Xīn kān Wángshì Mài jīng 新刊王氏脈經
A Newly-Printed Edition of Mister Wáng’s Classic of the Pulse by 王叔和 (Wáng Shūhé, late 3rd c., 晉) — original; collated by 林億 (Lín Yì) and the Sòng校正醫書局 team
About the work
The Mài jīng of Wáng Shūhé is the foundational systematic treatise on Chinese pulse diagnosis: ten juan, ninety-eight 篇, gathering the pulse-doctrines of the Sùwèn, the Língshū, the Nán jīng, Zhāng Jī’s ShānghánJīnguì, the lost works of Biǎn Què 扁鵲 and Huá Tuó 華陀 (= Huá Tuó), and the third-century clinical inheritance into a coherent diagnostic framework. The work introduces the classical twenty-four pulse-types (浮、沉、遲、數、滑、澀、虛、實 etc.) with paired forms (“they look alike but differ” — 弦緊浮芤, 沉伏, 緩遲) and lays out the inch-bar-cubit (寸關尺) three-position pulse-diagnosis at both wrists that has remained standard ever since. The transmitted form is the Sòng校正醫書局 collation by Lín Yì (序 of 1068, signed 臣林億等類次, retained at the head of the SBCK base print), and the SBCK photographic facsimile is from the Yuán print of that collation under the title Xīn kān — “Newly Printed” — Wángshì Mài jīng.
Abstract
The composition window is set at 280–300 — the late Western Jìn period during which Wáng Shūhé held office as Imperial Physician (Tàiyī lìng 太醫令). Wáng’s preface (preserved at the head of KR3e0009_000.txt, signed 晉太醫令王叔和撰) lays out the rationale: the pulse-types are subtle, easily confused (the inferred similarities chain — “xián and jǐn; fú and kōu — look alike but differ” — runs through the preface verbatim), and the older medical writers transmitted them in cryptic style; he therefore “compiles, from Qí Bó 岐伯 down through Huá Tuó, the essentials of the jīng and lùn, into ten juan, with the root-causes of the hundred diseases each separately set out.” The work was already current in the Liù Cháo (cited by Tao Hongjing 陶弘景 and the Sùwèn / Língshū commentaries of LiùCháo / Suí date), and is one of the “foundational classics” (本經) of the Sòng校正醫書局 medical canon. Lín Yì’s collation provides the standard Sòng recension on which all later editions depend.
The Mài jīng differs from its predecessors in two structural ways: (a) it organizes pulse-types systematically by paired contrast rather than scattered through symptom-discussion, providing the diagnostic vocabulary that SòngJīnYuán medicine inherited; (b) it correlates pulse to zàngfǔ function, channel-pathway, and prognostic outcome at the three-position three-wrist level, anchoring pulse diagnosis as a freestanding examination procedure independent of the Shānghán’s symptom-pattern logic. The traditional triad — Sùwèn / Língshū (theoretical-cosmological), Nán jīng (textual-philological), Mài jīng (diagnostic-clinical) — completes the foundational pre-Táng medical canon.
Translations and research
- Yang Shou-zhong, The Pulse Classic: A Translation of the Mai Jing, Boulder: Blue Poppy Press, 1997. The standard English translation, complete and clinically oriented.
- Catherine Despeux, “Le pouls dans la médecine chinoise: histoire, théories, pratiques,” in Le souffle dans la médecine chinoise (ed. Despeux), Paris: École Pratique des Hautes Études, 1985. Foundational study of the Mài jīng tradition.
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Mài jīng jiào zhù 脈經校註, Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1991. Standard modern critical edition.
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群, “Wáng Shū-hé yǔ Mài jīng” 王叔和與《脈經》, in his Yīxué yǔ chuántǒng wénhuà 醫學與傳統文化, Tianjin: Bǎihuā Wényì, 2002. Standard biographical-philological treatment.
- Furth, Charlotte. A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. On the Mài jīng’s gendered pulse-doctrine and its Sòng-Míng reception.
Other points of interest
The Mài jīng is the principal early medical work where the systematic cùnguānchǐ 寸關尺 wrist-pulse division is fully developed; the Sùwèn and Língshū preserve only fragmentary anticipations. The work’s reception in Japan (the Sō-mon / Soshi tradition) and Korea was decisive for the East-Asian standardization of pulse diagnosis.
The Sòng校正醫書局 Mài jīng is the textual ancestor of the more elaborate YuánMíng pulse manuals — most directly the Pínhú màixué 瀕湖脈學 of Lǐ Shízhēn 李時珍 (1564) — and the clinical pulse-doctrine of the entire post-Sòng medical tradition.