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金鏡內臺方議

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Text ID
KR3ed048
Date
1419–1419
Dynasty
明

Jīnjìng Nèitái Fāngyì 金鏡內臺方議

Golden-Mirror Inner-Court Discussions of Recipes by 許宏 (Xǔ Hóng, fl. early Ming, 永樂 era, 明) — physician of Jiànān 建安 (modern Jiànōu 建甌, Fújiàn)

About the work

The Jīnjìng nèitái fāngyì in 12 juǎn is an early-Ming systematic commentary on the recipes of Zhāng Zhòngjǐng — specifically on the Shānghán lùn recipe corpus and the Jīnguì yàolüè prescriptions, known traditionally as the Nèitái (Inner Court) recipes since their preservation in the Jīnguì yùhán jīng tradition. The work was relatively little circulated in the early- and mid-Ming but emerged into wider reception under the late-Ming jīngfāng revival (paralleling Shī Pèi’s Zǔjì KR3ed042 and Wú Kūn’s Yīfāng kǎo KR3ed039). The prefacer Féng Shìrén 馮士仁 of XīShǔ 西蜀 (Sìchuān) describes how he encountered the previously-unknown manuscript and recognised its kinship with the Sùwèn (question-and-answer format) and the Nánjīng (problem-clarification format).

The work’s method is dialectical commentary: each Zhòngjǐng recipe is presented with a question-and-answer discussion of its (i) underlying physiology, (ii) drug-by-drug jūnchén zǔshǐ (ruler-minister / aide-envoy) reasoning, (iii) syndromic indications, (iv) clinical modifications, and (v) common errors of application. This is a precursor to Wú Kūn’s Yīfāng kǎo method by some 165 years and represents one of the earliest sustained Chinese pharmaceutical-theoretical commentaries.

Prefaces

A single preface by Féng Shìrén 馮士仁 of XīShǔ 西蜀 (Sìchuān). The preface is not dated, but internal evidence places it in the Tiānqǐ / Chóngzhēn late-Ming reigns (the prefacer’s yīdào tōng yú zhì “medicine connects with governance” framing has clear late-Ming Confucian-political resonance). The preface develops three points:

  1. Medical and Confucian texts share a structure. Sùwèn is to medicine what the Yìjīng / Shūjīng are to Confucianism — the jīng canonical text. Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s Shānghán and Jīnguì recipes are the zhuàn commentary-text. HànTángSòng commentaries on these are the zhùshū sub-commentary.
  2. The Nèitái recipes are universally studied; Xǔ Hóng’s commentary has not been transmitted. Féng discovered the work in manuscript and recognised its quality.
  3. Medicine and statecraft share principles. Treating the biāo (symptom) versus the běn (root) corresponds to the political-administrative distinction between treating xié (heterodoxy) and treating zhèng (orthodoxy). Hasty / wrong-priority treatment in medicine corresponds to short-sighted governance.

Abstract

Xǔ Hóng 許宏 (fl. early Ming; not in CBDB) was a Jiànān 建安 (Jiànōu, Fújiàn) physician active in the Yǒnglè era (1403–1424). The conventional date for the work’s composition is yǒnglè 17 (1419), although internal evidence does not allow a precise date. The work belongs to the early-Ming Zhāng Zhòngjǐng revival that paralleled and contributed to the larger Yǒnglè dàdiǎn project at the court of the Yǒnglè emperor.

The work’s significance:

  1. Foundational early-Ming jīngfāng commentary. The Fāngyì is one of the earliest sustained Ming-era commentaries on the Zhòngjǐng recipe corpus and a textual precursor to the Qīng-era Shānghánjīngfāng school’s commentarial tradition.
  2. Pharmacological dialectic. The work’s question-and-answer commentary format anticipates the systematic theoretical pharmacology of Wú Kūn (1584) and Wāng Áng (1682) by 165 and 263 years respectively.

Translations and research

  • Hé Shíxī 何時希 (coll.). 1991. Jīnjìng nèitái fāngyì 金鏡內臺方議 (punctuated edition).
  • Goldschmidt, Asaf. 2009. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200. Routledge. — for the Shānghán-jīngfāng commentary tradition context.
  • Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §41.3.2.

Other points of interest

Féng Shìrén’s framing of yīdào (medical Way) and zhìdào (governance Way) as parallel disciplines is one of the clearest late-Ming articulations of the medicine-as-statecraft topos that animates the late-Ming literati-medical tradition. His parenthetical comment that “a person who has the full mind of governing the state has Yǐngfǔ 俞跗 [the legendary surgeon] already turning to leave” pictures the state-as-patient that no orthodox medicine can save without comprehensive zhìběn root-treatment.

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