Huángdì bāshíyī Nànjīng zǎntú jùjiě 黃帝八十一難經纂圖句解
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Eighty-One Difficulties: Diagrammed and Phrase-by-Phrase Annotated by 李駉 (Lǐ Jiōng, fl. Southern 宋 mid-13th c.) — author
About the work
The Huángdì bāshíyī Nànjīng zǎntú jùjiě in seven juan is the earliest illustrated Nànjīng commentary, completed in 1269 (Sòng Xiánchún 咸淳 5) by Lǐ Jiōng 李駉 — the otherwise poorly attested Southern-Sòng medical scholar listed in the CBDB as no. 103033 (the entry carries no lifedates and only summary biographical information). The work’s zǎntú (assembled diagrams) supply for each of the eighty-one nán one or more woodblock illustrations — anatomical schematics of the channels, viscera, pulse-positions, and acupuncture-point clusters — and the jùjiě (phrase-by-phrase explication) walks each nán sentence by sentence. The combination is unique in the Sòng commentarial tradition: where Lǚ Guǎng, Yáng Xuáncāo, and Dīng Dérún supply learned doctrinal commentary without illustration, Lǐ Jiōng pioneers the integrated illustrated approach that would later be canonized by 滑壽 Huá Shòu’s KR3ea060 Běnyì (1361) and the Shísì jīng fāhuī (1341).
Tiyao
KR3ea065_001.txt contains only the org-mode placeholder header; the body text is not transcribed in this directory. The work has a Sìkù tíyào in the Zǐbù yījiā lèi 子部醫家類; the Sìkù editors classified it as a Sòng-period illustrated commentary of moderate value, useful for understanding Sòng readings of the Nànjīng but superseded for clinical use by Huá Shòu’s Běnyì. The illustrations are nonetheless flagged in the tíyào as a documentary contribution.
Abstract
Date 1269, attested by Lǐ Jiōng’s preface preserved in the surviving YuánMíng impressions and in the Sìkù WYG witness (KR5d0047 is the canonical Sìkù entry of the same work). Lǐ Jiōng is listed in CBDB 103033 without lifedates; his prosopographic record is the slimmest of any Nànjīng commentator who is securely identified. The standard biographical reference is the SòngYuán xué’àn bǔyí 宋元學案補遺 entry, which records only his name, the title of the Zǎntú jùjiě, and the Xiánchún 5 date. Modern scholarship (Liào Yùqún 2002; Mayanagi Makoto in Nihon ishigaku zasshi studies of SòngYuán medical illustration) places him among the Southern Sòng medical scholars active in the Lín’ān 臨安 medical book trade.
The Zǎntú jùjiě is the earliest surviving illustrated Nànjīng commentary and the principal source for reconstructing Southern-Sòng anatomical and channel-pathway iconography. The illustrations were copied — often modified — into the late-Yuán and Wanli-era popular anthologies (cf. KR3ea064) and constitute the iconographic substrate of the early-modern Chinese medical visual culture.
Translations and research
- Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Chónggòu Nànjīng 重構難經 (Tāiběi: Academia Sinica, 2002) — Chapter 4 engages Lǐ Jiōng’s illustrated commentary.
- Paul U. Unschuld, Medicine in China: Nan-ching (Berkeley, 1986) — uses Lǐ’s readings in the comparative apparatus.
- Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠, “Sōdai no zushiki ishigaku” 宋代の図式医学, Nihon ishigaku zasshi 日本醫史學雜誌 30.2 (1984): 169–192.
- No English-language translation of Lǐ Jiōng’s commentary located.
Other points of interest
The illustrations of the Zǎntú jùjiě — especially the channel-pathway diagrams for the twelve regular and the eight extraordinary vessels — predate by seventy years the standard Yuán Shísì jīng fāhuī iconography of Huá Shòu (1341) and represent the earliest surviving complete Chinese medical channel-diagram set. They were the principal model for the late-Sòng Japanese kanpō illustrated tradition transmitted through Tanba no Yasuyori’s school.
Links
- CTEXT 《黃帝八十一難經纂圖句解》
- Companion entry: KR5d0047 (canonical WYG Sìkù witness of the same text).