Shèngjì zǒnglù zuǎnyào 聖濟總錄纂要
Essentials of the Sage’s Universal Records of Salvation by 徽宗 (Sòng Huīzōng 趙佶, 1082–1135) — by imperial decree compiled; 程林 (Chéng Lín, zì Yúnlái, of Xiūníng, early 清) — abridger and editor (1670s)
About the work
A Qīng-period 26-juan abridgement of the massive Sòng-dynasty imperial medical encyclopedia Shèngjì zǒnglù 聖濟總錄 (200 juan), originally commissioned by Sòng Huīzōng during the Zhènghé period (1111–1118) and presented as a comprehensive imperial codification of the inherited medical canon — pulling together symptom-discussion (drawing on the Bìngyuán lineage), prescription, yùnqì doctrine, and clinical regimen for every gate of medicine then known. The original 200-juan work was largely lost during the JīnSòng transition (the Jīn sack of Kāifēng in 1127 caused the loss of the imperial library); a Jīn 大定 (1161–1189) reprint partly restored it, but by the early Qīng even that was severely damaged. Chéng Lín, working from three partially-overlapping damaged copies, produced this abridgement (zuǎnyào) preserving the work’s structural categories and most-essential prescriptions while excluding both the still-missing juan (173–177) and the editorially-deleted three juan of Daoist immortal-elixir material; for the pediatric juan, which had no good copy, Chéng commissioned a reconstruction from his friend Xiàng Ruì.
Tiyao
Shèngjì zǒnglù zuǎnyào, 26 juan. Originally commissioned by imperial decree in the Sòng Zhènghé period; in our Imperial dynasty Chéng Lín produced the abridgement. Lín, zì Yúnlái, was a man of Xiūníng. Earlier, [Sòng] Huīzōng composed himself the Shèngjì jīng 聖濟經 in 10 juan and 42 章, and further commanded that the famous physicians of the realm gather and that the imperial archive’s secret prescriptions and discussions be brought out, compiled and edited together to form a 200-juan encyclopedic record [the Shèngjì zǒnglù]. The book was long, and over time fell apart and lost; Lín sought out the surviving fragments, obtaining three copies and supplementing one against another, but juan 173 through 177 are not recoverable. As the work is too lengthy and unwieldy to circulate, he pressed it into its essentials and re-arranged the material, with categorical divisions all retained from the original. The five juan of pediatric prescriptions, which had no good source, he had his friend Xiàng Ruì 項睿 reconstruct. The original is prefaced by Huīzōng’s preface and the Yuán Dàdé 4 (1300) Jíxián Scholar Jiāo Huì 焦惠’s submission preface and proofreading-officials’ names.
Examining the bibliographies of Cháo Gōngwǔ and Chén Zhènsūn — only Huīzōng’s Shèngjì jīng is recorded; this work is not. From Jiāo Huì’s preface — “first completed in the Zhènghé reign, reprinted in the [Jīn] Dàdìng” — we can see that after the fall of Biànjīng [Kāifēng] in 1127, [the work] travelled north along with the imperial palace’s books and records; the southward-fleeing scholars never saw the volume.
We do not now see the original work [in its full 200-juan form]; but this Sòng-period work in venerating medical learning gathered with great breadth; its records preserve a great deal of the older specialist transmissions, and its broad outline can still be seen. Each category opens with a single discussion-paragraph of concise language and clear principle, all serving for textual reference. The end of the original recension had three juan of Shénxiān fúěr (immortal-elixir ingestion): some on roasting cinnabar and refining stones, some on chewing cypress and gnawing pine, some on inhaling-and-exhaling the pure-and-mild qì, some on excising the Three Corpses (sān shī 三尸). At the time, Daoism had just risen [under Huīzōng], so this kind of fanciful talk was included. Lín, troubled by its absurdity, deleted it wholesale, retaining only some thirty everyday cultivation-medicines. His judgement is orderly; the prescriptions he records are accordingly mostly applicable, distinct from those who cling rigidly to ancient methods.
(Respectfully verified, 5th month of Qiánlóng 46 [1781]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Composition window: 1111–1117, the Zhènghé period during which the original 200-juan Shèngjì zǒnglù was compiled under Huīzōng’s commission. The catalog meta sets notBefore/notAfter and the dynasty to the period of the original commission, since this is the received recension of the Sòng compendium — Chéng Lín’s 1670s abridgement is editorial and selective, not creative.
The work’s significance:
(a) The Sòng imperial-medical-encyclopedia tradition: the Shèngjì zǒnglù is the most ambitious of the Northern-Sòng medical compendia, surpassing even the Tàipíng shènghuì fāng (992) in scope and integrating the Bìngyuán aetiology, the yùnqì cosmology of the Sùwèn’s seven great treatises, and the comprehensive Sòng prescription record. It is the medical pendant to the Tàipíng yùlǎn and Tàipíng guǎngjì in literature — an imperial summa.
(b) Huīzōng’s medical interest: the work documents the imperial-medical activism of Huīzōng — also responsible for the Shèngjì jīng 聖濟經 (10 juan, his own composition; cf. KR3e0028), the bronze-man acupuncture mannequin reaffirmation, and the Zhèng-hé-period Yī xué (Imperial Medical College) curriculum reforms. The medical activism interlocked with Huīzōng’s contemporary Daoist patronage, reflected in the work’s Shénxiān fúěr chapters.
(c) The Jīn 大定 reprint and Yuán 大德 collation: Jiāo Huì’s 1300 collation submission — preserved in the SKQS print’s frontmatter alongside Huīzōng’s original preface — is one of the more interesting pieces of trans-dynastic medical-textual transmission, demonstrating the Yuán court’s interest in preserving the SòngJīn medical canon.
(d) The Chéng Lín 1670s abridgement: methodologically interesting as a deliberate Qīng-period editorial intervention preserving structure and core content while filtering Daoist material. The SKQS editors’ implicit endorsement of Chéng’s deletion-decisions is a small piece of editorial commentary on the Daoist-medical fringe.
The juan-count of the abridgement is given as 26 in the catalog meta and the SKQS frontmatter; the SKQS tíyào opens with “twenty-six juan”, confirming. Some witnesses of the abridgement have been cited as 36 juan in error.
The complete original Shèngjì zǒnglù in 200 juan was reprinted in the YuánDàdìng period and again in modern times (Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1962, in 4 volumes), drawing on surviving Yuán print fragments and the Japanese-preserved early-Míng print copy of the JīnYuán recension; the Chéng Lín zuǎnyào of KR3e0027 is the SKQS-canonical abridgement of that material.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western secondary literature on this specific work.
- Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200, London: Routledge, 2009 (treats the Shèng-jì zǒng-lù in the Sòng imperial-medical-encyclopedia context).
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōng-yī wénxiàn xué 中醫文獻學, Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Kēxué Jìshù Chūbǎnshè, 1990 (entry on the Shèng-jì zǒng-lù and the Chéng Lín abridgement).
- Yamada Keiji 山田慶兒 (ed.), Sōdai no kagaku gijutsu 宋代の科学技術, Kyōto: Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho, 1967. Includes essays on the Shèng-jì zǒng-lù.
Other points of interest
The Chéng Lín zuǎnyào is the principal Qīng-period entry-point into the Shèngjì zǒnglù corpus and was for some time the only widely-circulating recension of the work; the modern Rénmín Wèishēng reprint (1962) of the surviving complete text has now superseded it for scholarly purposes, but the zuǎnyào remains a useful curated guide to the original’s most-applicable clinical content.
The deleted Shénxiān fúěr chapters, criticized by both Chéng Lín and the SKQS editors as Daoist-superstitious, are in fact a major source for the early-twelfth-century Daoist alchemical and fúshí (ingestion) tradition under Huīzōng’s patronage. Their removal from the zuǎnyào is a regrettable loss for the history of Daoist material culture; they survive in the modern reprint of the complete original.