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小品方

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Text ID
KR3ed006
Date
454–473
Dynasty
晉

Xiǎopǐn Fāng 小品方

Lesser Selection of Recipes (also known as Jīngfāng xiǎopǐn 經方小品) by 陳延之 (Chén Yánzhī, fl. mid-5th c., 南朝 LiúSòng / late 晉) — an otherwise unidentified physician working in the Jiāngnán region

About the work

The Xiǎopǐn fāng — also (and in its own preface always) called the Jīngfāng xiǎopǐn 經方小品 — was a 12-juǎn general medical formulary composed in the mid-fifth century by Chén Yánzhī 陳延之. It was, alongside the Mài jīng 脈經 of Wáng Xī 王熙 (or 王叔和) and Gě Hóng’s Zhǒuhòu fāng (KR3ed002), one of the three most-cited fifth-century medical texts in the SuíTáng pharmacological tradition. The Suíshū jīngjízhì 隋書經籍志 records “經方小品十二卷 陳延之撰.” It was lost in China by the late Táng; what survives is (i) substantial quotations in the Wài tái mì yào 外台秘要 (752), the Yī xīn fāng 醫心方 (984, Japanese), and the Tài píng shèng huì fāng 太平聖惠方 (KR3ed007), and (ii) a Japanese-preserved partial manuscript discovered in the Sonkeikaku Bunko 尊經閣文庫 (collection of the Maeda family) in 1985 — about 1 juǎn of the original, the first time a substantial Chén Yánzhī text fragment had been seen in either China or Japan in roughly a millennium.

The author’s own preface (transmitted complete with the work, surviving as the first thing the Sonkeikaku manuscript opens with) is one of the most theoretically explicit medical prefaces of the pre-Táng tradition. It articulates the yōusuí 應隨 principle — the idea that “old recipes” cannot be applied mechanically because patients differ by age, sex, regional climate, constitution, dietary habit, and seasonal qì — and is therefore cited heavily by historians of Chinese medical theory.

Prefaces

A single self-preface by Chén Yánzhī stands at the head of the work. It comprises three intellectual moves:

  1. Why old recipes alone do not heal. Recipes were originally written down by physicians at the time of the illness, recording what worked for this patient here; later transmission inverted the priority, making the recorded recipe the master and the patient the case to which it was applied. Without attention to bencao drug-nature, regional and seasonal qì variation, and individual constitution, a recipe that healed in Lǐngnán may injure in Huáiběi. This is one of the earliest explicit Chinese formulations of what would later be called biànzhèng lùnzhì 辨證論治 (treatment differentiated by syndrome).
  2. A bibliographic inventory of pre-existing medical texts. Chén lists the contents of the Mìgé sìbù shū mùlù 秘閣四部書目錄 medical section as he had it: Huà Tuó fāng 10 juǎn; Zhāng Zhòngjǐng Biàn shānghán bìng fāng 9 juǎn “though copies in circulation differ in juǎn count”; Zhāng Zhòngjǐng Zá fāng 8 juǎn; Huáng sù fāng 黃素方 25 juǎn; Gěshì (Gě Hóng) Suǒzhuàn fāng 4 juǎn; Ruǎn Hénán zhuàn fāng 15 juǎn; Liáodōng dūwèi guǎng suǒzhuàn bèijí fāng + Zhōnggǔ bèijí combined 2 juǎn; Yángshì zhuàn fāng 9 juǎn; zázhuàn fāng 7 juǎn; zhì xià tāng wán sǎn fāng 10 juǎn; zhì fùrén fāng 13 juǎn; zhì shàoxiǎo zázhuàn fāng 30 juǎn; zhì yǎn fāng 5 juǎn; zá gāo fāng 10 juǎn; Fàn Dōngyáng suǒzhuàn fāng 109 juǎn (assembled after Fàn Ānběi crossed the Yangtze); plus Yáng Zhōngsǎn 30 juǎn and Qín Chéngzǔ 20 juǎn. This list is the single most important early bibliographic witness to fifth-century Chinese medical literature, and Chén’s status as a meticulous compiler is established by it.
  3. The editorial method of the present work. From this enormous mass of inherited material Chén selected what he judged authoritative (“撰取十卷可承案者”), added 1 juǎn of pharmacological “drug-natures-and-principal-treatments” bencao, and 1 juǎn of moxa key-points, for a total of 12 juǎn. The aim was that “in remote villages with no master-physician at hand, anyone may use this work for emergencies”; junior practitioners are encouraged to learn this Xiǎopǐn first, before tackling the Dàpǐn (the great compilations).

Abstract

Almost nothing is known of Chén Yánzhī 陳延之 personally. He does not appear in the standard histories. His preface is the principal evidence for his existence and date. Internal references — particularly his citation of Gě Hóng’s Zhǒuhòu fāng and his use of Fàn Wāng (Fàn Ānběi) 范汪 (308–372) as a recently-deceased source — place him no earlier than the late fourth century; his reference to the Sìbù shū mùlù of the Imperial Secretariat fixes him in the LiúSòng period (420–479), and the standard view (followed by Mǎ Jìxīng, Liào Yùqún, Kosoto Hiroshi 小曽戸洋, and Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠) places his floruit around 454–473 (i.e. in the reigns of Sòng Xiàowǔdì and Míngdì). The catalog meta date 晉 is conservative — the work in fact straddles the Eastern Jìn / LiúSòng boundary, but the medical tradition has long lumped fifth-century pre-Qí works under 晉.

The hxwd recension transmitted here is the modern partial reconstruction, principally based on the 1985 Sonkeikaku discovery and on quotations extracted from the Wài tái mì yào, the Yī xīn fāng, and the early Sòng pharmacopoeias. The standard critical edition is that of Gāo Wénzhù 高文鑄 (1995). The reconstruction therefore should not be read as if it were the complete fifth-century work, but as a partial textual witness whose preface is reasonably intact and whose recipe section is fragmentary.

The work’s enduring significance is methodological: Chén Yánzhī articulated the principle that recipes are not algorithms but provisional records of one physician’s response to one patient, and that pharmacological understanding (bencao) must underlie recipe-application. This argument was foundational for the SuíTáng synthesis (especially Sūn Sīmiǎo’s Qiānjīn yào fāng) and is routinely cited by historians of Chinese medicine as the moment when the philosophical foundation of biànzhèng lùnzhì received its first explicit formulation.

Translations and research

  • Gāo Wénzhù 高文鑄 (coll.). 1995. Xiǎopǐn fāng (jí jiào běn) 小品方輯校本. Tiānjīn kēxué jìshù — standard modern critical edition.
  • Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠 and Kosoto Hiroshi 小曽戸洋. 1985–1989. Multiple articles in Nihon ishi gakkai zasshi 日本醫史學會雜誌 on the Sonkeikaku manuscript discovery and its philological implications.
  • Liào Yùqún 廖育群. 1989. “Chén Yánzhī yǔ Xiǎopǐn fāng” 陳延之與《小品方》. Zhōnghuá yīshǐ zázhì 19: 142–146.
  • Hsia, Emil C. H., Ilza Veith, and Robert H. Geertsma. 1986. The Essentials of Medicine in Ancient China and Japan: Yasuyori Tamba’s Ishimpō. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill — translates the Yī xīn fāng which incorporates Xiǎopǐn fāng material.
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §41.3.1 — bibliographic orientation; notes the Xiǎopǐn fāng as a pre-Táng medical landmark.
  • No complete Western-language translation.

Other points of interest

The Xiǎopǐn fāng is also one of the earliest Chinese medical texts to discuss paediatric medicine as a distinct sub-discipline. Several of its recipes specifically distinguish doses for shàoxiǎo 少小 (children); the recipes preserved in the Yī xīn fāng paediatric chapters are largely Xiǎopǐn fāng-derived. The preface’s bibliographic list also constitutes the single best fifth-century witness to the existence of a dedicated paediatric formulary (Zhì shàoxiǎo zázhuàn fāng 30 juǎn) and of a dedicated gynaecological formulary (Zhì fùrén fāng 13 juǎn) — both lost without trace except through this list.

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