Xíngjūn Fāngbiàn Biànfāng 行軍方便便方
Field-Convenient Convenient Recipes for Campaign collected by 羅世瑤 (Luó Shìyáo, fl. mid-late 19th c., 清)
About the work
The Xíngjūn fāngbiàn biànfāng is a 3-juǎn military-medical handbook for use on field campaign, compiled by Luó Shìyáo from earlier formularies and ration-treatises. The work covers four principal types of material: (1) preparedness rations (bèiyù 備豫), including the famous “Zhūgě Dry Provisions” (諸葛乾糧) and other pìgǔ 辟穀 grain-substitute formulas; (2) field medicine for the standard battlefield syndromes (heat-stroke, dehydration, frost-injury, wound-treatment, snakebite, poison-arrow wounds); (3) disease of campaign (dysentery, fever, sores); and (4) emergency revival of wounded or comatose soldiers.
Prefaces
The source begins immediately with the first recipe (諸葛乾糧方 Zhūgě dry-rations recipe) without a separate preface; the work in the present transmission begins in medias res. Each recipe is given with a source-citation (《武備志》 Wǔbèi zhì, 《靜耘齋》 Jìngyúnzhāi, etc.), suggesting the compiler’s method is one of careful citation of antecedents.
Abstract
The compilation belongs to the substantial late-Qīng genre of field/military medical handbooks that flourished during the Tàipíng wars (1851–1864) and the Húnán / Huáijūn campaigns of the 1860s–1870s. The genre includes the Cǎotóu yībiàn 草頭醫便 of military physicians, the Xíngjūn yīfāng 行軍醫方, and (more famously) Xú Dàchūn’s 徐大椿 medical-military essays. Luó’s work draws extensively on the late-Míng military encyclopaedia Wǔbèi zhì 武備志 (Máo Yuányí 茅元儀, 1621) and on 18th-century preparedness manuals.
The compilation is undated in the KR text; stylistic and source-citation evidence places it in the mid-to-late 19th century. The work is a rare surviving example of Han Chinese military medicine as a textually articulated practice and is therefore an important source for the practical pharmacy of the Tàipíng-era armies.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
Modern Chinese punctuated editions exist in collections of military-medical literature.
Other points of interest
The work’s pìgǔ (grain-substitute) recipes — particularly the Zhūgě gānliáng attributed to Zhūgě Liàng 諸葛亮 — preserve a continuous tradition of emergency-rations pharmacy that runs from the Bàopǔzǐ of Gě Hóng (4th c.) through SòngYuán famine handbooks to the late-Qīng military formularies. Several of the recipes claim that a single ration can sustain a marching soldier for “five hundred lǐ” or even “two thousand four hundred rì” without further food — culturally significant hyperbole that nevertheless preserves practical pìgǔ compounding traditions.
Links
- Wikidata: no dedicated entry.
- 行軍方便便方 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB