Comparative analysis of data on medicinal plant material

from various Tibetan texts
T.A.ASEYEVA,D.B.DASHIYEV,etc.

Department of Tibetan Medicine, Institute of General and Experimental Biology, Russia
We have some Tibetan texts which are very important for identification of medicinal plant raw material, like Vaidurya sngon po by Sans rgyas tgya mtsho(18th c), Shel phreng by bsTan' dzin phun thshong (18th c),and mDes mtshar mig rgyan by'Jam dpal rdo rje (late 18th-early 19 thcc).
The appearcne of this group of illustrative and textual khrungs-' dpes in the 17th-18th cc was related with the necessity to preserve thoroughly tested information on medicinal means and to avoid errors while i-detifying raw material. Nowadays comparative analysis of information on meddicinal means from various texts is of relevance in connection with great interest to Tibetan medicine in the West and needs of search of reliable substitutes of Tibetan raw material from other countries' floras.

We suggest to consider this problem on the case study of substitution of raw material under the name ofru-rta.

According to the contemporary materia medica of Tibet ru-rta is a root of Saussurea lappa (Decne.) Sch.-Bip.(Pasang 1994;Dash).Along with this raw material, in Mongolia and Zabaikalye, roots of local plants of Phlojodicarpus and Echinops species were used.In the Vaidurya sngon po and the Atlas ofTibetan medicine, Costus speciosus(Koen.)Smith (Vaidurya, f.199b;Atlas, chart 25,drawing 38)is described as ru-rta, but the name of" round ru-rta" is mentioned while describing a plant under the Tibetan name of ' byar-bag(Vaidurya, f.203a; Atlas, chart25, drawing 92).
In the mDes mtshar mig rgyan by Mongolian physician' Jam dpal rdo rje (xylograph in Tibetan, 199),under the name ofru-rta is depicted a Saussurea costus root.A similar drawing was found in the khrungs-' dpe to the Shelphreng, where a lengthwise wrinkled root with a specific pattern at the break was depicted .In fact, the Saussurea costus root look like that, with a marked pointed pattern at the break.
Thus, substitution of Costus with Saussurea can be traced back to old days, though indications for these species of raw material differ. That is why it was important to test experimentally identity of their pharmaco-logical activity.
Substitutes of the ru-rta from the Buryat tradition - Phlojodicarpus sibiricus Steph. and Ph. villosus Turcs. are listed under the Pharmacopea of Russia. The preparation dimidine possessing cumarine dihy-drosamadine is prescribed as a vasodilative in vessels* spasm and microcirculation decline(intermittent claudi-cation, endarteritis obliterans), in atherosclerotic accompanied with chronic coronary deficien-cy. The use of roots of Phlojlodicarpus as substitutes for Costus is based on the above indications. Pharmaco-logical research of other substitutes of the ru-rta-decocted roots of Echinops latifolius Taursch and Saus-surea costus showed their spasmolytic and marked anti- exudative effects, so they can be used along with Cos-tus speciosus.
Thus, it is obvious that in similar cases of multiple substitution of plants with various indications accord-ing to Tibetan texts pharmacological research is critical for solution of the issue on legitimacy of substitution.