Huángdì Nèijīng Sùwèn jízhù 黃帝內經素問集註
A Collected Commentary on the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic, Basic Questions by 張志聰 (Zhāng Zhìcōng, 1610–1674, 清) — author and editor
About the work
The Sùwèn jízhù in nine juan is the foundational collaborative commentary on the Huángdì nèijīng Sùwèn of the Lǚshān jiǎngtáng 侶山講堂, the West-Lake medical academy founded by Zhāng Zhìcōng 張志聰 (zì Yǐn’ān 隱菴) in Qiántáng 錢塘 (modern Hángzhōu) around 1660. Zhāng presided over a circle of about forty pupils who collectively glossed the Sùwèn and Língshū over a decade of lecture meetings; the resulting collation is presented under Zhāng’s single name (as principal compiler) but credits individual contributors in interlinear notes. The work was completed and printed in 1670 (a companion Língshū jízhù KR3ea025 followed in 1672). It is one of the three foundational early-Qīng commentaries on the Sùwèn, alongside 馬蒔 Mǎ Shī’s Zhùzhèng fāwēi (KR3ea035) and 吳崐 Wú Kūn’s Wú zhù (KR3ea014).
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw source carries the postface — not the original 1670 preface — of a late-Qīng (Guāngxù-era) re-issue. The postscriber, writing in the wake of the destruction of the Lǚshān jiǎngtáng archive in the Tàipíng wars, recounts how the Sùwèn and Língshū jízhù survived (chiefly through transmission to Chánglè 長樂 disciple 陳修園 Chén Xiūyuán (1753–1823), who incorporated abridged extracts in his Yīxué sānzìjīng 醫學三字經) and how the original Lǚshān prints were recovered in the late 19th c. from the libraries of Dīng Sōngshēng 丁松生, Wáng Gēngméi 王耕眉, Yáo Shòuzhī 姚受之, and Chǔ Dūnbó 褚敦伯 in Hángzhōu and used for the re-cutting from which the jicheng.tw transcription derives. The postface also names Zuǒ Júnóng 左菊農 as the re-cutter of Zhāng’s companion Shānghán jízhù in another province.
Abstract
Zhāng Zhìcōng’s school treats the Sùwèn as a comprehensive medical metaphysics organized around the doctrine of qìhuà 氣化 (the transformation of vital breath) and the liù qì xíng yùn 六氣行運 (operations of the six climatic influences). In contrast to Mǎ Shī’s chapter-by-chapter philological commentary and Wú Kūn’s pedagogical accessibility, Zhāng’s commentary is doctrinal-systematic, weaving the eighty-one pian into a single discourse on the cosmological grounding of clinical medicine. The interlinear voices preserve disagreement among his pupils (with Gāo Shìshì 高士宗 frequently named), allowing modern readers to recover something of the discursive texture of the Lǚshān seminars. The work is the central text of what is conventionally called the “侶山 / 錢塘 Nèijīng school” (錢塘醫派) and was the dominant Sùwèn commentary in late-Qīng and Republican-era TCM training before the rise of philological criticism (胡澍 Hú Shù, 俞樾 Yú Yuè, Qián Chāochén).
The catalog meta gives Qīng for the dynasty; on a strict reading Zhāng was born and active in the late Míng, but his medical œuvre belongs entirely to the early Qīng (post-1644) — the convention is to follow the dating of the work, not the author. The 1610 birth-date is now standard following Pān Qiūchén 潘秋辰’s 2009 reconstruction in Zhōnghuá yīshǐ zázhì.
Translations and research
- Pān Qiūchén 潘秋辰, “Zhāng Zhìcōng shēng zú nián xīn kǎo” 張志聰生卒年新考, Zhōnghuá yīshǐ zázhì 中華醫史雜誌 (2009).
- Wáng Hóngtú 王洪圖, Huángdì nèijīng yánjiū dàchéng 黃帝內經研究大成 (1997) — surveys the Lǚshān school.
- Asaf Goldschmidt, “Reasoning with Cases: The Transmission of Clinical Medical Knowledge in Twelfth-Century Song China”, in Thinking with Cases (UHP, 2007) — background on the Sòng formation of the case-based medical genre that the Lǚshān commentary builds on.