Lèijīng 類經
The Inner Classic by Categories by 張介賓 (Zhāng Jièbīn, 1563–1640, 明) — author
About the work
The Lèijīng in thirty-two juan (with appended Lèijīng túyì 類經圖翼 in eleven juan and Lèijīng fùyì 類經附翼 in four juan, totalling 47 juan) is the magnum opus of Zhāng Jièbīn 張介賓 (zì Huìqīng 會卿, hào Jǐngyuè 景岳), the great late-Míng theorist of the “warming-tonifying” (溫補) school. Zhāng spent thirty years on the work, completing it in 1624 (the author’s preface is dated Tiānqǐ 4 = 1624). The text re-organizes the whole Huángdì nèijīng — both Sùwèn and Língshū — into a single integrated treatise structured under twelve major categories (攝生, 陰陽, 藏象, 經絡, 標本, 氣味, 論治, 疾病, 鍼刺, 運氣, 會通, 雜論). Each Sùwèn and Língshū passage is given a category-and-paragraph reference, and Zhāng’s commentary follows. The result is the most ambitious systematic re-presentation of the Nèijīng in the entire commentarial tradition, comparable in scope to but more comprehensive than the Tàisù (KR3ea031) which it consciously updates.
Prefaces
The author’s preface (KR3ea036_000.txt) opens with a grand cosmological-historical claim: medicine begins with Fúxī’s single stroke (一畫 — the trigram), which is the tàijí 太極, the heart of heaven, earth, and humanity. By extension, the eighty-one pian of the Sùwèn and Língshū are simply the elaboration of this single primordial principle. The preface justifies the categorical re-organization on the grounds that the original Nèijīng passages are intermixed and that the cosmological doctrine cannot be grasped without systematic re-presentation. The text is dedicated to the long lineage of Nèijīng exegetes — 王冰 Wáng Bīng, the Sòng校正, 馬蒔 Mǎ Shī, 吳崐 Wú Kūn — and explicitly positions itself as their culmination.
Abstract
Zhāng Jièbīn’s doctrinal innovation, fully on display in the Lèijīng and developed in his clinical magnum opus Jǐngyuè quánshū 景岳全書, is the yáng-tonification / Mìngmén warming (扶陽溫補命門) school: in deliberate opposition to 朱震亨 Zhū Zhènhēng’s yángchángyǒuyú yīnchángbùzú doctrine, Zhāng asserts that the Gate of Life (命門) — sometimes identified with the right kidney, sometimes with the area between the two kidneys — is the source of true yáng-and-yīn and that pre-emptive yáng-tonification (using 附子, 桂枝, 鹿茸, etc.) is the principal therapeutic strategy. The Lèijīng presents this doctrine as the natural reading of the Nèijīng through categorical re-organization. The Túyì (figure appendix) supplies illustrated anatomical and channel diagrams; the Fùyì (further appendix) treats specialized topics in yùnqì, yīnyáng, and ritual medicine.
The Lèijīng was admitted to the Sìkù quánshū (where it is digitized as KR3e0085). The present jicheng.tw transmission is an independent late-Qīng or early Republican re-cutting from a Wànlì-Tiānqǐ-era Wúlín 武林 (Hángzhōu) print and differs from the WYG in fine textual detail; the substantive content is identical. Through Zhāng Jièbīn, the warming-tonifying school became the principal Qīng-period doctrinal counterweight to the Dānxī school, and the Lèijīng the principal vehicle of its Nèijīng-grounded justification.
Translations and research
- Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665 (Berkeley: UC Press, 1999) — chapter on Zhāng Jièbīn and the Mìngmén doctrine.
- Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626–2006 (Eastland Press, 2007) — chap. on the early-Qīng reception of Zhāng Jièbīn.
- Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (UC Press, rev. ed. 2010) — chap. on the warming-tonifying school.
Other points of interest
The cross-reference apparatus of the Lèijīng (every passage tagged with its category-and-paragraph number AND with its Sùwèn or Língshū original location) makes the work simultaneously a re-organized treatise and a fully-indexed concordance to the Nèijīng — a structural achievement not surpassed before modern critical editions.
Links
- Wikipedia 張景岳 (中文).
- Wikidata Q9098089 (張介賓).