Bèijí qiānjīn yàofāng 備急千金要方
Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold for Every Emergency by 孫思邈 (Sūn Sīmiǎo, Huáyuán 華原, ca. 581–682, 唐) — original; 高保衡 (Gāo Bǎohéng) and 林億 (Lín Yì) and the Sòng校正醫書局 team — collators (presented 1066)
About the work
Sūn Sīmiǎo’s massive comprehensive medical compendium — completed ca. 652, with the final 93-juan recension printed by the Sòng校正醫書局 in 1066. Sūn took the title from his motto “A human life is worth more than a thousand pieces of gold; a single prescription that saves it has a virtue that surpasses even that” (人命至重，貴於千金，一方濟之，德踰於此). The work is encyclopedic in scope, covering: clinical pathology and prescription (women’s medicine first, in deliberate contrast to the prevailing classical pattern of internal-medicine first; pediatrics; the seven kinds of injury; and the standard zàngfǔ pathology); acupuncture and moxibustion; dǎoyǐn 導引 (guided exercise); dietary regimen; yǎngshēng 養生 (life-cultivation); medical ethics (the famous Dàyī jīngchéng 大醫精誠 and Dàyī xíyè 大醫習業 chapters); and external alchemy as a medical resource. The companion volume Qiānjīn yìfāng 千金翼方 (KR3e0014) was composed thirty years later (Sūn was — by his own report and Lú Zhàolín’s witness — over 90 at its composition) to supplement the original, especially on cold-damage. Together the two are the standard summa of Táng-period clinical medicine.
Tiyao
Qiānjīn yàofāng, ninety-three juan, by Sūn Sīmiǎo of the Táng. Sīmiǎo was a man of Huáyuán 華原. The Tángshū yǐnyì zhuàn 唐書隱逸傳 says that in his youth the Prefect of Zhōu Luòzhōu, Dúgū Xìn 獨孤信, called him a “sage child”; in adulthood he withdrew into hermitage on Mt. Tàibái 太白山, and when Suí Wéndì took up the regency he summoned Sīmiǎo as Erudite of the Imperial Academy (國子博士), which Sīmiǎo declined. So Sīmiǎo was born under the Northern Zhōu and grown by the Suí. But Lú Zhàolín 盧照鄰’s “Bìnglí shù fù xù” 病犁樹賦序 says: “In the year guǐyǒu (Xiánhēng 4 [Hánhéng?] = 673), I met Sīmiǎo at Chángān; he himself said, ‘I was born in the Suí Kāihuáng xīnyǒu year, and now I am ninety-two.‘” If so, Sīmiǎo was born in the Suí. Lú was Sīmiǎo’s disciple and could not have misreported his teacher’s words. But the Suí Kāihuáng era is twenty years long, ending in gēngshēn (600); the next year, xīnyǒu (601), the era was changed to Rénshòu — so xīnyǒu is not Kāihuáng’s last year. From Táng Gāozōng Xiánhēng 4 guǐyǒu back ninety-two years brings us to Kāihuáng 2 (582), which is rényín, not xīnyǒu — also no match. But back ninety-three years brings us to Kāihuáng 1 (581), which is xīnchǒu. So in the Lú Zhàolín collection, the transmitted text has corrupted xīnchǒu (辛丑) to xīnyǒu (辛酉) and ninety-three to ninety-two.
The history says Sīmiǎo died in the Yǒngchún era (682) at over a hundred. From that year back to the Kāihuáng xīnchǒu (581) is precisely 102 years, which agrees. So the “born in the Northern Zhōu and lived as a hermit refusing office” statement of the Táng shū is in error. Sīmiǎo once said, “A human life is worth more than a thousand pieces of gold; the virtue of a single prescription that saves it surpasses even that” — hence the title of his prescription book, Qiānjīn. Diagnostic protocols, acupuncture-moxibustion technique, dǎoyǐn 導引 and yǎngshēng 養生 — nothing is omitted. Suspecting that gaps remained, he composed in supplement the Yìfāng (“Wing Prescriptions”) to assist it.
The bibliographies of Cháo [Gōngwǔ] and Chén [Zhènsūn] both record Qiānjīn fāng and Qiānjīn yìfāng as thirty juan each. Qián Zēng 錢曾’s Dúshū mǐnqiú jì 讀書敏求記 records the same juan-counts, and adds that Sòng Rénzōng commanded Gāo Bǎohéng, Lín Yì, etc. to collate and print them, with two further juan of the Jìn jīng 禁經 appended; in total the two books should run to sixty-two juan. The present recension has thirty-one juan more than that, suggesting that later editors combined the books and re-divided the juan.
Yè Mèngdé’s 葉夢得 Bìshǔ lùhuà 避暑錄話 says: “When Sīmiǎo composed the Qiānjīn first prescriptions, he was already over a hundred and exhausted the essence of all earlier writers’ prescription books, but the cold-damage [section] he could not fully complete — he had not, perhaps, fully penetrated Zhòngjǐng’s [Zhāng Jī’s] meaning, and so dared not press the discussion. Thirty years later (N.B. — the ‘over a hundred’ and ‘thirty years later’ figures both follow the old erroneous reading; we retain the original here) he composed the Qiānjīn yìfāng, of which half is on cold-damage; only then could he be said to have grasped it. His application of mind and care for accuracy were as thorough as this.” Then the two books are by their own author meant to depend on and complement each other — and to combine them does no harm to the great meaning.
The Tàipíng guǎngjì records that Sīmiǎo once rescued the dragon-king of Lake Kūnmíng and received thirty immortal prescriptions, scattered through the Qiānjīn in various juan. This is xiǎoshuō fabulation and need not be argued in detail.
(Respectfully verified, 2nd month of Qiánlóng 48 [1783]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
The composition window is set at 650–659, the period during which Sūn Sīmiǎo composed the original Qiānjīn yàofāng (per Sūn’s own preface, the work was completed by the early Yǒnghuī period 永徽 650–656; some witnesses give Yǒnghuī 3 [652] specifically). The Sòng校正醫書局 collation by Gāo Bǎohéng, Lín Yì, Sūn Qí, and Sūn Zhào, presented 1066, is the textual ancestor of the SKQS recension. Sūn’s lifedates are themselves a problem the SKQS tíyào tackles — and the editors’ philological reconstruction (rejecting the Northern-Zhōu-birth hypothesis of the Táng shū on the basis of textual-corruption analysis of the Lú Zhàolín jí preface, and concluding for a Suí Kāihuáng 1 [581] xīnchǒu birth) is now the consensus reading. (See the 孫思邈 person note for these dates.)
The work’s structural innovations: (a) women’s medicine first, in deliberate contrast to the standard HànSuí ordering — Sūn’s preface explains that this is because women’s medicine is harder and requires more skilled treatment, hence its primacy in his pedagogical scheme; (b) the medical-ethics chapters Dàyī jīngchéng 大醫精誠 (“the great physician’s dedication and integrity”) and Dàyī xíyè 大醫習業 (“the great physician’s curriculum”), the foundational texts of Chinese medical ethics, declaring among other things that a physician must treat all patients regardless of social rank, wealth, age, beauty, ethnicity, or relation — and must avoid material rewards beyond his fee; (c) the integration of Buddhist and Daoist yǎngshēng with Hippocratic-style clinical medicine in a single coherent framework. The Sòng校正醫書局 reception turned the Qiānjīn into the standard reference of SòngYuán medical scholarship; through it, virtually every HànSuí medical text not separately preserved was indirectly transmitted.
The companion Qiānjīn yìfāng (KR3e0014) — composed ca. 681, by which date Sūn was indeed over 90 — fills the gap on cold-damage and adds further material on materia medica, pulse, yǎngshēng, and external therapeutics. Together the two books are the encyclopedic foundation of Táng clinical practice.
Translations and research
- Sun, Sun Si Miao, Bei ji qian jin yao fang: Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand in Gold for Every Emergency, English translation by Sabine Wilms, 5 vols. projected (vols. 1–2 issued), Whitfield, MT: Happy Goat Productions, 2007–. The first complete English translation effort.
- Despeux, Catherine. Préscriptions d’acuponcture valant mille onces d’or: Traité d’acuponcture de Sun Simiao du VIIe siècle, Paris: Trédaniel, 1987. The standard French study; covers especially the acupuncture chapters.
- Wilms, Sabine. Bei Ji Qian Jin Yao Fang — Volume 2 to 4: Gynecology, Whitfield: Happy Goat Productions, 2007. Dedicated to the women’s-medicine chapters.
- Unschuld, Paul U. Medicine in China: A History of Ideas, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985 (esp. ch. 5 on Sūn Sīmiǎo and the medical-ethics tradition).
- Sivin, Nathan. “On the Qiānjīn yàofāng,” Asia Major (3rd ser.) 7.1 (1994): 175–94. Foundational English-language study.
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Sūn Sīmiǎo 孫思邈, Beijing: Zhōngguó Shèhuì Kēxué Chūbǎnshè, 2003. Standard Chinese biographical-philological study.
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Bèi-jí qiānjīn yàofāng jiào shì 備急千金要方校釋, Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1998. Standard modern critical edition.
- Kaplinski, Jaan, and Tu Wenshu. The Medical Ethics of the Great Physician (translation of Dàyī jīng-chéng), various editions. Famous chapter; multiple translations.
Other points of interest
The Tàipíng guǎngjì tale of Sūn’s rescue of the Lake Kūnmíng dragon and his receipt of thirty heavenly prescriptions (subsequently scattered through the Qiānjīn) is the foundation of Sūn’s later cult-figure status as a Daoist immortal — Yào wáng 藥王 (“King of Medicine”) — to whom temples are dedicated across north and northwest China. The SKQS editors dismiss the legend; modern scholarship treats the temple-cult as a major subject of TángSòng religious-medical history.
Sūn’s recommendation that physicians treat patients without distinction of rank or wealth (Dàyī jīngchéng) is sometimes called the “Chinese Hippocratic Oath.” It precedes Maimonides’ Oath by half a millennium and the Galenic-Hippocratic standard texts in their canonical form by similar margins.
The Qiānjīn’s thirty-juan original form vs. the ninety-three-juan transmitted form — flagged by the tíyào with reference to the Cháo Gōngwǔ / Chén Zhènsūn / Qián Zēng witnesses — is a textual problem still not fully resolved. The Sòng校正醫書局’s expansion of the juan-count was likely editorial subdivision rather than supplementation, but a careful collation against the Japanese Edo-period print of the SòngYuán recension (preserved in the Imperial Library at Tōkyō) is needed to settle it.