Běncǎo Gāngmù Biémíng Lù 本草綱目別名錄
Index of Alternate Names from the Compendium of Materia Medica attributed to 李時珍 (Lǐ Shízhēn, zì Dōngbì 東璧, hào Bīnhú 瀕湖, 1518–1593, 明)
About the work
The Běncǎo gāngmù biémíng lù is an auxiliary index of alternate (synonym) names extracted from Lǐ Shízhēn’s Běncǎo gāngmù (KR3ec025). It cross-references the multiple Chinese popular, regional, and book-tradition names by which a drug substance can be known, against the canonical Gāngmù headings. The text functions as a finding aid: a clinician encountering an unfamiliar substance name in a prescription, a regional gazetteer, or a bǐjì could trace it back to the Gāngmù’s formal entry and read off the standardised pharmacological profile.
The work is conventionally attributed to Lǐ Shízhēn himself — the Gāngmù’s entries do include extensive 釋名 (“name elucidation”) sections from which such an index could be mechanically extracted, and it is plausible that Lǐ or his sons (who oversaw the 1596 first printing) compiled such an index as a printer’s appendix. However, no Míng or early-Qīng catalog records the Biémíng lù as an independent work, and the index format also suggests a later derivative compilation. The work is best understood as a Gāngmù finding aid of indeterminate Míng–Qīng date that the tradition has placed under Lǐ’s name. The date bracket here (1593–1900) reflects this uncertainty.
Prefaces
The local repository preserves only the index body — no preface or compiler’s note.
Abstract
Lǐ Shízhēn (李時珍, 1518–1593) is the great late-Míng pharmacologist whose Běncǎo gāngmù (KR3ec025) is the dominant pharmacopoeia of the early-modern Chinese tradition. See his person note for biographical detail.
The Biémíng lù is one of several Qīng-era Gāngmù-derived auxiliary works (alongside the Běncǎo gāngmù shíyí KR3ec049 and various extracted summaries) that show how the Gāngmù became, in the Qīng, less a book to be read straight through than a reference system to be queried through finding aids. The Biémíng lù in particular is the principal pre-modern Chinese synonymy of drug substances; it remained in use into the early 20th century before being superseded by the modern botanical-Latin nomenclature.
Translations and research
- Métailié, Georges. 2015. Science and Civilisation in China, vol. VI:4 (Traditional Botany). CUP. — discusses Gāngmù synonymy practices.
- Běncǎo gāngmù critical editions (Liú Héngrú 劉衡如 et al., Renmin weisheng) reproduce the Biémíng tradition as an apparatus.
- No standalone Western-language treatment.
Links
- Wikidata: not yet assigned.
- 本草綱目別名錄 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB