神農本草經

Shénnóng Běncǎo Jīng 神農本草經

The Divine Husbandman’s Classic of Materia Medica (Sūn-family reconstructed text) by 神農 (attributed) — pseudepigraphic Han compilation; reconstructed by 孫星衍 (Sūn Xīngyǎn, 1753–1818, 清) and his nephew 孫馮翼 (Sūn Féngyì, fl. late 18th c., 清), 輯

About the work

The Shénnóng běncǎo jīng 神農本草經 is the foundational text of the Chinese pharmacopoeic tradition. The received core is generally agreed to have crystallised between the late Western Hàn and the Eastern Hàn (1st century BCE – 2nd century CE) as a tripartite (上/中/下) catalog of 365 medicinal substances — plant, mineral, and animal — each classified by toxicity and intended use. The original was lost by the Suí; what survives is recovered from later quotations and from the chromatic interleavings (朱墨 black/red) of Táo Hóngjǐng’s 陶弘景 Jízhù 集注 (KR3ec003) as transmitted through Sòng pharmacopoeias such as the Dàguān běncǎo 大觀本草 (KR3ec009). This particular KR3ec001 edition is the Sūn Xīngyǎn / Sūn Féngyì recension completed in 嘉慶四年 1799 — one of three major Qīng reconstructions (the others being those of 顧觀光 Gù Guānguāng and 黃奭 Huáng Shì). The Sūn brothers worked back from the Dàguān běncǎo’s 黑白字 interleaving, restoring as 神農本經 only those entries in white (朱) and those quoted in 《太平御覽》 with the formula “生山谷” / “生川澤” (no Han-era post-dating jùnxiàn names attached), supplementing each entry from Wú Pǔ 吳普 (KR3ec002), Shuōwén 說文, Ěryǎ 爾雅, Guǎngyǎ 廣雅, Huáinánzǐ 淮南子, and Bàopǔzǐ 抱朴子 to recover the early commentarial layer.

Prefaces

Four prefaces stand at the head of the work as transmitted in 漢學文典:

1. 邵晉涵 序 by 邵晉涵 (Shào Jìnhán, 1742–1796, the famous Sìkù compiler from Yúyáo). Shào situates the Běnjīng within the classical curriculum: Lǐjì “醫不三世，不服其藥” — the “three generations” of medical knowledge being the Huángdì zhēnjiǔ, the Shénnóng běncǎo, and the Sùnǚ mài jué. He praises the Sūn brothers’ philological rigour in distinguishing 經文 from later 名醫 accretions and aligns the project with classical kǎozhèng 考證 scholarship.
2. 張炯 序 by Zhāng Jiǒng of Xuānchéng 宣城 (dated 嘉慶四年冬十月 = 1799). Zhāng argues for the unity of ru 儒 and yī 醫: “Shénnóng is one of the great Confucians of antiquity.” He praises Sūn for going beyond Miù Xīyōng 繆希雍 (Běncǎo jīng shū KR3ec019) and Lú Zhīyí 盧之頤 (Běncǎo chéngyǎ bànjì KR3ec026) by treating the Jīng as a jīng (canonical text) rather than as raw material for medical opinion.
3. 孫星衍 自序 by Sūn Xīngyǎn himself, an extended philological essay laying out his editorial method. He confronts the perennial doubts about Shénnóng authorship — Yán Zhītuī’s 顏氏家訓 objection that the Běncǎo mentions Yùzhāng 豫章, Zhūyá 朱崖, Cháng Shān 常山, Fènggāo 奉高 (post-Hàn jùnxiàn) — by following Táo Hóngjǐng in attributing such interpolations to later hands (likely Zhāng Zhòngjǐng 張仲景, Huà Yuánhuà 華元化, or their school). He explicitly rebukes Lǐ Shízhēn 李時珍 for the Běncǎo gāngmù (KR3ec025) — “its very title is silly” (其名已愚) — for slicing up the Dàguān tradition without philological discipline.
4. 周學海 跋 by 周學海 (Zhōu Xuéhǎi, Chéngzhī 澂之, 1856–1906) dated 光緒辛卯仲秋 = autumn 1891, written when Zhōu reprinted the Sūn recension at his Jiàndé 建德 (Anhuī) press. Zhōu compares it to the contemporaneous Gù Guānguāng 顧觀光 reconstruction, criticises Gù’s failure to consult the Běnjīng index in the Gāngmù juan 2, and notes the puzzling discrepancy that “the two books, both based on the Dàguān, differ in their 三品 placements by nearly twelve substances.”

Abstract

The Sūn reconstruction (1799) became the most widely circulated form of the Shénnóng běncǎo jīng in modern Chinese medical scholarship, partly because Sūn Xīngyǎn was a leading evidential-research (考據) classicist, partly because Zhōu Xuéhǎi’s 1891 reprint in the Jiàndé Zhōushì yīxué cóngshū 建德周氏醫學叢書 put it into wide circulation. The book is in three juǎn corresponding to the three grades (上、中、下品) of the original classification, plus an opening 序錄 reconstructed from the Táo Hóngjǐng preface preserved in Jízhù. Each substance entry gives (a) the 經 text in the Sūn editors’ judgement, (b) variant names, (c) Wú Pǔ 吳普 (named-physicians) annotation where extant, (d) cross-references to Shuōwén, Ěryǎ, Guǎngyǎ, Huáinánzǐ, Bàopǔzǐ, etc. The 365-substance count of the original is preserved.

Sūn Xīngyǎn, zì Yuānrú 淵如, was a leading scholar of the Qián-Jiā evidential-research school, a native of Yánghú 陽湖 (Jiāngsū), jìnshì of 1787; CBDB 34196 gives lifedates 1753–1818. His pharmacological reconstruction is sometimes dismissed by physicians as a bookish exercise (Zhōu Xuéhǎi’s preface tactfully calls Sūn “not himself a knower of medicine”), but its value as a critical edition is undisputed; it is the principal source for nearly every modern translation of the Běnjīng. The catalog meta lists the original work as 佚名 (anonymous) because the historical author of the Han core is unknown despite the conventional Shénnóng attribution; the Sūns are recorded as 輯 (compilers / restorers).

Translations and research

• Wilms, Sabine. 2017. The Divine Farmer’s Classic of Materia Medica: Shénnóng běncǎo jīng. Corbett, OR: Happy Goat Productions. — based principally on the Sūn recension.
• Ma Jixing 馬繼興 (chief ed.). 1995. Shénnóng běncǎo jīng jízhù 神農本草經輯注. Rénmín wèishēng. — the modern critical edition, collating Sūn, Gù, and Huáng recensions against the Dūnhuáng fragments.
• Despeux, Catherine. Entry “Shennong bencao jing” in Pregadio (ed.), Encyclopedia of Taoism; also in EMCT (Early Medieval Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide).
• Unschuld, Paul U. 1986. Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics. UCP. — chapters 1–2 narrate the textual history of the Běnjīng and its Qīng reconstructions.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §41.3.2 — points to the work as “the earliest systematic pharmacopoeia of which parts have survived.”

Links

• Wikidata: Q11078316 (神農本草經 / Shennong Ben Cao Jing).
• Wikipedia (zh): 神農本草經.
• Online text via ctext.org: ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=183330 (Sūn-family recension).
• 神農本草經 jicheng.tw
• Kanseki DB