Sùwèn shàoshí 素問紹識
Continuation of the Identifications in the Basic Questions (Japanese: Somon Shōshiki) by 丹波元堅 (Tamba no Motokata / Dānbō Yuánjiān, 1795–1857, 江戶) — author
About the work
The Sùwèn shàoshí in four juan is the supplement to 丹波元簡 Tamba no Mototane’s Sùwèn shí (KR3ea010) by Mototane’s youngest son Tamba no Motokata 丹波元堅 (also 多紀元堅 Taki no Motokata, zì Màozhī 茂之, hào Mòshēng 茝庭). It collects further textual emendations, lexical glosses, and intertextual citations that Motokata had accumulated through his work at the Igaku-kan 醫學館 after his father’s death (1810) and the death of his elder brother 丹波元胤 (Motoin, 1789–1827) — both of whom are repeatedly invoked in the text as xiānfù 先父 and xiānxiōng 先兄. The work was completed in Kōka 3 (1846) and printed by the Igaku-kan in Ansei 1 (1854).
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw source has only a single line “序” in _000.txt; the preface itself was not transcribed. The body of the work (_001.txt) opens with notes on 上古天真論篇第一 — a textbook example of Motokata’s method, in which he challenges the authenticity of the famous opening “成而登天以上六句” on the grounds that they replicate the Shǐjì, the Dà Dài lǐ, and the Kǒngzǐ jiāyǔ, and impose a Yáodiǎn 堯典-style narrative frame on what was originally a simple dialogue. He cites the Tàisù recension (preserved in 楊上善 Yáng Shàngshàn’s KR3ea031) and the Qiānjīn fāng and Xiánián yàochāo 遐年要抄 (the latter quoting the Tàisù) as evidence that the original opening read only 黃帝問曰. Other voices interleaved: his deceased elder brother (先兄 = 元胤), the Igaku-kan colleagues Kojima Haruchika 小島春沂 (Shimajima Shun-i) and Kaiho Genbi 海保元備, and the comparator Shibue Zenzen 澁江全善.
Abstract
Motokata follows his father’s plan of philological restraint and inter-witness comparison, but his apparatus is denser and the textual base is wider: by the 1840s the Igaku-kan circle had recovered the Sui Tàisù 太素 in Yáng Shàngshàn’s recension (KR3ea031) from the Ninnaji 仁和寺 archive (1825 onward), and Motokata systematically collates the Tàisù readings against the 王冰 Wáng Bīng / 林億 Lín Yì base text. The result is the most comprehensive single witness-collation of the Sùwèn before the early-20th-c. work of Qián Chāochén 錢超塵.
The Sùwèn shàoshí circulated to China together with the parent Sùwèn shí and Língshū shí; it was imported by 楊守敬 Yáng Shǒujìng in 1880 and printed in his Lìcǎo jīngzhāi cóngshū 立草精齋叢書. It is reprinted in the Cóngshū jíchéng (Shanghai Commercial Press, 1936) and in the Lìdài Sùwèn yánjiū wénjí series. The catalog assigns the dynasty 清 by Chinese convention; strictly the work is late Edo (Kōka–Ansei era).
Translations and research
- Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠, “多紀元堅と『素問紹識』” — articles in Nihon ishi-gaku zasshi 日本醫史學雜誌.
- Kosoto Hiroshi 小曾戸洋, Nihon kanpō tenseki jiten 日本漢方典籍辞典 (Taishukan, 1999) — the Tamba entry.