Běncǎo Hémíng 本草和名 / Honzō Wamyō
Materia Medica with Japanese Names by 深江輔仁 (Fukae Sukehito 深江輔仁, Japanese physician, fl. early 10th c., Engi era 延喜, 901–923)
About the work
The Honzō wamyō (Chinese reading: Běncǎo hémíng) is the earliest extant Japanese pharmacological dictionary, compiled by imperial command around 918 CE by the Engi-era court physician Fukae Sukehito 深江輔仁 (Chinese: Shēnjiāng Fǔrén), who held the post of naiyaku no kami (内藥正, Director of the Inner Pharmacy). The work is modelled on the Táng Xīn xiū běncǎo 新修本草 (KR3ec004, 659) — the first state-sponsored Chinese pharmacopoeia and the foundational pharmacological reference for Heian Japan — but adapts it to Japanese conditions in two crucial respects: it provides the Japanese (wamyō 和名) phonetic reading for each substance in man’yōgana / early kana, and it indicates for each substance whether it could be obtained from Japanese domestic sources (出產國) or had to be imported from Táng China (most exotic substances).
The work is in 2 juǎn, covering approximately 1025 substances. It is one of the principal documents of Heian-period East Asian pharmacological transmission and is invaluable both as a record of which Táng pharmacological substances were known and used in 10th-century Japan, and as one of the oldest documents of Japanese natural-history terminology (the wamyō readings preserve early-Heian botanical and zoological vocabulary). The work was lost in transmission and survived only in a single Tang-Heian manuscript copy preserved at Daigo-ji 醍醐寺 (Kyōto) until rediscovered in the mid-Edo period; it is now a Japanese National Treasure (kokuhō 国宝).
Prefaces
The local repository preserves only the substance body. Standard editions reproduce the brief Heian imperial commissioning note and Fukae’s editorial conventions.
Abstract
Fukae Sukehito 深江輔仁 (no confident lifedates, fl. early 10th c.), Heian court physician. The post of naiyaku no kami placed him in charge of the imperial pharmacy and the supervision of court pharmacological compounding. The Honzō wamyō is the principal scholarly output of the Engi-era pharmacological establishment.
The work’s significance is multifold. Pharmacologically, it is the earliest systematic Japanese reception of the Xīn xiū běncǎo tradition and is one of the principal sources for reconstructing the contents of the Xīn xiū (large parts of which survive elsewhere only fragmentarily). Linguistically, it is one of the oldest sources for early-Heian Japanese vocabulary, particularly for natural-history terms. Historically, it documents the depth of Táng pharmacological transmission to Heian Japan and the simultaneous development of an indigenous Japanese pharmacopoeia drawing on local flora and fauna.
The work is in the same lineage as the slightly later Wamyō ruijushō 和名類聚抄 (c. 938) of 源順 Minamoto no Shitagō — both works are 10th-century Heian-court Sino-Japanese terminological dictionaries, though the Wamyō ruijushō is a general-purpose terminological work whereas the Honzō wamyō is specifically pharmacological.
Translations and research
- Yajima Genryō 矢島玄亮. 1958. Honzō wamyō no kenkyū 本草和名の研究. Kyūsho Shoten.
- Maki Sachiko 槙佐知子. 1979 (rev. 1991). Zenyaku Honzō wamyō 全訳本草和名. Shunjūsha. — full modern Japanese translation.
- Endo, Jun’ichirō. 2010. “Honzō wamyō and East Asian Pharmacological Transmission”. Journal of East Asian Medical History.
- Goble, Andrew Edmund. 2011. Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan. UH Press. — situates the Honzō wamyō in the Heian pharmacological context.
- No complete Western-language translation.
Other points of interest
The unique Daigo-ji manuscript is one of the most important kokuhō documents in the history of East Asian medicine. Its transmission history — preserved in a Buddhist temple library through the entire medieval period and rediscovered by Tokugawa-era kogaku scholars — is the model case for the recovery of Tang-Heian pharmacological texts through Japanese Buddhist manuscript transmission.
Links
- Wikipedia (ja): 本草和名.
- Wikidata: Q11377040.
- 本草和名 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB