Nànjīng jīngshì 難經經釋
Canonical Glosses on the Classic of Difficulties by 徐大椿 (Xú Dàchūn, 1693–1771, 清) — author
About the work
The Nànjīng jīngshì in two juan is 徐大椿 Xú Dàchūn’s earliest major medical work, completed in 1727 when he was thirty-five suì. The commentary is methodologically rigorous and doctrinally conservative-philological: Xú reads the Nànjīng not as a free-standing classic on a par with the Sùwèn, but as a Hàn-period systematization of the Nèijīng whose authority rests entirely on its fidelity to the parent canon. Each of the eighty-one nán is therefore re-read against the Sùwèn / Língshū passages from which it derives; where the Nànjīng departs from the Nèijīng, Xú prefers the Nèijīng and flags the divergence. This is the explicit polemical thesis of the work: the late-Míng commentarial tradition (張介賓 Zhāng Jièbīn KR3ea036 in particular) treated the Nànjīng’s departures as doctrinal advances; Xú treats them as errors. The book carries the Wújiāng Xú Dàchūn jí 吳江徐大椿集 prefatory signature.
Tiyao
KR3ea059_000.txt, _001.txt, and _003.txt in the jicheng.tw directory contain only org-mode placeholder headers — no body text is transcribed. The work was admitted to the Sìkù quánshū (alongside Xú’s Yīxué yuánliú lùn and Lántái guǐfàn); the corresponding Sìkù tíyào in juan 104 of the Zǒngmù is brief and lukewarm, noting Xú’s polemic against the Nànjīng but commending his philological method.
Abstract
Composition firmly dated to 1727 by Xú’s own preface; the work is the first of his eight major medical writings and establishes the methodological signature that recurs in the later Yīxué yuánliú lùn (1757) and Lántái guǐfàn (1764) — kǎojù-style fidelity to the earliest sources, polemical independence from received scholastic authority, and willingness to challenge SòngYuánMíng synthetic developments. Xú’s framework: the Nànjīng is valuable as a clarification of the Nèijīng where it stays close, and erroneous where it departs (most notoriously in the right-kidney mìngmén doctrine of nán 36 / 39, which Xú reads as an unwarranted Hàn-era innovation). The argument was widely contested by later Qing physicians sympathetic to the late-Míng tradition but became a touchstone of the xīnyīxué 新醫學 movement of the Republican era, which adopted Xú’s methodological scepticism. The work was reprinted in the Xú Língtāi yīshū quánjí 徐靈胎醫書全集 (multiple Qing-Republican impressions) and remains in current circulation via the Beijing Rénmín wèishēng critical edition (1956).
Translations and research
- Catherine Despeux, “Xu Dachun: Origines et évolution de la médecine chinoise” (annotated French translation of Yīxué yuánliú lùn) (Paris: Éditions de la Maisnie, 1990) — for Xú’s methodological framework.
- Paul U. Unschuld, Forgotten Traditions of Ancient Chinese Medicine (Brookline: Paradigm, 1990) — extended English commentary on Xú’s Yīxué yuánliú lùn; cross-references the Nànjīng jīngshì.
- Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: Nan-ching (Berkeley, 1986) — integrates Xú’s Jīngshì into the comparative apparatus.
- Yú Yīng’áo 余瀛鼇, Xú Língtāi yīshū kǎo 徐靈胎醫書考 (Beijing: Rénmín wèishēng, 1985).
Other points of interest
The Nànjīng jīngshì is the only Nànjīng commentary by an author of independent first-rank canonical authority in late-imperial medicine — Xú’s own status as a major medical thinker means his disagreements with the Nànjīng carry weight that the technical commentators (Dīng Jǐn, Yè Lín) cannot match. The work’s polemic against the Nànjīng’s right-kidney mìngmén doctrine is the most-cited single passage of Qing-period NèiNàn scholarship and was the principal target of 黃元御 Huáng Yuányù’s KR3ea063 Nànjīng xuánjiě (1753), which directly rebuts Xú on this point.