Tibetan surgeons could conduct surgical operations as complicated as craniotomy in the eighth century, 1,000 years earlier than Western medicine, according to a renowned Tibetan medicine dictionary.

The book, called Four Volumes of Medicine Dictionary, was codified in the eighth century, and recorded 360 bones, the meridian of human body and operational methods of surgical instruments at that time.

"Compared with its brilliant religious history, Tibet's natural science is relatively lagging, only except the medicine science," said Goinqog Wangdu, professor with the medicine school of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Tibetan surgeons' deep understanding of human body derives from a popular funeral custom prevailing in the region: the celestial burial.

To Tibetan people, death is just one of the phases among life samsaras. If a person's body disintegrates soon after death, he or she will have more chances to be reincarnated. So most Tibetans choose to have a celestial burial when they die, and the dignitaries in charge of the burial are responsible for dissecting corpses to feed birds.

However, the ritual, which prospered in the seventh century in Tibetan history, was lost after the Tubo Dynasty collapsed. The Tibetan medicine remained unnoticed until the seventeenth century in the fifth Dalai Lama's reign.

According to descriptions recorded in the Four Volumes of Medicine Dictionary, the Dalai Lama's Surgeon Damo Losang Aoizhag had remade about 100 surgical instruments, which are kept in the museum of Tibetan history.

"The fifth Dala Lama's cataract was said to be cured by Damo Losang Aoizhag using these instruments," Goinqog Wangdu said.

(Xinhua News Agency July 26, 2004)