BELLINGHAM – The National Endowment for
the Humanities (NEH) recently awarded a $40,000 fellowship to Western
Washington University adjunct Professor Paul Buell, who is documenting
the medicine of the Mongol Era in China. The WWU is the home of the American Centre for Mongolian studies and has one of the largest collection of Mongolian books in its library.
The fellowship allows Buell to
complete a translation of the “Huihui Yaofang,” a general encyclopedia
of Islamic Medicine, believed to have been written for the Mongol
rulers of China.
All or part of the text was copied
during the early Ming Dynasty, said Buell, who teaches classes on the
Mongols through the Independent Learning program.
“The aim of the project will be to
produce a readable and consistent but still entirely accurate
translation,” Buell said. “This will serve as the basis of a
collaborative venture between Sinologists, Central Asianists, Arabists,
Persianists and historians of medicine to study the (text) from all
sides and in all its aspects.”
Buell has been a specialist in the
Mongol era in China for nearly four decades and is familiar with the
colloquial and other technical Chinese documents of the period. His
previous experience includes leading a team that translated and
interpreted another major Islamic-influenced text of the period, the
“Yinshang zhengyao,” a Mongolian imperial dietary manual for China.
NEH grants enrich classroom learning,
create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas to life through public
television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions and programs in
libraries and other community places.
“The humanities convey the story of
civilization, and today's NEH grant recipients are deeply engaged in
advancing that story through new scholarly research and taking
important strides to preserve the material record of our history and
culture,” said NEH Chairman Bruce Cole.
The awards are highly competitive and
involve a rigorous review and evaluation process leading to the
selection of the highest quality projects in humanities research,
education, preservation and public programs.
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