Běncǎo Yuēyán 本草約言
Brief Discussions of the Materia Medica attributed to 薛己 (Xuē Jǐ, 1487–1559, 明; the catalog meta gives 薛已 — a typographical slip for 薛己 — preserved here per CLAUDE.md)
About the work
The Běncǎo yuēyán is another of the mid-Míng Xuē-school pharmacologies, parallel to Běncǎo xiángjié (KR3ec035) and Shíwù běncǎo (KR3ec034). The work is a brief (yuē 約 — abbreviated; yán 言 — discussion) digest of pharmacological knowledge for clinical reference. The catalog attribution is to “薛已” — a typographical slip for 薛己 (Xuē Jǐ), preserved here per repository convention.
Prefaces
The local repository preserves only a header file. Major Míng editions preserve a brief Xuē-school preface noting the work’s pedagogical intent.
Abstract
For Xuē Jǐ’s biographical context see his existing person note. The dating range reflects his lifetime. Like the other Xuē-school pharmacologies, this work belongs to a publishing programme that may have been more associative than directly authored — the Xuē brand serving as a recognition mark for a stream of mid-Míng pharmacological pedagogy.
The text is little studied in modern scholarship; its principal value is as a witness to the mid-Míng pharmacological digest genre.
Translations and research
- No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The Xuē-school pharmacological corpus — Shíwù běncǎo, Běncǎo xiángjié, Běncǎo yuēyán (KR3ec034-036) — sometimes treated as three independent works, may also be understood as a coordinated three-format pharmacological reference: encyclopaedic (Shíwù), detailed (Xiángjié), and abbreviated (Yuēyán). The catalog’s separation into three entries reflects the bibliographic tradition, not necessarily the authorial intent.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 本草約言 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB