Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn 黃帝內經素問
The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic — Basic Questions by 王冰 (Wáng Bīng, fl. 762, 唐) — second-stage compiler and commentator; 林億 (Lín Yì, fl. 1057–1067, 宋) — head of the imperial 校正醫書局 collation team
About the work
The Sùwèn 素問 is the foundational classic of Chinese medicine, a dialogic exposition of yīnyáng physiology, pathology, diagnostics, acupuncture, and cosmological correspondence cast as conversations between the Yellow Emperor (Huángdì 黃帝) and his physicians (Qí Bó 岐伯, Léi Gōng 雷公, and others). The received recension in twenty-four juan / eighty-one 篇 is the result of two great editorial interventions: Wáng Bīng’s restoration and rearrangement of 762 — which both supplied the so-called “seven great treatises” (七篇大論, j. 19–22) on cosmological cycles and converted the eight-juan transmitted text of Quán Yuánqǐ 全元起 (Suí) into eighty-one chapters with new commentary — and the Northern Sòng校正醫書局 (Bureau for Editing Medical Books) revision under Lín Yì, Sūn Qí 孫奇, Gāo Bǎohéng 高保衡 et al. (compiled 1057–1067, presented 1069) that produced the title Chóng guǎng bǔ zhù Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn 重廣補註黃帝內經素問. The SKQS prints the Lín Yì recension; this is the standard medical text taught and cited from the Sòng onward.
Tiyao
[Sub-classification: 子部十三 醫家類一. Edition: 內府藏本.] — drawn from the Kyoto Zinbun digital Sìkù tíyào (entry 0208301), since the Kanripo digitization of this title is the SBCK rather than the WYG, and no 提要 is in the local source.
Annotated by Wáng Bīng of the Táng. The Hàn shū yìwén zhì records the Huángdì nèijīng in eighteen 篇 with no mention of the title Sùwèn. The Later Hàn Shānghán lùn 傷寒論 of Zhāng Jī 張機 quotes the work, and there the name Sùwèn appears for the first time. Huángfǔ Mì 皇甫謐’s preface to the Jiǎyǐ jīng 甲乙經 (Jìn) speaks of a Zhēn jīng 鍼經 in nine juan and a Sùwèn in nine juan, both being parts of the Nèijīng; the sum agrees with the eighteen-篇 figure of the Hàn zhì. Hence the title Sùwèn arose between Hàn and Jìn, which is why the Suí shū jīngjí zhì is the first standard history bibliography to list it.
But the Suí zhì records only eight juan, since the seventh had already been lost by the time Quán Yuánqǐ wrote his commentary. Wáng Bīng, a man of the Bǎoyìng 寶應 reign-period (762–763), claimed to have obtained an old hidden copy and restored that juan. The Sòng collators Lín Yì and his colleagues observed that from the “Tiānyuán jì dà lùn” 天元紀大論 onward (j. 19), the chapters are unusually long and stylistically discontinuous with the rest of the Sùwèn; they suspected these are in fact the so-called “Yīnyáng dà lùn” 陰陽大論 mentioned in Zhāng Jī’s preface to the Shānghán lùn, and that Wáng Bīng inserted them to fill the lost juan. This is plausible. As for the “Cì fǎ lùn” 刺法論 and “Běn bìng lùn” 本病論, even Wáng’s recension lacked them, and they could not be restored.
Wáng Bīng substantially rearranged the chapter order, but each chapter is annotated with its position-number in Quán Yuánqǐ’s recension, so the older sequence can still be recovered. His commentary penetrates obscurities and is rich in original observations. On the dictum, “If under great heat one cools markedly and is still not cooled, this is absence of water; if under great cold one warms markedly and is still not warmed, this is absence of fire — for absence of fire one need not eliminate water but should rather replenish the source of fire to dispel the yīn shadow; for absence of water one need not eliminate fire but should rather strengthen the master of water to subdue the yáng glare” — Wáng Bīng’s reading opened the way for the Míng physicians, beginning with Xuē Jǐ 薛己, to develop the doctrine of probing the root in the Gate of Life (命門). He was indeed deeply versed in medical theory.
Wáng Bīng’s name is recorded in the Xīn Tángshū zǎixiàng shìxì biǎo 新唐書宰相世系表, which calls him an Adjutant of the Jīngzhào Prefecture (京兆府參軍). Lín Yì and his collaborators, citing a Rénwù zhì 人物志, called him Court Equerry (太僕令). It is uncertain which is correct, but in the medical tradition he is universally referred to as “Wáng Tàipú” 王太僕, following Lín Yì’s practice. Cháo Gōngwǔ’s 晁公武 Dúshū zhì 讀書志 writes the name 王砯 Wáng Pīng, and Dù Fǔ’s collected works contain a poem “Presented to my Senior Cousin Wáng Pìng” (贈重表姪王砅) — also a match. But the Táng and Sòng standard-history bibliographies all write 冰 Bīng, and the surviving Sòng print-blocks likewise have 冰. Cháo Gōngwǔ may have been led astray by Dù Fǔ’s poem.
Abstract
The Sùwèn exists in three transmissional layers. (1) A pre-Hàn / Western Hàn nucleus of medical dialogues, attested in the bare title Huángdì nèijīng 黃帝內經 (18 篇) of the Hàn shū yìwén zhì. The discovery of the Mǎwángduī 馬王堆 (1973) and Zhāngjiāshān 張家山 (1983) silk and bamboo medical manuscripts has shown that medical dialogues with strong stylistic and topical affinities to the Sùwèn circulated already in the second century BCE, although none of those manuscripts is the Sùwèn itself. (2) A Liù Cháo / early-Táng received text in eight juan with the seventh missing, transmitted through Quán Yuánqǐ’s commentary (Liáng or early Suí). (3) The Wáng Bīng recension of 762, in twenty-four juan / eighty-one 篇, restoring a “seventh juan” widely suspected since Lín Yì of being borrowed from the Yīnyáng dà lùn 陰陽大論 (the so-called “seven great treatises”). The Sòng校正醫書局 collation under Lín Yì (presented to the throne in 1069) gave the work its current title Chóng guǎng bǔ zhù Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn and is the immediate ancestor of all later print editions, including the Yuán GǔLín 顧林 print on which the SBCK photographic facsimile (Kanripo digitization) is based. The catalog’s notBefore/notAfter are set to 762 to mark the composition window of the received recension as Wáng Bīng knew it; the Lín Yì collation is editorial revision rather than re-composition, so does not extend the window.
The SKQS tíyào endorses Lín Yì’s diagnosis of the seven great treatises as inserted material and stresses Wáng Bīng’s medical originality, particularly his commentary on the absence-of-fire / absence-of-water doctrine which became foundational for MíngQīng “Gate of Life” (命門) theory. The two missing chapters “Cì fǎ lùn” 刺法論 and “Běn bìng lùn” 本病論 circulating in some SòngYuán editions are post-Wáng-Bīng restorations and are usually printed as a separate appendix (the Yí piān 遺篇).
The Sùwèn is paired in the canon with the Língshū 靈樞 (KR3e0002), which preserves the more clinically and acupuncture-oriented half of the Nèijīng corpus. The Daoist Canon recension of the work is catalogued separately as KR5d0040 (Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn bǔ zhù shì wén 黃帝內經素問補註釋文).
Translations and research
- Paul U. Unschuld and Hermann Tessenow, Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: An Annotated Translation of Huang Di’s Inner Classic — Basic Questions, 2 vols., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. The standard scholarly English translation; supersedes Ilza Veith’s 1949 partial version. Companion volume Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text (Berkeley, 2003) treats the textual history.
- Paul U. Unschuld, Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: A Dictionary of the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen (with Hermann Tessenow), 2 vols., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Concordance and lexicon.
- Ilza Veith, The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1949 (chs. 1–34 only); rev. ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. The first Western translation; now superseded but historically influential.
- Catherine Despeux, “La culture lettrée au service d’un art du corps: les médecins lettrés (rúyī 儒醫) de la dynastie Song et leurs pratiques,” in Médecines, religions et sociétés (vol. ed. F. Obringer), Extrême-Orient — Extrême-Occident 24, 2002, 33–66. On the Sòng校正醫書局 context.
- Wáng Hóngtú 王洪圖 (chief ed.), Huángdì nèijīng yánjiū dàchéng 黃帝內經研究大成, 3 vols., Běijīng: Běijīng Chūbǎnshè, 1997. The standard mainland Chinese reference compendium.
- Yamada Keiji 山田慶兒, Kōtei naikei no shisō 黃帝內經の思想, in his Chūgoku igaku no kigen 中國醫學の起源, Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1999, 89–214. Foundational study of the textual history.
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Qí Huáng yī dào 岐黃醫道, Shěnyáng: Liáoníng Jiàoyù Chūbǎnshè, 1991. On the Nèijīng in the broader history of Chinese medicine.
Other points of interest
The Sùwèn in the SKQS tíyào is referred to simply as 黃帝素問 in 24 juan; the longer title Chóng guǎng bǔ zhù Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn (used in the Kanripo catalog meta) reflects the Sòng校正醫書局 imprint. The Kanripo digitization KR3e0001 is from the Míng Jiājìng 嘉靖 庚戌 (1550) Gù Cóngdé 顧從德 reprint of the Sòng print, transmitted via the SBCK photographic facsimile — the postface by Gù Cóngdé is preserved at the end of KR3e0001_000.txt (j. 0). The catalog meta editions field lists only WYG, but the local source is in fact SBCK; the WYG 提要 is therefore taken from Kyoto Zinbun rather than from _000.txt.
The classic textual problem — whether the seven great treatises (j. 19–22) are an authentic part of the Sùwèn — remains unresolved. The Lín-Yì-and-Wáng-Bīng “Yīnyáng dà lùn insertion” hypothesis is widely accepted but cannot be conclusively demonstrated, and the cosmological wǔyùn liùqì 五運六氣 doctrines elaborated in those chapters became the core of the SòngJīnYuán medical revolution (Liú Wánsù 劉完素, Zhāng Yuánsù 張元素, Lǐ Gǎo 李杲, Zhū Zhènhēng 朱震亨), so the question is far from merely philological.