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藥錄

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Text ID
KR3e0108
Date
180–280
Dynasty
漢-晉

Yàolù 藥錄

Drug Record by 李當之 (Lǐ Dāngzhī, fl. c. 200, late 漢 / 三國·魏 — traditional attribution)

About the work

A very short fragmentary text (≈30 entries) titled simply 《藥錄》 Yàolù — “Drug Record” — preserving brief notices on minerals (shíliúhuáng 石流黃 / sulphur, shíliúqīng 石流青, shíliúchì 石流赤, yángqǐshí 陽起石 / actinolite, shídǎn 石膽 / chalcanthite, shífèi 石肺, shípí 石脾) and a small number of plant drugs (bīngláng 檳榔, xīmì 菥蓂, qiángwēi 薔蘼, tiānméndōng 天門冬). The title 藥錄 belongs to the Hàn–Wèi pharmacological-fragment genre — works of the same name attributed to 桐君 Tóngjūn, 蔡邕 Cài Yōng, and 李當之 Lǐ Dāngzhī are all attested in 《隋書·經籍志》 and later bibliographies, but none survives intact. The Kanripo file is not in the WYG, has no entry in data/catalogs/meta/KR3e.yaml, and lacks an external custom_id; it is a stand-alone digital fragment.

Abstract

Identification and authorship. The file’s heading reads simply 《藥錄》 with no compiler named. Internal evidence is mixed:

  • The format of the second 陽起石 entry — “陽起石，神農扁鵲：酸，無毒，桐君、雷公、岐伯：（咸）無毒。李氏：小寒，或生太山，或陽起山，採無時。” — is the signature multi-authority-citation form of 《吳普本草》 (KR3ec002), where 吳普 Wú Pǔ records the divergent opinions of 神農 Shénnóng / 扁鵲 Biǎn Què, 桐君 Tóngjūn / 雷公 Léi Gōng / 岐伯 Qí Bó, and Lǐ Dāngzhī (= 李氏). The same anecdote on 杜子服天門冬御十八妾 has a parallel in 《抱朴子內篇·仙藥》 (KR5f0019) by 葛洪 Gě Hóng under the variant 杜子微服天門冬御八十妾.
  • That 李氏 is cited in the third person makes Lǐ Dāngzhī’s own authorship internally awkward: the citation pattern fits 吳普本草 better than 李當之藥錄.
  • Conversely, in modern reconstructions (e.g. Shàng Zhìjūn 尚志鈞, Lǐ Dāngzhī Yàolù jíběn 李當之藥錄輯本), the editor preserves the surrounding 《證類本草》 (KR3e0028) / 《本草經集注》 (KR3e0101) quotation context — including the lines from neighbouring authorities — even when the Lǐ-attributable contribution is only the “李氏：小寒” gloss; this would account for the multi-authority format under a 李當之 title.

The most defensible reading is that this Kanripo file is a fragments-collection (輯佚) drawing on quotations preserved in 《證類本草》 (KR3e0028), 《本草綱目》 (KR3e0079), 《抱朴子內篇·仙藥》 (KR5f0019), and 《名醫別錄》 (KR3e0105), traditionally placed under Lǐ Dāngzhī’s name but in fact mixing material that 證類本草 itself attributed to 吳普 吳普 / 李氏 / 桐君 桐君 / 神農 神農 / 扁鵲 扁鵲. The frontmatter accordingly attributes the work to Lǐ Dāngzhī with the (attributed) marker.

Dating. The composition window 180–280 covers the plausible activity-span of Lǐ Dāngzhī (a disciple of 華佗 Huà Tuó, c. 145–208) and his immediate Wèi–Jìn redactors. Chinaknowledge.de places the Lǐ Dāngzhī Yàolù in the Jìn period (265–420), which would push the redaction date toward the third-century end of this bracket; the underlying material is late Hàn (Huà Tuó school).

Content. The c. 30 surviving entries are predominantly mineral and elixir-related (the wǔ shí 五石 — sulphur, actinolite, chalcanthite — were all elixir ingredients; “能化鐵為銅，合名金銀，煉餌食之不老” on 石膽 is overtly alchemical), with a smaller plant component dominated by Daoist longevity drugs (天門冬 with its associated 杜子 / 甘始 / 赤須子 narratives). The selection thus belongs to the fāngshì 方士 / Daoist-pharmacological wing of the HànWèi materia medica corpus, not the dietetic-medical mainstream.

Transmission. No complete edition of any 漢-魏 Yàolù survives. The text was lost by the Sòng but is partially recoverable from quotations in 《太平御覽》 (KR3k0012), 《證類本草》 (KR3e0028), 《本草綱目》 (KR3e0079), 《藝文類聚》 (KR3k0003), and 《抱朴子》 (KR5f0019). Modern reconstructions include Shàng Zhìjūn’s 李當之藥錄輯本 and the relevant chapter of Běncǎo rénshēng 本草人生 (Shàng Zhìjūn collected essays).

Translations and research

  • Shàng Zhìjūn 尚志鈞, 《李當之藥錄》(in Běncǎo rénshēng: Shàng Zhìjūn běncǎo lùnwén jí 本草人生：尚志鈞本草論文集). Critical fragment-edition and study by the principal modern běncǎo philologist.
  • Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōngyī wénxiàn xué 中醫文獻學, Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Kēxué Jìshù, 1990 (sections on lost Hàn-Wèi yàolù / běncǎo fragments).
  • Hinrichs, T.J. and Linda L. Barnes, eds., Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History, Harvard UP, 2013 — discusses Wú Pǔ and Lǐ Dāngzhī as Huà Tuó’s apprentices who revised the Shénnóng běncǎo.
  • Unschuld, Paul U., Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics, University of California Press, 1986 — broader survey of the Hàn-Wèi běncǎo tradition and its lost works.

Other points of interest

The text is one of the very few witnesses inside the Kanripo yījiā 醫家 division to the Daoist-alchemical wing of the early Chinese pharmacological tradition. The cluster of mineral-elixir entries (能化鐵為銅 / 合名金銀 / 煉餌食之不老 on 石膽; 補足肉攣 / 治崩中 on 陽起石) and the immortality-anecdote glosses on 天門冬 (杜子 御十八妾 有子百四十人 日行三百里; 甘始太原人在人間三百餘年; 赤須子齒落更生) place this within the same intellectual orbit as 葛洪 Gě Hóng’s 《抱朴子·仙藥》 (KR5f0019) — and indeed the 杜子-anecdote shows direct textual dependence with that work, in a different recension.

The catalog meta is silent on this id (KR3e0108)

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