Zhēnjiǔ jiǎyǐ jīng 鍼灸甲乙經
The A-B Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion by 皇甫謐 (Huángfǔ Mì, zì Shì’ān, hào Xuányàn xiānshēng, 215–282, 晉) — original compiler; 高保衡 (Gāo Bǎohéng, fl. 1057–1067, 宋) and 林億 (Lín Yì, fl. 1057–1068, 宋) — Northern Sòng校正醫書局 collators
About the work
The Jiǎyǐ jīng is the first systematic acupuncture and moxibustion canon, the work that consolidated the channel-and-point teaching of the Huángdì nèijīng corpus into a usable clinical textbook. Compiled by Huángfǔ Mì of the Western Jìn during his confinement by the so-called “Gānlù wind disease” (256–260) and completed before his death in 282, it amalgamates three sources — the Sùwèn (KR3e0001), the Zhēn jīng (= Língshū in its pre-Wáng-Bīng form, here essentially KR3e0002), and the now-lost Míngtáng kǒngxué zhēn jiǔ zhì yào 明堂孔穴鍼灸治要 — into 118 chapters across twelve juan organized by topic (channels, points, pathology, diagnostics, therapeutics) rather than by source-text. The Northern Sòng校正醫書局 produced the standard collated edition ca. 1067 under 高保衡, 林億, 孫奇, and 孫兆; their interlinear notes citing Yáng Shàngshàn 楊上善’s Tàisù jīng 太素經, Sūn Sīmiǎo 孫思邈’s Qiānjīn fāng 千金方, 王冰’s Sùwèn commentary, and Wáng Wéidé’s 王惟德 Tóngrén tú 銅人圖 are post-Huángfǔ-Mì additions, not original to the work. Through the Jiǎyǐ jīng alone the Míngtáng kǒngxué — the great HànWèi acupuncture teaching of the points and their indications — is preserved.
Tiyao
Zhēnjiǔ jiǎyǐ jīng, twelve juan, by Huángfǔ Mì of the Jìn. Mì has a Gāo shì zhuàn 高士傳, recorded elsewhere. This compilation is wholly on the Way of acupuncture and moxibustion. The Suí shū jīngjí zhì lists the Huángdì jiǎyǐ jīng 黃帝甲乙經 in ten juan with an interlinear note “phonetic gloss in one juan; Liáng-period twelve juan; compiler’s name not recorded.” Examining this book, one finds at the head Huángfǔ Mì’s own preface, which states: “The Qīlüè yìwén zhì 七略藝文志 [recorded] the Huángdì nèijīng in eighteen juan; today we have a Zhēn jīng in nine juan and a Sùwèn in nine juan, two-times-nine making eighteen, which is the Nèijīng. There is also the Míngtáng kǒngxué zhēn jiǔ zhì yào, all of it material drawn from Huángdì and Qí Bó. The three works are of one origin but their text contains many duplications and not a few discrepancies. In the Gānlù period (256–260) I fell ill with wind, with the further affliction of bitter deafness, and a hundred days were needed for treatment. (N.B. — these last four characters are unclear in meaning; some text has likely dropped out. We retain the old reading and note our concern.) As all of it is shallow and easy material, I therefore compiled the three works, classifying their material by topic, deleting the floating phrases and removing the duplicates, eventually producing twelve juan.” (N.B. — the character “至” [eventually] is unclear and may also be corrupt.) So this book is a fusion compilation of older material. The Suí zhì therefore prefixed the title with 黃帝, but in striking out Mì’s name it gave the impression that Huángdì had composed it himself, which is a textual error. The Jiù Tángshū jīngjí zhì lists the Huángdì sānbù zhēn jīng 黃帝三部鍼經 in thirteen juan and is the first to record Mì’s name; but it has one juan more than the Liáng recension, perhaps including the phonetic gloss as a separate juan. The Xīn Tángshū yìwén zhì lists both the Huángdì jiǎyǐ jīng in twelve juan and Huángfǔ Mì’s Huángdì sānbù zhēn jīng in thirteen juan together, conflating the two earlier records and so committing a further error.
The book has 118 chapters in nominal arrangement: but the chapters “Twelve Channels and the Branch Vessels” (十二經脈絡脈支別篇), “Disease Patterns and Pulse Diagnosis” (疾形脈診篇), “Acupuncture and Moxibustion Prohibitions” (鍼灸禁忌篇), “The Five Viscera Transmitting Disease and Producing Cold and Heat” (五臟傳病發寒熱篇), “Yīn-Receiving Disease Producing Numbness” (陰受病發痹篇), and “Yáng-Receiving Disease Producing Wind” (陽受病發風篇) are each subdivided into upper and lower; and the chapters “Channels” (經脈篇) and “The Six Channels Receiving Disease and Producing Cold-Damage Heat-Disease” (六經受病發傷寒熱病篇) are each subdivided into upper, middle, and lower — making in fact 128 chapters. The interlinear notes within the lines often cite Yáng Shàngdá’s 楊上達 [recte Yáng Shàngshàn 楊上善] Tàisù jīng 太素經, Sūn Sīmiǎo’s Qiānjīn fāng 千金方, Wáng Bīng’s Sùwèn commentary, and Wáng Wéidé’s 王惟德 Tóngrén tú 銅人圖 to compare variant readings; all of those works post-date Mì, so they were added by the Sòng collators Gāo Bǎohéng, Sūn Qí, Lín Yì, and others — not Mì’s own.
Examining the Suí zhì, one finds a Míngtáng kǒngxué 明堂孔穴 in five juan, a Míngtáng kǒngxué tú 明堂孔穴圖 in three juan, and a second Míngtáng kǒngxué tú in three juan. The Táng zhì lists the Huángdì nèijīng míngtáng 黃帝內經明堂 in thirteen juan, Huángdì shí’èr jīngmài míngtáng wǔzàng tú 黃帝十二經脈明堂五臟圖 in one juan, Huángdì shí’èr jīng míngtáng yǎncè rén tú 黃帝十二經明堂偃側人圖 in twelve juan, and Huángdì míngtáng 黃帝明堂 in three juan; also Yáng Shàngshàn’s Huángdì nèijīng míngtáng lèichéng 黃帝內經明堂類成 in thirteen juan and Yáng Yuánsūn’s Huángdì míngtáng 黃帝明堂 in three juan. All of these are now lost; only this book has preserved their essentials. Further, the divisions are clear and orderly, and the chapters are easier to follow than those of the Nèijīng. To this day it circulates alongside the Nèijīng and neither can be set aside in favour of the other. There is good reason for this.
(Respectfully verified, 9th month of Qiánlóng 46 [1781]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
The Jiǎyǐ jīng’s composition is bracketed by Huángfǔ Mì’s preface (autobiographical reference to the Gānlù 甘露 illness, 256–260) and his death in 282; the catalog notBefore/notAfter are accordingly set at 256 / 282. Huángfǔ’s contribution is editorial and architectural: the three source-texts are absorbed and rearranged so that material on a given channel, point, or pathology is gathered in one place. This rearrangement was the indispensable step that made acupuncture systematically teachable, and the Jiǎyǐ jīng was the standard medical-school textbook of the imperial Tài yī shǔ 太醫署 from the Táng onward.
The current twelve-juan / 118-chapter (in fact 128, as the SKQS editors compute) form is post-Sòng. Pre-Sòng witnesses listed by the Suí and Táng bibliographies record the work in eight, ten, twelve, and thirteen juan; the variation reflects the inclusion or exclusion of the phonetic-gloss apparatus, and in the case of the Xīn Tángshū yìwén zhì a fictitious double-listing combining Suí and Táng reading-traditions. The Sòng校正醫書局 collation under Gāo Bǎohéng, Sūn Qí, Lín Yì, and Sūn Zhào, presented to the throne in 1069, is the basis for all later print editions; its interlinear citations of the Tàisù, the Qiānjīn, and the Tóngrén tú are the bureau’s own apparatus, not Huángfǔ Mì’s.
The Míngtáng kǒngxué zhēn jiǔ zhì yào, lost in independent transmission, survives only through this work. The Jiǎyǐ jīng is therefore the chief witness for the HànWèi acupuncture point-system and the indispensable companion to the Língshū in any reconstruction of pre-Táng acupuncture. Its sub-divisions of certain chapters into upper-and-lower or upper-middle-lower sections — YīnYáng disease division, channels, the six channels and cold-damage — reflect editorial expansions, presumably Sòng-period, to handle the practical clinical exposition.
Translations and research
- Yang Shou-zhong and Charles Chace, The Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion: Huang-fu Mi’s Jia Yi Jing, Boulder: Blue Poppy Press, 1994. The principal English-language translation; clinically oriented but with a serviceable critical apparatus.
- Catherine Despeux, Préscriptions d’acuponcture valant mille onces d’or: Traité d’acuponcture de Sun Simiao du VIIe siècle, Paris: Trédaniel, 1987. On the relation of the Jiǎyǐ tradition to the seventh-century Qiānjīn tradition.
- Élisabeth Hsu, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Discusses the Jiǎyǐ jīng in the broader context of medical teaching transmission.
- Huáng Lóngxiáng 黃龍祥, Zhōngguó zhēnjiǔ shǐ tújiàn 中國針灸史圖鑒, 2 vols., Qīngdǎo: Qīngdǎo Chūbǎnshè, 2003, and idem, Zhēnjiǔ jiǎyǐ jīng kǎo 鍼灸甲乙經考, Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 2008. The standard mainland Chinese textual studies.
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhēnjiǔ jiǎyǐ jīng jiào zhù 鍼灸甲乙經校注, Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1996. The standard modern critical edition.
Other points of interest
The SKQS tíyào makes one noteworthy textual flag: the four characters “百日方治” in Huángfǔ Mì’s preface — “a hundred days were needed for treatment” — are flagged by the editors as suspect (文義未明) and may reflect a textual lacuna in the prefatorial paragraph. Likewise the character “至” in “至為十二卷” is flagged. Both are retained in the SKQS edition with explicit àn 案 notes.
The tíyào misreads “Yáng Shàngshàn” 楊上善 as “Yáng Shàngdá” 楊上達 — an obvious typographical slip that the Kanripo digitization preserves; flagged here for the textual record. The Tàisù author is Yáng Shàngshàn, the early-Táng physician.