networks. The Huihui Yaofang prescription further complicates this identification. The text describes the drug as an “alkali from the Armenian region,” a phrase that may refer either to a provenance label or to alkaline substances obtained from saline soil. It is mixed with ash water made from Western acorn tree and fig tree, together with the urine of a young boy, for external application. This suggests that the material identity of bawraq Armānī in this prescription should not be reduced to purified borax crystals. At the same time, the use of plant ash water resonates with Ayurvedic methods of preparing kṣāra through burning, lixiviation, filtration, and concentration of plant ash. Chinese materia medica also records shifting identities of mineral and plant-derived alkalis, especially in relation to lujian 卤碱 and shijian 石碱.
