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滇南本草

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Text ID
KR3ec020
Date
1436–1476
Dynasty
明

Diānnán Běncǎo 滇南本草

Materia Medica of Southern Yunnan by 蘭茂 (Lán Mào, zì Tíngxiù 廷秀, hào Zhǐ’ān 止庵, 1397–1476, 明)

About the work

The Diānnán běncǎo is the first major regional pharmacopoeia in Chinese history and the foundational text of Yúnnán ethnobotanical pharmacology. Lán Mào, a Yúnnán scholar-physician working at his retreat in Sōnghuájiāng 嵩明 (modern Sōngmíng, north of Kūnmíng), compiled the work from 1436 onwards through more than four decades of field collecting from the diverse ethnic groups of Yúnnán — Hàn, Yí 彝, Bái 白, Nàxī 納西, Dài 傣, and Miáo 苗 — and from his own clinical practice with the local flora and fauna. The work catalogues over 458 substances unique or near-unique to Yúnnán, including many plants and minerals not previously recorded in the Zhènglèi tradition (Běncǎo gāngmù (KR3ec025) of 1593 cites Diānnán běncǎo on multiple occasions). It is the principal late-Míng witness to the non-Chinese pharmacological knowledge of south-west China.

The original autograph in 3 juǎn circulated only in Yúnnán manuscript copies through the Qīng. A printed edition appeared in 1887 (Guāngxù 13), and the modern critical edition was prepared by the Yúnnán Provincial Drug Research Institute in 1959. The work was the first text of premodern Chinese medicine to be systematically validated against modern botanical taxonomy in the early PRC era, an enterprise that confirmed many of Lán’s drug-plant identifications.

Prefaces

The 漢學文典 transmitted text contains the original Lán Mào preface (date 正統元年 = 1436), explaining the project: “Yúnnán’s mountains and waters are different from the Central Plain; its drugs are different too. Yet the Běncǎo gāng of the past does not record them…” Lán describes his decades of field collecting, his consultations with non-Hàn local healers, and his clinical validation. The preface is one of the earliest Chinese pharmacological writings to grant explicit credit to non-Hàn medical knowledge.

Abstract

Lán Mào (蘭茂, 1397–1476), zì Tíngxiù 廷秀, hào Zhǐ’ān 止庵 (“Hermit Who Stopped”), native of Sōnghuájiāng 嵩明 in Yúnnán. He came from a Wú-region Hàn family that had been relocated to Yúnnán in the early Hóngwǔ era as part of the Míng jūntún 軍屯 settlement of the southwestern frontier. He took the jǔrén exam unsuccessfully and then retired to study medicine and pharmacology; he never held official appointment. His other major works are the Xìnglín yào yào 醒嗽藥要 (a respiratory-medicine manual) and a literary collection Zhǐ’ān shī wén jí 止庵詩文集. He died in 1476 at age 80.

The Diānnán běncǎo’s significance is twofold:

  1. Ethnobotanical — it is the principal premodern record of Yúnnán pharmacological flora, including drugs of Yí, Bái, Nàxī, Dài, Miáo, and other ethnic-group origin. Many of its descriptions are the earliest written attestation of plants that are now major commercial Chinese medicinal drugs (e.g. sānqī 三七 / Panax notoginseng, chónglóu 重樓 / Paris polyphylla, yīndìjué 滇黃精 / Yunnan Polygonatum).
  2. Methodological — its field-collecting methodology, drawing explicitly on non-Hàn informants, prefigures the early-modern ethnobotanical tradition.

CBDB does not have a confident Lán Mào record; standard biographical sources (Yúnnántōngzhì 雲南通志, modern biographical compilations) give 1397–1476 unambiguously.

Translations and research

  • Yúnnán Provincial Drug Research Institute 雲南省藥物研究所 (coll.). 1959; rev. 1975, 2007. Diānnán běncǎo 滇南本草 (critical edition with botanical identifications). Kūnmíng: Yúnnán renmin.
  • Hsu, Elisabeth. 2009. Plants in Medical Traditions / Medical Traditions in Plants: Approaches to the History of Ethnobotany in Asia. — devotes a section to Diānnán běncǎo.
  • Métailié, Georges. 2015. Science and Civilisation in China vol. 6 part 4. — discusses Yúnnán botany.
  • No complete Western-language translation.

Other points of interest

The 1887 print edition was the first appearance of the work outside Yúnnán; its diffusion in the early Mínguó period coincided with the development of “national medicine” (國醫) interest in regional pharmacopoeias.

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