Nànjīng gǔyì 難經古義
The Ancient Meaning of the Classic of Difficulties by 丁錦 (Dīng Jǐn, fl. Yongzheng–Qianlong, 清) — author
About the work
The Nànjīng gǔyì is the companion to 丁錦 Dīng Jǐn’s Gǔběn Nànjīng chǎnzhù (KR3ea055) and represents his more synthetic doctrinal program: where the Chǎnzhù is a phrase-by-phrase commentary on a putatively older recension of the eighty-one nán, the Gǔyì organizes the same eighty-one questions under topical headings (pulse, channels, viscera, points, treatment) and traces what Dīng considers the “ancient meaning” — i.e. the doctrinal substrate of the Nànjīng prior to its assimilation into the YuánMíng 滑壽 Huá Shòu KR3ea060 commentarial tradition. Dīng’s gǔyì method is a Qing-period kǎojù-influenced reading: he treats the Nànjīng as a coherent late-Hàn doctrinal redaction whose conceptual structure can be recovered against later overlay, and he privileges the early commentators (Lǚ Guǎng 呂廣, Yáng Xuáncāo 楊玄操, accessed via the 王九思 Wáng Hànlín Jízhù KR3ea056) over the YuánMíng synthetic tradition.
Tiyao
KR3ea057_000.txt, _001.txt, and _003.txt in the jicheng.tw directory contain only org-mode placeholder headers — no body text is transcribed. There is no Sìkù tíyào (the work was not admitted to the Sìkù).
Abstract
Dating window 1729–1740: the Gǔyì is internally cross-referenced from the Chǎnzhù (KR3ea055, 1729 preface) and conversely references the Chǎnzhù as a companion volume; the two works were almost certainly composed in tandem, with the Gǔyì finalized between the 1729 Chǎnzhù preface and the 1736 first impression. The work circulated in the same Jiāngnán medical book trade as the Chǎnzhù and is preserved chiefly via the same Yītǒng zhèngmài / Qing-Republican reprint line. Dīng Jǐn’s biographical record is otherwise thin — see 丁錦 for what is recoverable. The doctrinal stance: the eighty-one nán are best read as a coherent late-Hàn redaction, against which the YuánMíng additions of the mìngmén doctrine and the xiànghuǒ doctrine appear as late accretions.
Translations and research
- Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: Nan-ching (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) — includes Dīng’s gǔyì readings in the comparative apparatus.
- No substantial English-language treatment of Dīng’s two Nànjīng works has appeared.