The Bodhisattva's Body in a Pill: The Material and Spiritual History of a Buddhist Relic Tradition

The first historical study of the medicinal mani pill and its profound spiritual significance in Tibetan religion and culture The ma?i pill is one of the most popular relic traditions in Tibetan Buddhism. Treasured around the globe, ma?i pills are small edible pellets formed from mixing the powdered bodily remains of buddhas and bodhisattvas with ingredients used in Tibetan medicine and sanctified through a tantric liturgy. Ma?i pills are today predominantly produced by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, who consecrates and distributes hundreds of thousands annually, but the tradition of producing and consuming ma?i pills stretches back more than a millennium. Examining the broad cultural history of Buddhist tantra in Tibet through the lens of the ma?i pill, James Duncan Gentry illustrates how these pills have influenced Tibetan conceptions of the body, medicine, healing, collective identity, and shared past; how they have functioned as a point of interaction, contestation, and negotiation between different Buddhist sects and institutions; and how they have created and shaped social bonds and religious identity across Tibet and beyond to the present day.

• Publication date: 8 July 2026
• Page count: 402
• Dimensions: Height 164 mm; Width 242 mm; Thickness 31 mm
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9780813954646