Dìng Zhèng Tài Sù Mài Bì Jué 訂正太素脈秘訣
Corrected Secret Songs of the Primordial Pulse by 張太素 (Zhāng Tàisù — also called Zhāng Shānrén 張山人, fl. late Wànlì, 明)
About the work
A two-juan late-Ming text of the Tài sù mài 太素脈 (“Primordial Pulse”) tradition — a divinatory and prognostic application of pulse diagnosis that reads life-fate, official success, fortune, longevity, and personality from the pulse signature rather than reading disease. The Tài sù mài tradition emerged in SòngYuán divinatory circles, was systematised in the early Ming by Zhāng Tàisù (a Daoist physician whose home of origin is variously given as 蜀, 浙, and 海陵), and was popularised in print by the late-Ming physician-publisher Gōng Tíngxián 龔廷賢. The present text is the Dìng zhèng (corrected) version, edited and prefaced by Gōng Tíngxián and printed in his publishing programme as part of the Wàn-lì-era medical-and-divinatory literature.
Prefaces
KR3eb017_000.txt carries the preface Jiā chuán Tàisù mài bì jué xù 家傳太素脈秘訣序 by Gōng Tíngxián 龔廷賢 of Yùzhāng Yúnlín 豫章雲林 (江西), undated but datable to the Wànlì period (Gōng’s principal publishing decade is 1576–1620). The preface frames the work cosmologically in terms of Buddhist embryology (地水火風眾緣和合 “earth-water-fire-wind, the four causes harmonising”) and Daoist qìyīnyáng circulation, and then introduces the practical division: “as breath has buoyant/sunken/slow/rapid signatures, so the pulse can predict good and ill fortune, life and death.” Gōng identifies the source as “張山人脈訣” — the Pulse Songs of Master Zhāng — and presents this edition as the standardised corrected text.
Abstract
The Tài sù mài literature stands apart from the mainstream of Chinese pulse diagnosis. Where Wáng Shūhé KR3eb011 Mài jīng, Cuī Jiāyàn’s mnemonic, and the later Bīnhú / Yī zōng jīn jiàn lineage use the pulse to diagnose disease, the Tài sù tradition uses it to read fate — a xiàngshù 象數 / divinatory inversion of the diagnostic project. The principal figures associated with the literature in Yuán-Ming Daoist circles are Tàisù mài fǎ shī 太素脈法師 (the title under which the doctrines were transmitted) and the early-Ming Zhāng Shānrén 張山人 — the latter conventionally identified with the author of this text. The Tài sù mài survived into the Qīng as a marginal but persistent tradition; it was condemned by the orthodox medical commentators (Lǐ Shízhēn called the practice charlatan-ridden) but was widely employed in popular fortune-telling. The two-juan structure of this Dìng zhèng edition consists of (juan 1) general principles and the seven-image classification, (juan 2) signatures for each of the standard life-categories (longevity, official rank, marriage, wealth, illness, death).
The author “張太素” is best regarded as a tradition-name rather than a historical individual; the conventional dating to the late Wànlì period reflects the printing rather than the composition of the doctrines, which are older.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation exists.
- The Tài sù mài tradition is surveyed in Yī Bóhán 醫伯瀚 (ed.), Tài sù mài bǎo cáng 太素脈寶藏 (Beijing: Renmin weisheng, 2007), and discussed critically in Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Yī shì wú yán de tiān-rén guān 醫之有言的天人觀 (Beijing: Beijing kexue jishu, 2003).
- Lǐ Shízhēn’s polemic against the Tài sù mài in the Běn cǎo gāng mù prefatory matter is the standard orthodox-medical assessment.
Other points of interest
The text is a window onto the porous boundary between medical and divinatory practice in late-Ming popular culture. Gōng Tíngxián’s willingness to include it in his publishing programme alongside straight medical texts (his own Wàn bìng huí chūn 萬病回春 and Shòu shì bǎo yuán 壽世保元) signals that the late-Ming practitioner-readership accepted this kind of xiàngshù extension of pulse diagnosis as a legitimate companion to disease diagnosis, even when its orthodox-medical credentials were disputed.
Links
- Wikidata: not assigned.
- 訂正太素脈秘訣 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB