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祖劑

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Text ID
KR3ed042
Date
1640–1640
Dynasty
明

Zǔjì 祖劑

Ancestral Prescriptions by 施沛 (Shī Pèi, zì Pèirán 沛然, hào Yuánwúzǐ 元無子, fl. late Ming, 明)

About the work

The Zǔjì in 4 juǎn is a late-Ming historical-genealogical study of prescription lineage. The title Zǔjì “Ancestral Prescriptions” reflects the work’s editorial principle: it identifies a set of zǔfāng “ancestral / progenitor” prescriptions from the earliest Chinese medical tradition (the Sùwèn / Língshū recipes, the Yī Yǐn Tāngyè lùn, the Zhāng Zhòngjǐng Shānghán and Jīnguì recipes) and traces each later prescription back to its ancestral source. Shī Pèi’s autograph short preface (Zǔqí xiǎoxù) sets out the position: Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s prescriptions are the jiā mǔ (most-direct ancestors) of all subsequent Chinese pharmacology, and Zhòngjǐng’s recipes in turn descend from Yī Yǐn’s Tāngyè lùn and ultimately from Shénnóng. The work places the Sùwèn / Língshū two recipes at the top of the genealogy; then the Yī Yǐn Tāngyè recipe; then proceeds through the Zhòngjǐng prescriptions as the principal “ancestors” with Júfāng (二陳湯, 四物湯, 四君子湯), Lǐ Gǎo (補中益氣湯), and Zhū Zhènhēng (越鞠丸) prescriptions classified as their descendants.

The work is one of the earliest sustained Chinese essays in pharmaceutical genealogy and a foundational document for the Shānghánjīngfāng 傷寒經方 (“Cold-Damage classical recipes”) tradition that would dominate Qīng-era Shānghán scholarship.

Prefaces

A single autograph preface, the 祖齊小敘 “Zǔqí xiǎoxù” by Shī Pèi, dated 崇禎庚辰歲重陽日 (= autumn 1640), signed Yuánwúzǐ Shī Pèi tí 元無子施沛題. The preface argues for the jīngfāng genealogical method:

  1. Citing the Xuányàn xiānshēng 玄晏先生 (Huángfǔ Mì 皇甫謐) on Zhāng Zhòngjǐng as “extending the Yī Yǐn Tāngyè method, used with great efficacy.”
  2. Quoting Chéng Liáoshè 成聊攝 (= Chéng Wújǐ 成無己) on the canonical primacy of Zhòngjǐng’s recipes as the “ancestor of all later prescriptions.”
  3. Asserting the jūnyī chénèr (one principal, two ministers) compositional principle as the standard of all jīngfāng recipes (Zhòngjǐng’s prescriptions typically have three or four drugs; Yuán-era Lǐ Gǎo’s prescriptions extend to thirty-plus drugs, which Shī Pèi treats with sceptical irony — quoting Hán Xìn’s “the more troops, the better” only to observe that “in other hands this becomes the criticism of guǎngluò yuányě 廣絡原野”— “throwing a net wide across the plain.”).
  4. Acknowledges late-Ming sources: Dài Yuánlǐ 戴元禮’s Zhèngzhì yàojué 證治要訣, Xuē Xīnfǔ 薛新甫’s Míngyī zázhù 明醫雜著.

Abstract

Shī Pèi 施沛 (zì Pèirán 沛然, hào Yuánwúzǐ 元無子, fl. late Ming; not precisely dated; CBDB id uncertain) was a late-Ming physician-scholar whose intellectual orientation belongs to the late-Ming jīngfāng movement that sought to recover the authority of the Han-era Shānghán / Jīnguì recipes against the Yuán polemic-physicians’ expansion of recipe-size and theoretical scope. His zǔjì genealogical method is one of the most rigorous late-Ming statements of this recovery project.

The work’s significance:

  1. Foundation of jīngfāng genealogy as a method. The zǔjì method — identifying ancestral recipes and tracing their descent through later expansion and modification — became a standard mode of Qīng-era medical-historical scholarship, especially in the Shānghán commentaries by Kē Qín 柯琴, Yǔ Cháng 喻昌, Zōu Shù 鄒澍, and others.
  2. Late-Ming Shānghán revivalism. The work is one of the clearer late-Ming statements of the return to Zhòngjǐng as the polemical-pharmaceutical centre, against the perceived dilution of late-Ming clinical practice into eclecticism.
  3. Methodological clarity. The work’s genealogical method makes pharmaceutical descent visible in a way that is rare in Chinese medical literature; subsequent Qīng yīfāng kǎo / yīfāng jíjiě works build on Shī’s framework.

Translations and research

  • Hé Shíxī 何時希 (coll.). 1991. Zǔjì 祖劑 (punctuated edition).
  • Goldschmidt, Asaf. 2009. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200. Routledge — for the Shānghán-jīngfāng polemical tradition context.
  • Scheid, Volker. 2007. Currents of Tradition. Eastland.
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §41.3.2.

Other points of interest

Shī Pèi’s hào “Yuánwúzǐ” 元無子 (literally “Master of Original Nothingness”) suggests Daoist-Buddhist influence; the contemporary late-Ming Confucian-Buddhist-Daoist syncretism is consistent with the work’s emphasis on recovering original principles (the zǔ “ancestor”) through historical-philological work.

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