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敖氏傷寒金鏡錄

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Text ID
KR3eb051
Date
1341–1341
Dynasty
元

Áo Shì Shānghán Jīnjìng Lù 敖氏傷寒金鏡錄

Mr. Áo’s Golden-Mirror Record of [Tongue Diagnosis for] Cold-Damage Disorders by 杜本 (Dù Běn, 1276–1350, 元; zì Bóyuán 伯原, hào Qīngbì 清碧), recompiled from a lost work attributed to Áo shì 敖氏 (dates unknown, late Sòng / early Yuán)

About the work

A one-juan Yuán treatise on tongue diagnosis — shé zhěn 舌診 — applied to the differentiation of cold-damage disorders (shānghán 傷寒). The book presents thirty-six numbered tongue figures, each pairing a tongue colour-and-coating type with a syndrome reading and a canonical prescription. The figures are organised by coating colour and morphology (白苔, 黃苔, 黑苔, 灰苔, 紅色, 紫色, 黴醬色, 藍色; jiāng wēn 將瘟, shēng bān 生斑, hóng xīng 紅星, chóng suì 蟲碎, jué yīn 厥陰, lǐ hēi 裡黑, sǐ xiàn 死現, etc.) and prescribe the standard Shānghán formulas (Xiǎo chái hú tāng 小柴胡湯, Dà chéng qì tāng 大承氣湯, Liáng gé sǎn 涼膈散, Bái hǔ tāng 白虎湯, Yīn chén hāo tāng 茵陳蒿湯, Lǐ zhōng tāng 理中湯, Sì nì tāng 四逆湯, etc.). It is the earliest surviving Chinese treatise dedicated specifically to tongue diagnosis and the methodological ancestor of all subsequent works in this division.

Prefaces

KR3eb051_000.txt carries a thick prefatory dossier accumulated through five centuries of re-editions:

  • A “Xùkān Shānghán Jīnjìng lù yuán xù” 續刊傷寒金鏡錄原序 by Chén Nán 陳楠 (Tóngjìnshì chūshēn Dàlǐsì zuǒsìzhèng 賜同進士出身大理寺左寺正; not the Southern-Sòng Daoist patriarch of the same name), narrating the transmission lineage from Zhāng Zhòngjǐng 張仲景 → 王叔和 Wáng Shūhé → Liú Héjiān 劉河間 → 成無己 Chéng Wújǐ, and positioning Áo’s tongue-diagnostic method as the Shānghán tradition’s neglected complement to pulse work: “其法淺而易知，試而輒效，誠千載不偶之秘書也”.
  • A “Shānghán yòng yào shuō” 傷寒用藥說 dated Zhìzhèng gǎi yuán yī yáng jí rì 至正改元一陽吉日 = 1341, by Xiāo Huángmíng 蕭璜鳴, hào Yǒnghé Sānxiānzhìrén 永和三仙至人, framing the work in the now-classical military analogy (the physician is a general; disease is an invader).
  • A Ming preface dated Jiājìng jǐ chǒu 嘉靖己丑 = 1529 by 薛己 Xuē Jǐ (of Chángzhōu 長洲, then Nánjīng Tàiyīyuàn yuànpàn 南京太醫院院判), reporting that he obtained the book in Nánjīng during the Zhèngdé wùchén 正德戊辰 year (1508), that Áo had originally written two secret manuals (Diǎndiǎn jīn 點點金 and Jīnjìng lù 金鏡錄), but that only the Jīnjìng lù was worth transmitting; he therefore had it cut for printing in Huìjījùn 會稽郡. Liángyī suǒ liángyī 良醫所良醫 Mǎ Chóngrú 馬崇儒 of Qīngfān 青藩 is named as jiào kān 校刊.
  • A postface dated Jiājìng jǐ wèi 嘉靖己未 = 1559 by Tāng Shàoēn 湯紹恩 (hào Dǔzhāi 篤齋, native of Xīshǔ 西蜀), recording that Chén Yàncái 陳彥材 of Gǔyú 古虞 had sent him the manuscript and that he was now reprinting it for wider circulation: “良醫者猶良相也”.

The Yuán core preface is dated to 1341 (至正元年); the work as received is therefore Yuán in composition but Ming in editorial transmission.

Abstract

Áo 敖 — given in some late sources as Áo Jìwēng 敖繼翁 — is otherwise unknown; he flourished in the late Sòng or early Yuán. The composition window for the Yuán core therefore cannot be tightened beyond 1341 (the year 杜本 Dù Běn / Xiāo Huángmíng prefaced and printed the recompilation); the underlying 36 figures may be slightly earlier. The book’s authorial economy is unusual: Áo supplies the 36-figure scheme, Dù Běn supplies the surviving textual frame, Xuē Jǐ supplies the Ming editorial reconstruction, and Tāng Shàoēn supplies the Jiājìng-era re-issue that became the basis of all subsequent printings.

Dù Běn 杜本 (hào Qīngbì 清碧, whence the book is sometimes cited as Dù Qīngbì’s Jīnjìng lù) was a major Yuán recluse-literatus of Qīngjiāng 清江 (modern Jiāngxī). His CBDB lifedates 1276–1350 are corroborated by Sòng Lián’s 宋濂 funerary inscription and by Wikidata Q30086686; he refused all summons under Shùndì 順帝 and lived as a recluse at Wǔyíshān 武夷山.

The diagnostic doctrine of the book is doctrinally striking. Where the Shānghán lùn tradition makes the pulse the principal index of pathological state, Áo / Dù elevate the tongue: “只以舌證，不以脈辨” — “rely on the tongue evidence alone; do not differentiate by pulse” (Chén Nán’s preface). The book is therefore the originating document of an independent tongue-only diagnostic line within the Shānghán tradition; this line was developed by 張登 Zhāng Dēng in KR3eb054 Shānghán shé jiàn (1668) and again by 劉恆瑞 Liú Héngruì in KR3eb053 Chá shé biàn zhèng xīn fǎ (1916), and was synthesised in compendium form by 曹炳章 Cáo Bǐngzhāng in KR3eb056 Biàn shé zhǐ nán (1920).

The transmitted text contains substantial interlinear commentary signed “Jiè àn” 介按 — these are the marginalia of the early-Republican expansion by Wáng Yùtián 王玉田 (active c. 1900–1920, hào Jièbīn 介賓); these commentary blocks belong to the late-Qīng / early-Republican stratum and should not be mistaken for the Yuán core.

Translations and research

  • Zhang, Ting-liang & Bob Flaws, Ao-shi’s Mirror of the Cold Damage (Boulder: Blue Poppy, 1995) — first complete English translation of all 36 figures with commentary.
  • Wong, K. Chimin & Wu, Lien-teh, History of Chinese Medicine (Tianjin: Tientsin Press, 1932; 2nd edn. 1936) — discusses Áo / Dù’s tongue series as the earliest systematic Chinese tongue-diagnostic treatise.
  • Yáng Zhìyī 楊志一 (ed.), Áo shì Shānghán Jīnjìng lù jiào shì 敖氏傷寒金鏡錄校釋 (Beijing: Rénmín wèishēng, 1959; rev. ed. 1986) — standard modern critical edition.
  • Liào Yùqún 廖育群, Qí Huáng yī xué 岐黃醫學 (Beijing: Liáoníng jiàoyù, 1991), discussion of the Yuán tongue-diagnostic synthesis.
  • Áo shì Shānghán Jīnjìng lù 敖氏傷寒金鏡錄, in Zhōng yī gǔ jí zhēn běn jí chéng — Shānghán bìng lèi 中醫古籍珍本集成·傷寒病類 (Changsha: Húnán kēxué jìshù, 2014).

Other points of interest

The “Jīn jìng” 金鏡 of the title — golden mirror — established the metonym for tongue diagnosis in subsequent Chinese medicine; the much later imperially-commissioned Yī zōng jīn jiàn 醫宗金鑑 (1742, 吳謙 Wú Qiān et al.) plays on the same metaphor. The book is also the earliest surviving Chinese pharmacological response to the Shānghán lùn in chart form, anticipating by several centuries the chart-style Shānghán literature of the late Ming and Qīng.

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