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 Táng-Sòng 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
Reminder: AI generated list - beware of hallucinations. Corrections and additions welcome
- 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