The Social Life of Tsotel

Abstract

No other compound in Tibetan medical pharmacology seems to be as fascinating, controversial, and enigmatic astsotel(btso thal, lit. ‘cooked ash’), the processed mercury sulphide ash that provides the base material of many of the popular Tibetan ‘precious pills’ (rin chen ril bu). The compound contains—apart from numerous herbs and other ingredients—eight metals and eight rock components.Tsotelpractices, which can be traced back to the thirteenth century in Tibet, are considered the pinnacle of Tibetan pharmacology. The commercial value oftsotelgives it a strong economic and social life of its own. This paper analyses the social life oftsotelfrom an anthropological perspective and sketches key aspects oftsotel’s biography, which in one way or the other are linked to medical, political, and religious perceptions of mercury:tsotelevents with their political and institutional agendas; the value oftsotelas a medical, religious, and political commodity; safety and toxicity debates; andtsotel’s religious and political efficacy. I argue that the social life oftsotelis increasingly linked to perceptions of toxicity and safety because of its chief ingredient, mercury, being contested in a globalised arena of tightened international regulations as well as the recent attention given to heavy metal toxicity issues in Asian medicines. Also, several fundamental misconceptions of the substance of mercury itself, its processed form of mercury sulphide, and of the contamination of herbal ingredients with heavy metals will be highlighted. Examples are based on ethnographic fieldwork with Tibetan medical practitioners and pharmacologists in India and Nepal.

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