Yàozhǒng Chāo 藥種抄 / Yakushushō
Notes on the Categories of Medicinal Substances attributed to 兼意 (Ken’i, Japanese Shingon monk, b. 1072 – d. after 1145, late-Heian / early-Kamakura)
About the work
The Yakushushō is one of three companion pharmacological works produced in the late-Heian / early-Kamakura Daigo-ji 醍醐寺 / Mōzan-ji 茂山寺 monastic milieu and conventionally attributed to the Shingon scholar-monk Ken’i 兼意 (b. 1072): together with the Kokuruishō 穀類抄 (KR3ec074, on grains) and the Kōyōshō 香要抄 (KR3ec075, on aromatics), the three works constitute a complete Buddhist-monastic pharmacopoeia covering medicinal substances proper (yakushu), dietary substances (kokurui), and aromatic / ritual substances (kōyō).
The Yakushushō covers the standard medicinal substances of the Tang-Heian pharmacological canon, drawing on the Honzō wamyō 本草和名 (KR3ec072, 918) of Fukae Sukehito 深江輔仁 for the Japanese vocabulary plus the imported TángSòng pharmacological literature as filtered through Buddhist monastic compounding practice. The work transmits, alongside the formal pharmacology, the monastic-medical tradition associated with Shingon ritual (which used pharmacological substances both medicinally and as offering / ritual materials). This double character — pharmacological + ritual — is distinctive of the medieval Japanese Buddhist medical tradition and distinguishes the three Daigo-ji works from the courtly Ishinpō 醫心方 tradition of the Heian secular medical establishment.
Prefaces
The local repository file is an empty placeholder; the Yakushushō text is not present in this repository fragment. The work survives in part in the Zoku gunsho ruijū 続群書類従 series and in Buddhist-canonical compendia.
Abstract
Ken’i (兼意, b. 1072), the late-Heian Shingon monk. See his person note for the limited biographical detail available.
The work’s significance is as one of the principal late-Heian / early-Kamakura Buddhist-monastic pharmacopoeias. Together with its sister works it documents the Buddhist-mediated transmission of Sino-Japanese pharmacological knowledge in the period before the Kamakura Zen tradition (榮西 Eisai, 道元 Dōgen) reintroduced Sòng pharmacology directly. The three Daigo-ji works are an important documentary witness to the late-Heian state of Japanese pharmacology and to the role of Shingon monastic institutions in preserving Tang pharmacological learning.
Translations and research
- Endō Jun’ichirō 遠藤潤一郎. 1995. Kamakura-jidai no honzōgaku 鎌倉時代の本草学. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan.
- Goble, Andrew Edmund. 2011. Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan. UH Press.
- Maki Sachiko 槙佐知子, various studies of medieval Japanese pharmacology.
- Zoku gunsho ruijū 続群書類従 (relevant volume).
- No complete Western-language treatment.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the very few extant documents of the Heian-Kamakura Buddhist-monastic pharmacological tradition. Its sister work Kōyōshō is the principal medieval Japanese reference on aromatic substances and is independently important for the history of incense.
Links
- Wikipedia (ja): 香要抄 (treats the trio together).
- 藥種抄 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB