Tàipíng huìmín héjì jú fāng 太平惠民和劑局方
The Tài-píng Imperial Pharmacy’s Harmonious Compounding Bureau Prescriptions by 陳師文 (Chén Shīwén, fl. Dàguān, 1107–1110, 北宋) — Dà-guān-period base editor; subsequent Southern-Sòng additions (Bǎoqìng, Chúnyòu) by anonymous hands
About the work
The standard imperial-pharmacy formulary of the Sòng dynasty, in 10 juan / 14 categorical gates, with 789 prescriptions in the received recension. Originally compiled at the Yuán-fēng-period (1078–1085) imperial pharmacy under Sòng Shénzōng — when the imperial decree commanded skilled practitioners across the empire to submit their best-tested prescriptions for verification at the imperial pharmacy and subsequent compounding-and-sale to the public — and re-edited by Chén Shīwén under Sòng Huīzōng in Dàguān (1107–1110) into a 5-juan, 297-prescription form with 21 gates. The work was renamed Tàipíng huìmín héjì jú fāng in Shàoxīng 18 (1148) when the Southern-Sòng court reorganized the imperial-pharmacy system; further supplemented in Bǎoqìng (1225–1227) and Chúnyòu (1241–1252); and its final form, with three appended juan of Yòng yào zǒnglùn 用藥總論 zhǐnán 指南 (drawn from Tújīng běncǎo-source material), is the SKQS base. The work was so widely circulated under late-Sòng that the early-Yuán Zhū Zhènhēng 朱震亨 wrote his Júfāng fāhuī 局方發揮 specifically as a critique — and that critique inaugurated the JīnYuán medical revolution. Yuè Kē 岳珂’s Chéngshǐ 程史 records that the work, despite its prestige, contained editorial errors — most famously the misincorporation of part of a “Mountain-yam pill” (山芋丸 from the Bǔ xū mén) into the “Cow-bezoar Clearing-the-Heart Pill” (牛黃清心丸).
Tiyao
Tàipíng huìmín héjì jú fāng, 10 juan, with the old attribution to Sòng Kùbù lángzhōng tíxiá cuòzhì yàojú Chén Shīwén and others, by imperial commission. According to Wáng Yīnglín’s Yùhǎi: “In Dàguān, Chén Shīwén and others collated the Héjì jú fāng in 5 juan, 297 dào, 21 mén.” Cháo Gōngwǔ’s Dúshū zhì says: “In Dàguān an imperial decree ordered the medical world to standardize the imperial pharmacy’s prescription books; over a year, the work was completed: 708 characters were collated and corrected, with over 70 prescriptions added or removed.” The Dúshū hòu zhì further says: “The Tàiyī jú fāng in 10 juan, in Yuánfēng — the imperial decree ordered skilled physicians across the empire to submit their tested-secret prescriptions to the Tàiyī jú; the bureau verified them, prepared the medicines according to the formulae, and sold them; further, transcribed copies were transmitted to the world.” So the Dàguān recension is in fact a renewed-edition of the Shénzōng Yuánfēng base, hence Cháo’s reference to “collated and corrected, added and removed.” But this present recension has only 14 categories with 789 prescriptions.
Examining further, the Yùhǎi records: “Shàoxīng 18 leap-8th-month 23rd-day, the Shúyào suǒ was renamed the Tàipíng huìmín jú; on the 17th day of the 12th month of [Shàoxīng] 21, the Jiānběn prescriptions were promulgated to the various Circuits.” This recension being titled Tàipíng huìmín — it is the Shàoxīng-promulgated Jiānběn, not the Dàguān original. Within it, further, are Bǎoqìng and Chúnyòu supplementations, which postdate Shàoxīng. Appended are 3 juan of Yòng yào zǒnglùn 用藥總論 / Zhǐnán 指南, in every case excerpted from the Tújīng běncǎo; the date of these additions is also unknown. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí mentions that the Héjì jú fāng received continuous supplementation over time; this is presumably the kind of thing he meant.
Dài Liáng’s Jiǔ líng shānrén jí has the Dānxī wēng Zhū Zhènhēng zhuàn 丹溪翁朱震亨傳, which says: “Then this prescription book was widely current — Chén Shīwén and Péi Zōngyuán’s [the second editor] Dàguān 297 prescriptions. The Old Man [Zhū Zhènhēng] worked at it day and night. Then he realized: ‘Working with the ancient prescriptions to treat today’s diseases, the trends cannot be made to fully agree. To establish the measure, set up the rules, and weight the standard, the Sùwèn and Nán jīng and the various classics are necessary.’ Subsequently, Zhènhēng obtained Luō Zhītì’s learning [Liú Wánsù lineage] and brought it to the medical world. The mud-bound followers of Chén [Shīwén] and Péi [Zōngyuán] heard him with great alarm and laughter and resistance; later, when his treatment of Xǔ Qiān’s terminal illness proved good, those who had laughed and resisted were the first to submit.” So this book had been current under SòngYuán until Zhènhēng’s Júfāng fāhuī came out, after which the medical art for the first time turned. Further, Yuè Kē’s Chéngshǐ 程史 says: “The Héjì jú fāng gathered the famous prescriptions of all the masters; how many famous physicians’ hands have passed through it; and the supervising officials and inner-court overseers further reviewed it — one would say it was thoroughly worked over. Yet the errors among them are not few. Take for example the Niúhuáng qīngxīn wán: in all 29 ingredients, with the cold and hot mixed and not making sense. I once saw a famous physician say: ‘This prescription is just the first few ingredients down to púhuáng 蒲黃; the 21 ingredients beginning with gān shānyào 乾山藥 are in fact the Shānyù wán 山芋丸 from the Bǔxū mén (deficiency-supplementation gate); they were originally simply transcribed in error after this prescription, and never since corrected.’ I [Yuè Kē] examined the matter and found this true. Errors of this kind must abound.” So even in this work, error is not absent.
Yet the secret prescriptions of the various specialties, transmitted across the dynasties, are largely contained here. The reader should examine carefully and use accordingly. To “stop eating because of choking” would be one-sided.
(Respectfully verified, 12th month of Qiánlóng 45 [1780]. Chief Compilers Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì; Chief Collator Lù Fèichí.)
Abstract
Composition window: 1107–1252. The work was a continuously-revised imperial-pharmacy compendium across nearly 150 years; the catalog meta retains 陳師文 as the named Dà-guān-period editor in mirror of the imperial frontmatter, but the received recension is the Chún-yòu-period (1252) form with all its supplementations. Composition is therefore best understood as bracketed by the Dàguān 1107 base-collation and the Chúnyòu 1252 final supplementation.
The work’s significance:
(a) The first comprehensive imperial-pharmacy formulary in any major civilization: from the early-Sòng Shènghuì jú 聖惠局 / Tàiyī jú 太醫局 / Héjì jú 和劑局 / Huìmín jú 惠民局 sequence, the Sòng imperial pharmacy provided standardized prescription compounding-and-sale to the public — a state-pharmaceutical-system project unmatched until 18th-century European national pharmacopoeias. The Héjì jú fāng is the formulary that codified the system’s standards.
(b) The locus of the JīnYuán medical revolution: Zhū Zhènhēng’s Júfāng fāhuī of 1347 (preserved as KR3e0048 [tbd]) was a programmatic critique of this very work. Zhū’s argument — that ancient prescriptions cannot be applied to modern conditions without reasoning from the SùwènNán jīng foundational principles — was the doctrinal turning point that gave Chinese medicine the Sùwèn-grounded clinical reasoning of the JīnYuán schools. The Héjì jú fāng is thus both summit and target of Sòng medicine.
(c) The Yuè Kē Niúhuáng qīngxīn wán error: a lasting reminder that imperial collation does not guarantee textual accuracy, and that pharmacological error in a widely-distributed standard can persist across centuries. The error has been corrected only in modern critical editions.
(d) Trans-dynastic continuity: the 1107-Dàguān → 1148-Tàipínghuìmín renaming → 1252-Chúnyòu supplementation cycle is one of the longest continuous editorial-revision cycles in any medical work. Through it, the Sòng standard-pharmacy became the textual ancestor of the YuánMíngQīng standard-prescription literature.
The catalog meta retains 陳師文 as 奉敕撰 (compiled by imperial decree); the SKQS print’s frontmatter recognizes the joint Dà-guān-period editorial team (Chén Shīwén and Péi Zōngyuán 裴宗元 — the Dānxī zhuàn-cited collaborator).
Translations and research
- Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200, London: Routledge, 2009 (treats the Hé-jì jú fāng in the Sòng imperial-pharmacy context, ch. 4–5).
- Despeux, Catherine. “La culture lettrée au service d’un art du corps: les médecins lettrés (rúyī 儒醫) de la dynastie Song et leurs pratiques,” Extrême-Orient — Extrême-Occident 24, 2002, 33–66.
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōng-yī wénxiàn xué 中醫文獻學, Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Kēxué Jìshù Chūbǎnshè, 1990 (extensive entry on the Hé-jì jú fāng’s textual history).
- Wú Lè 吳樂 et al. (eds.), Tài-píng huì-mín hé-jì jú fāng jiào zhù 太平惠民和劑局方校注, Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1992. Standard modern critical edition.
Other points of interest
The Yuè Kē Niúhuáng qīngxīn wán error — described in detail in the Chéngshǐ 程史 and quoted at length by the SKQS tíyào — is one of the more famous textual-pharmaceutical scandals in Chinese medicine. The 29-ingredient combined prescription is in fact two prescriptions accidentally merged in early transmission; Yuè Kē’s diagnosis (separating at púhuáng 蒲黃) is now the accepted reading. The persistence of the error across multiple SòngYuánMíng reprints is a useful caution about the apparent authority of canonical compendia.
The Júfāng / Zhū Zhènhēng confrontation is one of the great moments of Chinese medical theory. Zhū’s diagnosis of the Héjì jú fāng school — that they were trying to “use ancient prescriptions to treat modern diseases” without re-grounding the framework in the Sùwèn principles — was the theoretical move that produced the JīnYuán “four masters” (Liú Wánsù, Zhāng Cóngzhèng, Lǐ Gǎo, Zhū Zhènhēng) and re-anchored Chinese medicine in classical-textual reasoning rather than imperial-pharmacy formulary.