Jīnguì yàoluè lùnzhù 金匱要略論註
The Golden-Coffer Essential Discourse, with Commentary by 張機 (Zhāng Jī, zì Zhòngjǐng, fl. 196–220, 漢) — original; 徐彬 (Xú Bīn, zì Zhōngkě, 清, of Jiāxīng) — commentator (1671)
About the work
The Jīnguì yàoluè, the Hàn-period clinical canon on non-cold-damage internal disease (雜病) and women’s medicine, was preserved through the late Northern Sòng discovery by Wáng Zhū 王洙 of a “Jīnguì yùhán yàoluè” 金匱玉函要略 manuscript among the Imperial Library worm-eaten leaves; from that discovery the lower two-thirds (treating zábìng and women’s medicine, with prescriptions formerly bound separately) became the received Jīnguì yàoluè. The present recension is Xú Bīn’s twenty-four-juan commentarial edition, completed under the Kāngxī era in 1671 (康熙辛亥), in which the Jīnguì base text is presented with continuous commentary by Xú, a disciple of Yú Chāng 喻昌 of Jiāngxī. The SKQS editors selected this recension over the older Sòng校正醫書局 print precisely because Xú’s commentary preserves a teacher-line back to Yú Chāng’s clinical school.
Tiyao
Jīnguì yàoluè lùnzhù, twenty-four juan, by Zhāng Jī of the Hàn, with notes by Xú Bīn of our Imperial dynasty.
Jī, zì Zhòngjǐng, was a man of Nányáng. He was once recommended as Filial-and-Incorrupt (孝廉), and in the Jiàn’ān period (196–220) he held office up to the Grand Protectorship of Chángshā. The book is also called Jīnguì yùhán jīng 金匱玉函經, and was edited by Wáng Shūhé 王叔和 of Gāopíng 高平 in the Jìn. Chén Zhènsūn’s 陳振孫 Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 says: “This book was obtained by Wáng Zhū from worm-eaten manuscripts in the Library and Court (館閣 蠹簡), called Jīnguì yùhán yàoluè. The upper juan discussed cold damage; the middle juan discussed miscellaneous diseases; the lower juan recorded the prescriptions and treatments of women’s diseases. He recorded and transmitted it. The present book, with each prescription placed beneath its symptom-pattern for easy clinical reference, took only the part from miscellaneous diseases on, ending at the chapter on dietary prohibitions, in twenty-five 篇 with two hundred sixty-two prescriptions, and retained the old name.” This means that Wáng Shūhé’s original edition was in three juan; Zhū copied and preserved the latter two; later editors then took the prescription juan and distributed each prescription under its corresponding symptom-pattern within the twenty-five 篇. So the form is no longer Wáng Shūhé’s. Yet from the Sòng on, physicians have honoured it as a standard work, ranking it with the Sùwèn and the Nán jīng, since even partial understanding of any of these can revive the dying. It is therefore a true heir of the QíHuáng line and the legitimate descent from Hé Biǎn 和扁 [the Hàn physicians Hé and Biǎn Què].
The Shānghán zúbìng lùn 傷寒卒病論 [recte 傷寒雜病論 — typographical slip in the SKQS print, retained here] composed by Jī, from the Sòng [Chéng] Wúyǐ 成無己 onward, has had its commentators contend with one another for the principal name and emend each other’s texts in disorderly fashion — much as the Sòng Confucians did with their disquisitions on transposed bamboo-strips — so that the original threads of Zhāng’s work have long been confused and are difficult to recover. This Jīnguì edition alone, with its prescriptions distributed under symptom-patterns, has not yet lost the original meaning, and is for this reason particularly precious.
The Hàn-dynasty surviving texts are spare and archaic in phrasing, and there has been no commentary from antiquity, so physicians in our day are not easily able to read them. Xú Bīn’s commentary was completed in Kāngxī xīnhài (1671); the explanation is still relatively clear, and so we record it here for the convenience of medical instruction.
Xú, zì Zhōngkě, was a man of Jiāxīng, a disciple of Yú Chāng of Jiāngxī. His learning therefore has a clear teacher-line.
(Respectfully verified, 12th month of Qiánlóng 46 [1781]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
The composition window is set at 1671, the year of Xú Bīn’s commentary, since the SKQS edition is the Xú Bīn recension, not the older Sòng校正醫書局 Jīnguì yàoluè (which is preserved separately as KR3e0008 and elsewhere). The Hàn-period base text of the Jīnguì is by tradition part of Zhāng Jī’s Shānghán zábìng lùn 傷寒雜病論 (the comprehensive clinical compendium of which the Shānghán lùn preserves the upper third); the lower two-thirds, after passing through Wáng Shūhé’s Jìn-period editorial work, was then lost and rediscovered by Wáng Zhū in the Northern Sòng (Imperial Library, “worm-eaten leaves”). Lín Yì’s bureau collated Wáng Zhū’s discovery and produced the standard form ca. 1066. Xú Bīn’s 1671 commentarial recension takes the Sòng校正醫書局 base text and provides a continuous explanatory commentary, expanding the work to twenty-four juan from the original three. The SKQS editors note that Wáng Zhū’s three-juan recovery was already not Wáng Shūhé’s three-juan edition, and that the prescription-distribution under symptom-patterns is later editorial work — neither Hàn nor Jìn but Sòng or post-Sòng.
The Jīnguì’s standing in the medical canon is co-equal with the Shānghán lùn. The Sòng校正醫書局 doctrine of Zhāng Jī as the Sage of Medicine (醫聖) became dominant in the SòngJīnYuán medical revolution and has remained so. The Jīnguì’s twenty-five 篇 cover internal disease (痙、濕、暍、百合、狐惑、陰陽毒、瘧、中風歷節、血痺虛勞、肺痿肺癰咳嗽上氣、奔豚、胸痺心痛短氣、腹滿寒疝宿食、五臟風寒積聚、痰飲、消渴小便不利淋、水氣、黃疸、驚悸吐衂下血胸滿瘀血、嘔吐噦下利、瘡癰腸癰浸淫、跌蹶手指臂腫、 婦人妊娠、婦人產後、婦人雜病), with a final chapter on dietary regulation and prohibitions.
Translations and research
- Sabine Wilms, Humming with Elephants: Discovering the Logic of the Universe in the Huangdi Neijing Suwen, Whitefish, MT: Happy Goat Productions, 2018, with companion translations of the Jīnguì by Wilms herself: Jin Gui Yao Lue: Essential Prescriptions of the Golden Cabinet — Gynecology Chapters, Whitefish: Happy Goat, 2022 (the women’s-medicine sections only).
- Otsuka Yasuo (大塚 敬節), Kinki yōryaku kōgi 金匱要略講義, Tōkyō: Sōgensha, 1955; rev. 1971. Standard Japanese clinical commentary, drawing on the Yú Chāng – Xú Bīn line.
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群, “Zhāng Zhòngjǐng” 張仲景, in his Yīxué yǔ chuántǒng wénhuà 醫學與傳統文化, Tianjin: Bǎihuā Wényì, 2002. On the historicity of Zhāng Jī.
- Lǐ Jīnyōng 李今庸, Jīnguì yàoluè jiàngǎo 金匱要略講稿, Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 2008. Standard contemporary mainland scholarly commentary.
- Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200, London: Routledge, 2009. On the Sòng校正醫書局’s role in canonizing the Shānghán-Jīnguì line as the clinical canon.
Other points of interest
The tíyào preserves a typographical slip — Shānghán zú bìng lùn 傷寒卒病論 for Shānghán zá bìng lùn 傷寒雜病論 — flagged here for the textual record. The character 卒 (“suddenly”) is sometimes substituted for 雜 (“miscellaneous”) in SòngYuán bibliographic listings, and the SKQS editors have followed that practice. The reference is unambiguously to the Shānghán zábìng lùn, the umbrella work of which both Shānghán lùn and Jīnguì yàoluè are surviving parts.
The Sòng校正醫書局 base text behind Xú’s commentary is preserved in this same series as KR3e0008 (Jīnguì yùhán jīng 金匱玉函經) and KR3e0009 (Jīnguì yàoluè 金匱要略). The SKQS editors’ choice of Xú Bīn’s commentary as the canonical recension is editorial preference for clarity of exposition over textual primacy.