Sùwèn rùshì yùnqì lùn’ào 素問入式運氣論奧
An Accessible Discussion of the Profound Five-Phases-and-Six-Qi Cycles in the Sùwèn by 劉溫舒 (Liú Wēnshū, Cháosànláng Tàiyī xué Sīyè 朝散郎太醫學司業, fl. 元符 1099, 北宋)
About the work
A late-Northern-Sòng systematic treatise on the Sùwèn’s wǔ yùn liù qì 五運六氣 doctrine (the “Five Cycles and Six Qì” cosmological-pathological correspondence theory of the seven great treatises in KR3e0001’s j. 19–22, the controversial portion likely added by Wáng Bīng), in three juan plus a one-juan appendix. Liú Wēnshū’s preface, dated to Yuánfú 元符 yǐmǎo 己卯 (1099), explains the work’s didactic purpose: the Sùwèn’s wǔyùnliùqì is the “principal aid in tonifying-and-draining” (氣運最為補寫之要) but is scattered through the dialogues of Huángdì, Qí Bó, and Guǐ Yúqū with no systematic exposition; Liú therefore composed thirty-some discussions and twenty-seven figures (the SKQS editors recount thirty-one and twenty-nine, accounting for some figures-and-discussions originally excluded from the count) to make the doctrine accessible. The appended Cìfǎ lùn 刺法論 (one juan) is a Sòng-period reconstruction of the lost juan-72 of the Sùwèn; the SKQS editors note that Wáng Bīng (eighth century) had already declared this chapter lost, and Liú’s “recovery” must be a Sòng pseudepigraphic effort.
Tiyao
Sùwèn rùshì yùnqì lùn’ào, three juan, with appended Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn yí piān one juan, by Liú Wēnshū of the Sòng. Liú’s native place is unclear. The work has at the head a Yuánfú jǐmǎo (1099) preface, signed with the old title Cháosànláng Tàiyī xué Sīyè (Cháosànláng officer, Director of Studies at the Imperial Medical Academy) — a man with imperial-medical credentials.
Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì says: “Wēnshū took the Sùwèn’s yùnqì as the essential of treatment, but the question-and-answer dialogues are entangled and the language ancient and obscure; readers find them hard to grasp. He therefore made thirty discussions and twenty-seven figures and submitted them to the throne.” Examining the figures carefully, there are in fact twenty-nine: the figures of “Ten Heavenly Stems initiating the cycles” and “Twelve Earthly Branches presiding over heaven” were originally separately marked as jué 訣 (mnemonic verses), so Cháo did not count them, recording only twenty-seven. The discussions are in fact thirty-one 篇: the closing Wǔ xíng shèngfù lùn 五行勝復論 was originally annotated as fù 附 (appended), so Cháo also did not count it, recording only thirty.
Appended at the end is a separately attached Cìfǎ lùn one juan, titled Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn yí piān 黃帝內經素問遺篇. But the Cìfǎ lùn was lost before Wáng Bīng’s commentary [762]; how could Wēnshū, born at the very end of the Northern Sòng, have obtained it? Its commentary cannot be identified either; it is most likely a fabrication and not wholly trustworthy. Jiāo Hóng 焦竑’s Jīngjí zhì gives this work as four juan, combining the Lùn with the appended Yí piān into a single book — even more erroneous.
(Respectfully verified, 3rd month of Qiánlóng 44 [1779]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Composition window: 1099, the date of Liú Wēnshū’s preface. The work’s significance lies in two complementary contributions:
(a) Systematic exposition of the wǔyùnliùqì doctrine: the Sùwèn’s seven great treatises (Tiānyuán jì dà lùn, Wǔ yùn xíng dà lùn, Liù wēi zhǐ dà lùn, Qì jiāo biàn dà lùn, Wǔ cháng zhèng dà lùn, Liù yuán zhèng jì dà lùn, Zhì zhēn yào dà lùn; j. 19–22) lay out a doctrine in which the year’s celestial-stem and terrestrial-branch determine the controlling heaven yùn and presiding qì, with disease-pattern, prognosis, and treatment-strategy varying systematically by year. Liú’s Lùn’ào is the first systematic Northern-Sòng exposition of this material, and is the immediate textual ancestor of the JīnYuán medical revolution (Liú Wánsù 劉完素, Zhāng Yuánsù 張元素, Lǐ Gǎo 李杲, Zhū Zhènhēng 朱震亨), all of whom worked from the yùnqì framework Liú Wēnshū had made accessible.
(b) Sòng-period pseudepigraphic recovery of the lost Cìfǎ lùn: the appended Yí piān is one juan of pseudepigraphic reconstruction of the Sùwèn’s lost juan-72 Cìfǎ lùn and its companion juan-73 Běn bìng lùn. The SKQS editors flag the impossibility — Wáng Bīng in 762 had already declared these juan lost; Liú in 1099 cannot have recovered them — but the appended text was so widely accepted in the SòngYuán medical tradition that later printers of the Sùwèn routinely include the Yí piān as a tag-end appendix. The SòngYuán commentaries on the Sùwèn (e.g., Mǎ Shī 馬蒔’s Sùwèn zhù zhèng fā wēi 素問註證發微, 1586) treat the Yí piān as authentic and elaborate it.
Liú’s identification as Cháosànláng / Tàiyī xué Sīyè in the preface places him in the late-Northern-Sòng imperial medical academy as a senior teaching official; the silence of the Sòng shǐ and the Tōngzhì on his career details is striking but not unusual for technical specialists in this period.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western secondary literature on this specific work. The yùn-qì doctrine is treated in:
- Catherine Despeux. “The System of the Five Circulatory Phases and the Six Seasonal Influences (Wuyun liuqi) — A Source of Innovation in Medicine under the Song (960–1279),” in Innovation in Chinese Medicine, ed. Elisabeth Hsu, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 121–65. The standard English-language treatment.
- Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200, London: Routledge, 2009 (esp. ch. 5 on the yùn-qì renaissance).
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōng-yī wénxiàn xué 中醫文獻學, Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Kēxué Jìshù Chūbǎnshè, 1990 (entry on the Lùn’ào and the Yí piān).
- Yamada Keiji 山田慶兒, Chūgoku igaku no shisō 中國醫學の思想, Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 1999 (chapter on yùn-qì and the seven great treatises).
Other points of interest
The Cìfǎ lùn / Běn bìng lùn “Yí piān” question is one of the recurring puzzles of Chinese medical philology. The two chapters were declared lost by Wáng Bīng in 762; they reappear in the late Northern Sòng (with Liú Wēnshū’s printing as their first attestation); they have been treated as authentic by SòngYuánMíngQīng commentary; modern scholarship is divided on whether they preserve any genuine Hàn material or are entirely Sòng-period pseudepigraphic composition. Despeux 2001 (above) and Mǎ Jìxīng 1985 incline toward the entirely-Sòng position.
The yùnqì doctrine itself — at the doctrinal heart of Liú’s work — is one of the classical points of contention in Chinese medical theory: the cosmological-pathological correspondence model is the principal Chinese medical contribution to a “weather/disease correlation” framework, anticipating later Western epidemiological-meteorological correlations. The SòngJīnYuán medical revolution made the yùnqì doctrine the basis of clinical reasoning, and Liú Wēnshū’s Lùn’ào is the Sòng didactic gateway through which this happened.