千金寶要

Qiānjīn Bǎoyào 千金寶要

Treasured Essentials from the [Recipes Worth a] Thousand Gold by 郭思 (Guō Sī, 1054–1132, zì Déyú 得閲, 北宋) — Northern-Sòng Huīyóugé zhíxuéshì 徽猷閣直學士, Tōngfèng dàfū 通奉大夫, son of the painter 郭熙 (Guō Xī)

About the work

The Qiānjīn bǎoyào is the most influential Sòng-era abridgement of Sūn Sīmiǎo’s Bèijí qiānjīn yàofāng 備急千金要方 (650 CE). Compiled in xuānhé 6 (1124) by Guō Sī 郭思 — son of the great Northern-Sòng landscape painter Guō Xī 郭熙 (c. 1020 – c. 1090) and a senior Hanlin Academy figure — the work distils Sūn’s 30-juǎn, 318-section original into a compact, drug-economical reference structured around four practical priorities: (i) emergency / acute conditions first, (ii) chronic-but-not-acute conditions second, (iii) common major illnesses third, (iv) common minor illnesses fourth. Guō explicitly inverts Sūn’s organising principle — Sūn’s Qiānjīn opens with gynaecology and paediatrics (treating the most-vulnerable categories first); Guō’s Bǎoyào opens with emergencies (treating the most-time-critical categories first).

The work was first cut as stone stelae at the Huázhōu 華州 (Shǎnxī) prefectural office in 1124 — an unusual mode of medical publication chosen specifically because the stelae would be a public, durable, freely-readable resource. Re-cut in wood in 1443 (Ming Yìngzōng Zhèngtǒng 8) by Liú Zhěng 劉整, then re-cut again in 1455 (Jǐngtài 6) by Yáng Shèngxián 楊勝賢 for ease of winter rubbing. The hxwd recension descends from the late-Ming consolidated print of the 1455 Yáng wood-block.

Prefaces

The hxwd transmission preserves two prefaces:

1. 自序 by Guō Sī himself, dated 宣和六年四月初一日 (= May 1124), signed “Huīyóugé zhíxuéshì Tōngfèng dàfū zhìshì Héyáng Guō Sī” 徽猷閣直學士通奉大夫致仕河陽郭思. The preface explains the editorial method: Sūn’s Qiānjīn fāng is canonical but inaccessible — most prefectures have no copy, and those that do cannot share it daily. The remote and impoverished therefore die unnecessarily. Guō’s response: select the lùn 論 (theoretical discussions) and the dānfāng 單方 (single-drug recipes) and jīngyàn 經驗 (tested) recipes from the Qiānjīn, plus a few from his own family practice; arrange them by clinical urgency; cut them in stone. He pledges to print 10,000 copies (誓施萬本) for free distribution.
2. 刻《千金寶要》序 — a Ming-era reprint preface (no date but contemporary to the 1455 Yáng reprint). Records the transmission history: 1124 Huázhōu stelae; 1443 Liú Zhěng wood-block recut; 1455 Yáng Shèngxián practical-format wood-block. The preface-writer recovered the book and “treasured it as if it were a jade ring.”

Abstract

Guō Sī 郭思 (1054–1132, CBDB 14068), zì Déyú 得閲 (also Déyù), of Héyáng 河陽 (Wènxiàn 溫縣, Hénán). Son of Guō Xī 郭熙 (c. 1020–c. 1090), the great Northern-Sòng landscape painter; Sī himself was the editor of his father’s posthumous treatise Línquán gāozhì 林泉高致 (KR3l* of art-history if catalogued). Sī’s official career: jìnshì of 元豐 5 (1082); rose through various central-court appointments to Huīyóugé zhíxuéshì 徽猷閣直學士 and Tōngfèng dàfū 通奉大夫; retired before 1124 to compile the Qiānjīn bǎoyào as a charitable retirement project.

The work is one of the earliest examples of Chinese medical stelae publication, anticipating the Sūnzhēnrén hǎishàng fāng stone cuts at Yáowángshān 藥王山 (the Sūn Sīmiǎo cult site near modern Yáozhōu 耀州) by several centuries. Its emphasis on dānfāng single-drug recipes and on emergency-first ordering made it particularly suitable for rural and low-resource contexts. Subsequent late-imperial reprints (Liú Zhěng 1443, Yáng Shèngxián 1455, and various Qīng editions) sustained the work as the standard popular-medical handbook in many northern Chinese regions through the 19th century.

The 1054–1132 lifedates from CBDB are consistent with Sī’s exam date and his preface signature; the bracket 1124 for the work itself reflects the precise dating of the xuānhé 6 preface and stelae.

Translations and research

• Hé Shíxī 何時希 (coll.). 1986. Qiānjīn bǎoyào 千金寶要 (punctuated edition). Beijing.
• Sivin, Nathan. 2007. Health Care in Eleventh-Century China. Springer. — discusses Guō Sī’s medical project in the context of Sòng-era charitable medicine.
• For Guō Sī’s relation to his father Guō Xī: Foong, Ping. 2015. The Efficacious Landscape: On the Authorities of Painting at the Northern Song Court. Harvard UP.
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §41.3.2.

Other points of interest

Guō Sī’s project is a rare and well-documented Sòng-era case of a senior literati-official producing a charitable medical compilation as a retirement act. The stone-stelae form chosen for the 1124 first cutting also illustrates the use of public stelae as a Sòng-era information-dissemination medium — comparable to the imperial Sānjīng xīnyì 三經新義 stelae and the Confucian classics stelae at the Tàixué 太學. The medical-stelae genre would later be developed at the Sūn Sīmiǎo cult sites in Shǎnxī.

Links

• Wikidata Q11079410 (千金寶要).
• Wikipedia (zh): 千金寶要.
• Parent work: Sūn Sīmiǎo, Bèijí qiānjīn yàofāng 備急千金要方.
• 千金寶要 jicheng.tw
• Kanseki DB