Yínhǎi jīngwēi 銀海精微
The Subtle Essentials of the Silver Sea by 孫思邈 (Sūn Sīmiǎo, attributed) — pseudepigraphic; in fact a Sòng / Yuán anonymous compilation
About the work
A two-juan specialist treatise on eye-medicine attributed to Sūn Sīmiǎo by the work’s prefatorial conceit but in fact, on the philological evidence assembled by the SKQS editors, a Sòng-or-later anonymous Chinese ophthalmology compendium. The title alludes to the metaphor yínhǎi 銀海 (“silver sea”) for the eye — a Daoist-canonical body-correspondence figure that on the testimony of the Northern Sòng polymath Wáng Ānshí 王安石 (cited in the Yíngkuí lǜsuǐ 瀛奎律髓) was already current by the 11th century, but whose textual source nobody has been able to identify. Its pre-Wáng-Ānshí absence — combined with the work’s absence from the Táng and Sòng standard-history bibliographies and from Sūn Sīmiǎo’s Táng shū biography — is conclusive evidence that the work is not Sūn’s.
Tiyao
Yínhǎi jīngwēi, two juan, with the old attribution to Sūn Sīmiǎo of the Táng. Neither the Táng zhì nor the Sòng zhì records it; Sūn Sīmiǎo’s biography also makes no mention of such a work. The title “Silver Sea” is taken from the figure of the eye as a “silver sea”. Examining Sū Shì 蘇軾’s snow-poem — “frozen together with the Jade Towers, cold-rises with millet; light shimmering on the Silver Sea, dazzling-births of flowers” (凍合玉樓寒起粟，光搖銀海炫生花) — and the Yíngkuí lǜsuǐ’s citation of Wáng Ānshí’s gloss, “the Daoist books call the shoulders ‘jade towers’ and the eyes ‘silver seas’” — but to this day no one has been able to point out from which Daoist book Wáng Ānshí was citing. Therefore before Wáng Ānshí there is no such expression, so the book must be Sòng or later.
The book has a preface by Qí Yījīng 齊一經 saying he obtained it while serving in the Héběi circuit from a colleague Mr. Lǐ; he gives no period or year, and the man cannot be identified.
The discussions of the various eye-pathology types in the body of the work are quite clear. The therapeutics combine tonifying and draining, heat and cold, without partial bias toward any one strategy. The various technical traditions of the fāngjì (medical-arts) family are by and large attributed [to legendary figures]; one need only seek a method that is usable, not insist that the book be authentic. The Běncǎo claims the divine farmer (Shénnóng); the Sùwèn speaks for the Yellow Emperor; certainty is impossible at every point. This book records prescriptions for treating eye conditions that are quite usable — and so, on the principle of taking each book on its own merits, we record it.
(Respectfully verified, 2nd month of Qiánlóng 46 [1781]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Composition window: 1100–1300 — the period between the appearance of the yínhǎi eye-metaphor in Northern Sòng intellectual circles (Wáng Ānshí, d. 1086; Sū Shì, d. 1101) and the late-Yuán bibliographic record (the work is recorded in the Yuán-period medical bibliographies that begin to mention it, including the Yùhǎi 玉海’s medical-section listings of “various eye-medicine” works; firm citation in the Pǔjì fāng 普濟方 of 1406 sets a Míng-period upper bound for the latest possible date). The pseudepigraphic attribution to Sūn Sīmiǎo follows the standard SòngYuán medical pattern: Sūn was the canonical authority for everything in the medical tradition not securely attributed elsewhere, and his name lent credibility to anonymous compilations.
The work’s content is genuine Chinese ophthalmology. It distinguishes 81 (or in some recensions 72) eye-disease patterns, prescribes for each a balanced therapeutic combining herbal medication, acupuncture / moxibustion, and external preparations (eye-drops, eye-washes), and records surgical procedures including a form of cataract-couching ultimately of South-Asian origin (transmitted through Buddhist medical exchange and elaborated in Chinese hands). The 81-pattern eye-pathology system is original to this work and was the standard reference for traditional Chinese ophthalmology from the Sòng through the Qīng.
The catalog meta retains 孫思邈 as 撰 by long-standing convention; the prose makes the Sòng-or-later pseudepigraphic status clear. The composition window is set by reference to the received recension as a Sòng-or-later anonymous work, not to Sūn Sīmiǎo’s lifedates.
Translations and research
- Andrews, Bridie J. and Mary Brown Bullock (eds.), Medical Transitions in Twentieth-Century China, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014. Some discussion of the Yín-hǎi jīngwēi’s legacy in modern Chinese ophthalmology.
- Deshpande, Vijaya. “Indian Influence on Early Chinese Ophthalmology: Glaucoma as a Case Study,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 62.2 (1999), 306–22. On the South-Asian transmission of cataract-couching technique into Chinese ophthalmology, of which the Yín-hǎi jīngwēi is a major witness.
- Gōng Tíngxián 龔廷賢 (ed.), 《銀海精微》, modern reprints by Rénmín Wèishēng, Běijīng, 1956 and later. The standard modern edition.
- No substantial Western critical edition. The work has not been translated into a Western language but is treated in the broader histories of Chinese ophthalmology (e.g., Unschuld, Medicine in China, 1985).
Other points of interest
The Wáng Ānshí gloss cited in the Yíngkuí lǜsuǐ — “the Daoist books call the shoulders ‘jade towers’ and the eyes ‘silver seas’” (道書以肩為玉樓，目為銀海) — is the locus classicus for the body-correspondence figure but its Daoist source remains unidentified despite extensive searching, and it may be a Sòng-period gloss attributed by misunderstanding to a (possibly fabricated) “Daoist book.” The SKQS tíyào’s acknowledgement of this lacuna is a good example of the editors’ philological honesty.
The Yínhǎi jīngwēi is the most important pre-modern Chinese specialist treatise on ophthalmology and the textual ancestor of the eye-medicine sections in major MíngQīng medical compendia (Lǐ Shízhēn’s Běncǎo gāngmù, Wáng Kěntáng’s Zhèngzhì zhǔnshéng, etc.). The cataract-couching technique it records — performed with a specially shaped needle that displaces the cataractous lens into the vitreous body — was practiced in Chinese medical settings into the early 20th century.