This is the fantastic story of Sun Simiao's 652 exercises labelled "Indian" and "Brahmanic Method"... Remember this before I begin: China's most famous doctor credited India, in writing, in his own book. 🙏🙏 Sun Simiao (581-682) is called the King of Medicine in China. His book, Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold (652 CE), is the most famous medical text of the Tang dynasty. In its chapter on staying healthy, he lists a set of 18 exercises. The heading he writes is: "Indian massage. This is a Brahmin method." Tianzhu was China's old name for India, and "Brahmin" then meant anything Indian, not a caste. The moves have names like drawing a five-stone bow, the tiger gaze, pushing away a mountain. He ends with a promise: even an old man doing these 3x a day will, after one month, shake off a 100 illnesses and run like a galloping horse. The label is certain, it is printed in the book. No Sanskrit original survives. But scholars make a fair point: China already had its own proud exercise tradition, centuries old, so calling a set "foreign" brought no prestige. Sun had no reason to invent the label. He most likely copied it from his source, an older text that most scholars connect to an Indian. Ayurvedic ideas reached China along with Buddhism, and Sun was openly sympathetic to both. The 18 moves did not stop in China. They were copied into the Ishinpo (984), Japan's oldest surviving medical book, a national treasure. There they live on as "Baramon-ho", the Brahmin method, and a few Zen communities still practise them. Sources: Qianjin Yaofang, juan 27. D. Steavu, Journal of Yoga Studies (2023). M. Stanley-Baker in Salguero (ed.), Buddhism and Medicine, Columbia Univ. Press (2017). Ishinpo: National Diet Library. Photo 1: Real woodblock scan, juan 27. Highlight: the heading "天竺國按摩此是婆羅門法" (Indian massage, this is a Brahmin method). Photo 2: Next page, highlighted: the closing promise. "After one month, a 100 illnesses gone, runs like a galloping horse." Image Source: Beiji Qianjin Yaofang, juan 27, Massage Methods section, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Yellow highlight is mine