A joint task force of linguists and AI specialists has successfully decoded a series of charred 7th-century birch-bark fragments found in the Tarim Basin. The manuscripts, written in a variant of Khotanese Sanskrit, were processed using a new 'Contextual Neural Decipherment' model. The results, published in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, reveal detailed surgical protocols for treating glaucoma and cataracts using specialized silver needles.
The texts provide evidence of a highly organized medical exchange between the Sushruta tradition of India and the monastic hospitals of the Silk Road. Notably, the manuscript contains botanical recipes for anesthetic eye drops that include concentrations of alkaloids previously thought to be undiscovered by medical science until the 18th century.