Shìzhāi Bǎiyī Xuǎnfāng 是齋百一選方
Selected One-of-a-Hundred Recipes of the Shì-zhāi by 王璆 (Wáng Qiú, zì Shíkě 師可, hào Shìzhāi 是齋, fl. late 12th c., 南宋) — Southern-Sòng official-physician
About the work
The Shìzhāi bǎiyī xuǎnfāng in 20 juǎn is a Southern-Sòng formulary compiled in qìngyuán 2 (1196) by Wáng Qiú 王璆. The title’s “bǎiyī” alludes to Táo Hóngjǐng’s Bǔquē zhǒuhòu bǎiyī fāng (KR3ed002 preface tradition) — both the Buddhist topos of “four-elements yielding 101 diseases” and Yīng Qú 應璩’s Bǎiyī shī. The xuǎnfāng “selected recipes” indicates editorial judgment: from a larger pool, Wáng selected those proven in clinical experience.
The work was little known in China through the late-imperial period — no Ming or early Qīng print is recorded. It survived primarily in Japan, where it was preserved in the Tokugawa-period Tanba 丹波 medical-family library; the work was issued in a 1799 Japanese print by Tanba Yasuyori’s descendants. The hxwd recension follows this Japanese print, which in turn used a Yuán manuscript and a separate Northern Song printed shànběn held by Dí Zǐyuán 狄子元.
Prefaces
The hxwd transmission preserves a single Japanese reprint postface:
- 是齋百一選方跋 by Sēndà Gōngshī 千田恭子 (a Japanese court physician, yīguān 醫官 of Edo / Tōkyō), dated 寬政十一年皋月端陽前一日 (= 1799, late spring). Records that Sēndà was inspired to publish the work as a contribution to medicine in his official capacity. He worked from Tanba Yasuyori’s Lèijù fāng 類聚方 holding and Dí Zǐyuán’s printed shànběn, collating them against each other for the print. Refers to a separate preface by Tanba Renpū 丹波廉夫 (the yīfāng lèijùfāng 醫方類聚方 holder).
Abstract
Wáng Qiú 王璆 (zì Shíkě 師可; hào Shìzhāi 是齋; fl. late 12th c., precise lifedates uncertain; not in CBDB) was a Southern-Sòng official with serious medical interest. The “Shìzhāi” 是齋 (“This-Studio”) was his personal study; the name appears to be a self-deprecating philosophical reference (the shì 是 implying “this and not the other,” or “right and not wrong”). The work spans general medicine, including a substantial gynaecological section, and is noted in Chinese medical-historical scholarship for its case-history-based recipe presentations — each recipe is given with the patient’s name, the prescribing physician, and the documented outcome, recalling Xǔ Shūwēi’s běnshì method (KR3ed015).
The work’s principal historical significance is its Japanese-mediated survival. Lost in China by the mid-Ming, the work survived in Japan through the Yīxīn fāng (a Heian-era Japanese physician’s Ishimpo) recipe-extraction tradition and through Tokugawa-era reprints. Its rediscovery via the 1799 Sēndà / Tanba print made the work available again in Chinese medical scholarship in the late Qīng. The work is a useful comparator to other Sòng formularies (the Bójì fāng KR3ed008, the Yángshì jiācáng fāng KR3ed017) and a unique witness to the Japan-mediated transmission of Sòng medical literature.
Translations and research
- Hé Shíxī 何時希 (coll.). 1991. Shìzhāi bǎiyī xuǎnfāng 是齋百一選方 (punctuated edition). Beijing.
- Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠. 1995. Nihon Kanpō hōjō no chūgokuhon yuirai 日本漢方方書の中国本由来 — surveys the Japanese-mediated transmission of Chinese medical texts.
- Hsia, Veith, and Geertsma 1986. The Essentials of Medicine in Ancient China and Japan: Yasuyori Tamba’s Ishimpō.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §41.3.2.
Other points of interest
The Shìzhāi recipe collection has been particularly important for modern Chinese reconstructions of Sòng-era female-physician practice: several recipes in the gynaecological section are attributed to women practitioners (the work uses “某夫人傳” / “尼某傳” attribution markers), and this is one of the few Sòng-era formularies to document female-physician contributions to the recipe tradition systematically.
Links
- Wikidata: no dedicated entry.
- 1799 Sēndà / Tanba edition (寬政十一年): the textual base of the hxwd recension.
- 是齋百一選方 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB