Sùwèn jīngzhù jiéjiě 素問經注節解
An Abridged Exposition of the Commentary on the Basic Questions by 姚紹虞 (Yáo Shàoyú, fl. 1671, 清) — author
About the work
The Sùwèn jīngzhù jiéjiě in nine juan is an early-Qīng abridgment and re-exposition of the Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn with 王冰 Wáng Bīng’s commentary. Yáo Shàoyú 姚紹虞 (also styled 止庵 Zhǐ’ān), an early-Qing Hángzhōu physician, retained Wáng Bīng’s base annotations but pruned them of redundancy, supplied his own glosses where Wáng was felt to be obscure, and reorganized the eighty-one pian of the Sùwèn into “inner” (內篇) and “outer” (外篇) sub-collections according to therapeutic relevance — the inner gathering chapters bearing on diagnostics and treatment, the outer the cosmological-correspondence material. The work’s prefaces are dated Kāngxī xīnhài 康熙辛亥 = 1671. The jicheng.tw source preserves the 外篇 marker at the head of _000.txt and opens the body with 卷之一 上古天真論.
Prefaces
The author’s opening statement (KR3ea005_001.txt) reviews the early citation history of the Sùwèn: 張機 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s Shānghán lùn claims to draw on it, 皇甫謐 Huángfǔ Mì’s (Jìn) Jiǎyǐ jīng praises its precision, 王叔和 Wáng Shūhé cites it in the Mài jīng, and it appears in the Suí shū jīngjí zhì. Yáo then quotes 全元起 Quán Yuánqǐ’s (Suí) etymology of sù 素 as “the root” (素者，本也) and the Sòng Xīn jiàozhèng reading via the Qián záodù 乾鑿度 (素 = 太素, the “starting point of substance”). Yáo rejects both as overly cosmological and proposes a moral-prophylactic reading: 素問 because the physician must “ask in regular practice” (問之有素), so that people are spared premature death. This editorial decision — to read the Sùwèn primarily as a clinical and ethical text — governs the book’s whole arrangement.
Abstract
The Sùwèn jīngzhù jiéjiě belongs to the broad early-Qīng “rationalization” of the medical canon associated with the Wú/Zhèjiāng schools — alongside 張志聰 Zhāng Zhìcōng’s Jí zhù (KR3ea008), 馬蒔 Mǎ Shī’s Zhùzhèng fāwēi (KR3ea035), and 吳崐 Wú Kūn’s Wú zhù (KR3ea014). Yáo’s distinctive contribution is the “node-cut” (節解) method: rather than gloss the text continuously, he excises Wáng Bīng’s circular or speculative remarks and substitutes plain-language clinical explanations. He preserves the 81-篇 division of the 林億 Lín Yì recension but groups them thematically into 內 and 外 篇. The seven great treatises on cosmological cycles (七篇大論) are placed in the 外篇, in line with the Lín Yì校正 suspicion that they are interpolations from the Yīnyáng dàlùn.
The author’s identity is consistently given in early Qīng prints as 姚紹虞 字 止庵, of Qiántáng 錢塘 (modern Hángzhōu); modern reference works (e.g. Zhōngyī rénmíng cídiǎn) sometimes list the work under “姚止庵”. The work is not collected in the Sìkù quánshū but circulated in late-Qing prints and in the 1958 Renmin Weisheng reprint series.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language scholarship located. Chinese-language studies are confined to short notices in surveys of Qīng Sùwèn commentaries (e.g. Wáng Hóngtú 王洪圖, Huángdì nèijīng yánjiū dàchéng, 1997).
Links
- Kanripo bibliographic record only; no stable Wikipedia entry.