Wáng Hànlín jí zhù Huángdì bāshíyī Nánjīng 王翰林集註黃帝八十一難經
The Hanlin Scholar Wáng’s Collected Commentaries on the Yellow Emperor’s Eighty-One Disquisitions by 王九思 (Wáng Jiǔsī, fl. Yuán, 元) — compiler / collator
About the work
A Yuán-period anthology in five juan that gathers the principal pre-Yuán commentaries on the Nán jīng 難經 — Qín Yuèrén’s 秦越人 (legendary Biǎn Què 扁鵲) exposition of eighty-one points of difficulty in the Huángdì nèijīng — into a single textus-cum-commentary. The base text is the eighty-one 難 in their classical form, with five strata of interleaved commentary: Lǚ Guǎng 呂廣 (Three Kingdoms / Wú, the earliest known commentator), Yáng Xuáncāo 楊玄操 (Táng, who added explanatory glosses where Lǚ’s were missing and divided the eighty-one Nán into thirteen thematic groups), Dīng Dérún 丁德用 (Sòng), Yú Shù 虞庶 (Sòng), and Yáng Kāngdí 楊康迪 (Sòng). The work is the principal repository for the otherwise-lost early-medieval commentaries on the Nán jīng and is the predecessor of Huá Shòu’s 滑壽 Nánjīng běnyì 難經本義 (KR3e0004).
Abstract
The transmitted text begins with Yáng Xuáncāo’s preface (preserved in KR3e0003_000.txt), which gives the early-medieval account of the Nán jīng’s composition: that Qín Yuèrén of Bóhǎi 勃海 — known after his fame surpassed that of the legendary Biǎn Què of Huángdì’s day as “Biǎn Què”, and after his settlement in the state of Lú as “Lú yī” 盧醫 — extracted the essence of the Huángdì nèijīng’s eighteen juan into eighty-one chapters of difficulty (難) for transmission to later students; that Lǚ Guǎng (呂廣, Wú Imperial Physician Tài yī lìng 太醫令) was the first to write a commentary, but completed only about half before his work broke off in fragments; and that Yáng himself, having studied the Nán jīng under his teacher for ten years, undertook to rearrange and re-annotate it, dividing it into thirteen thematic 篇 while preserving the original eighty-one 首, supplying notes where Lǚ Guǎng was silent and supplementing where Lǚ’s notes were inadequate, and adding a separate phonetic-and-meaning gloss (音義). The thirteen 篇 are: 經脉診候, 經絡大數, 奇經八脈, 滎衛三焦, 藏府配像, 藏府度數, 虛實邪正, 藏府傳病, 藏府積聚, 五泄傷寒, 神聖工巧, 藏府井俞, 用鍼補瀉.
The transmitted form, however, is later than Yáng. To Lǚ Guǎng’s and Yáng Xuáncāo’s commentaries the Sòng compilers Dīng Dérún (active under Rénzōng), Yú Shù (active in the Jiāyòu period 嘉祐 1056–1063), and Yáng Kāngdí added further annotations; the Yuán editor Wáng Jiǔsī then collated all five strata under his own redaction and submitted the work under the title Wáng Hànlín jí zhù. The “Hànlín” 翰林 of the title is Wáng Jiǔsī’s office. The composition window for the received recension is therefore Yuán: the bracket is set at 1300–1400 to cover the period of likely Yuán-period activity for this Wáng Jiǔsī, who is otherwise unrecorded.
The work is recorded as five juan throughout its bibliographic history, beginning with the Sòng shǐ yìwén zhì 宋史藝文志 (entered there under Yáng Xuáncāo’s name as the Huángdì bāshíyī Nánjīng zhù 黃帝八十一難經注 in five juan) and the various Sòng-period medical bibliographies. Its omission from the SKQS is editorial preference — the editors found Huá Shòu’s Nánjīng běnyì a clearer base for the canon — not a doubt about the work’s authenticity. The text is the chief witness for the lost Lǚ Guǎng and Yáng Xuáncāo commentaries and is therefore essential to the history of the Nán jīng’s exegetical tradition.
Translations and research
- Paul U. Unschuld, Nan-Ching: The Classic of Difficult Issues — With Commentaries by Chinese and Japanese Authors from the Third through the Twentieth Century, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. The standard scholarly English translation of the Nán jīng with extensive commentary; Unschuld translates substantial passages from the Wáng Hànlín jí zhù commentary strata and treats the textual history.
- Catherine Despeux, Lao-tseu, Tch’an et médecine chinoise, Paris: Encre, 1996, ch. 3. Discusses the Nán jīng tradition.
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Yīxué yǔ chuántǒng wénhuà 醫學與傳統文化, Tianjin: Bǎihuā Wényì, 2002, ch. 4 (“Nán jīng shì yī bù zěnyàng de jīng” 《難經》是一部怎樣的經). On the Nán jīng’s bibliographic and textual history.
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōngguó chūtǔ gǔ yīshū kǎoshì yǔ yánjiū 中國出土古醫書考釋與研究, Shànghǎi: Zhōngyī Yàoxué Chūbǎnshè, 2015. Compares the received Nán jīng with second-century BCE manuscript medical material.
Other points of interest
The Wáng Hànlín jí zhù is the immediate ancestor of all Sòng-Yuán-period readings of the Nán jīng preserved in later compilations: Huá Shòu’s Nánjīng běnyì draws extensively on its commentary stack but reorganizes the material under the 滑壽 reading. Through it survive the only fragments we have of Lǚ Guǎng’s third-century commentary (the earliest Nán jīng commentary on record), and substantially complete versions of Yáng Xuáncāo’s Táng commentary and the three Northern Sòng strata.