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紹興本草

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Text ID
KR3ec014
Date
1157–1159
Dynasty
宋·南宋

Shàoxīng Běncǎo 紹興本草

Materia Medica Edited in the Shaoxing Era — formally Shàoxīng jiàodìng jīngshǐ zhènglèi bèijí běncǎo 紹興校定經史證類備急本草 by 王繼先 (Wáng Jìxiān, 1098–1181, Hànlín 醫官) et al., under imperial commission of Sòng Gāozōng

About the work

The Shàoxīng běncǎo is the third and last of the Sòng imperial revisions of Táng Shènwēi’s 唐慎微 Zhènglèi běncǎo tradition (KR3ec009), following the Dàguān (1108) and Zhènghé (1116) recensions. Begun in Shàoxīng 27 (1157) by Wáng Jìxiān, Gāo Shàogōng 高紹功, Zǐyuán 紫源, and Zhāng Xiàozhí 張孝直 under the Hànlín Medical Bureau, it was presented to the throne in 1159 (Shàoxīng 29) under the title Shàoxīng jiàodìng jīngshǐ zhènglèi bèijí běncǎo. The work is in 32 juǎn + 目錄 1 — slightly larger than the Zhènghé — and its principal novelty is a complete set of colour-illustrated plates, executed in colour rather than monochrome woodblock. It was printed in Shàoxīng but apparently never widely circulated; surviving copies are mostly in Japan.

Prefaces

The 漢學文典 transmitted text contains only a single short empty file (the source directory contains only KR3ec014_001.txt with the mandoku metadata header and no body). The text proper survives in fragments — primarily in two partial Japanese manuscripts, one at the Kunaichō Shoryōbu 宮内庁書陵部 (Imperial Household Archives, Tōkyō) and the other at the Ryūmonbunko 龍谷大學 library — plus citations in Yuán-Míng zhènglèi-line texts. The complete preface is preserved in the Kunaichō manuscript and is reproduced in modern reconstructions.

Abstract

Wáng Jìxiān (王繼先, 1098–1181, CBDB 38418) was the leading imperial physician of the Southern Sòng court under Gāozōng, the senior Hànlín yìguān 翰林醫官. He was personally favoured by Gāozōng and his medical advice was highly valued; he was raised to Guānglù dàfū 光祿大夫 in 1158. His subsequent fall (1161, impeachment by remonstrance officials and demotion) and exile-death (1181) overshadowed the work; later Sòng historians (《宋史》 j.470 places him in 佞幸傳) were unsympathetic, and this contributed to the Shàoxīng běncǎo’s comparatively limited transmission within China. The text was carried to Japan via the early Kamakura medical networks (which were importing Sòng pharmacopoeias) and there preserved.

The work’s principal historical significance is twofold:

  1. As the first colour-illustrated state pharmacopoeia in Chinese history (and arguably in world history before the 16th-century European herbals).
  2. As the immediate base text for the Japanese Honzō tradition through the Kamakura period: the Ryūmonbunko manuscript is the source from which Tanba Yorinari 丹波頼業 and his disciples drew their working knowledge of Chinese pharmacology, and from which the Wamyō honzō tradition descends.

The catalog meta lists four persons: Wáng Jìxiān (王繼先) as principal editor, with Gāo Shàogōng (高紹功), Zǐyuán (紫源), and Zhāng Xiàozhí (張孝直) as collaborators. None of the three collaborators is independently documented; their names appear only in the Shàoxīng běncǎo’s editorial colophon, preserved in the Kunaichō manuscript.

Translations and research

  • Watanabe Kōzō 渡邊幸三. 1987. Honzō-sho no kenkyū 本草書の研究. Tōkyō: Kazama. — comprehensive study of the Shàoxīng manuscripts.
  • Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠. 2007. Shàoxīng běncǎo zhī yánjiū 紹興本草之研究 (in Chinese). Shanghai kexue jishu.
  • Shang Zhijun 尚志鈞 (coll.). 2007. Shàoxīng běncǎo huà tú 紹興本草畫圖 (facsimile). Renmin weisheng.
  • No Western-language translation; partial discussion in Métailié, SCC vol. 6 part 4, ch. 4.

Other points of interest

The Kunaichō manuscript contains the only surviving colour woodblock images from a Sòng pharmacopoeia — invaluable for the history of natural-history illustration in East Asia. The illustrations are stylistically distinct from those of Sū Sòng’s Tújīng běncǎo (KR3ec006), reflecting Southern Sòng court botanical conventions.

The local 漢學文典 transmission contains no body text (only the mandoku header file), so the content of this entry is reconstructed entirely from external sources.

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