Jiùshēng Jí 救生集
Collection for Saving Lives by 虛白主人 (Xūbái Zhǔrén, fl. mid-late 18th c., 清); edited by his disciple Lǐshēng 李生 of Hóngdū 洪都
About the work
The Jiùshēng jí is a 4-juǎn charitable formulary attributed to a wandering physician known only by the hào Xūbái Xiānshēng 虛白先生, edited and printed by his disciple Lǐshēng 李生 of Hóngdū 洪都 (Nánchāng, Jiāngxī). It belongs to the genre of charitable-distribution medical literature characteristic of mid-late-Qīng Jiāngxī popular Daoist-medical culture, with strong overlaps to the popular religious gōngguò gé 功過格 (merit-and-demerit ledger) tradition.
Prefaces
The work’s principal preface, unsigned but presumably by Lǐshēng, develops a touching biographical account of Xūbái:
虛白先生，未知何許人也。里居世系不傳，性嗜山水，遍遊江湖間，歲甲申，遊於洪都。有李生者，識先生於風塵，相與訂交，為東道主。適罹目疾，幾失明，先生示之方，應手而愈。
(“Mr. Xūbái — none know where he came from. His native place and lineage are not transmitted. By nature fond of mountains and rivers, he wandered widely along the rivers and lakes. In the jiǎshēn year he passed through Hóngdū. A man named Lǐshēng recognized him through the dust of travel, struck up acquaintance, and made him a host’s guest. Lǐshēng was just then afflicted with an eye-disease and near blindness; Xūbái showed him a formula and he was cured at once.“)
The preface continues: Xūbái thereupon entrusted Lǐshēng with the manuscript-bag of tested formulas (shì shì shì yàn 試屢屢驗) he had collected during his wanderings, telling him “you are good with brush and ink — sort these into categories and continue them; let them not be lost. There may be many more useful things added when found.” Lǐshēng worked at it morning and night, and within a few months had arranged the recipes into proper sequence. The cure for his eye trouble was so complete that “by lamplight I could write small fly-head characters better than in youth.” Xūbái continued to wander for over a decade, distributing pills and powders without charge, “his recipes never departing from those of the ancient masters of the city.” Lǐshēng convened like-minded friends, took up the manuscript, and had it printed.
The jiǎshēn year is undated by cyclical alone; the surrounding evidence (mid-Qīng publishing patterns in Jiāngxī, the popular-Daoist register of the preface) most likely places it at Qiánlóng 29 = 1764.
Abstract
The work is one of the cleanest mid-Qīng examples of the itinerant-master formulary genre: a wandering physician of obscure origins gathers a body of tested recipes during decades of travel; a literate disciple commits them to writing; charitable-print donors fund the publication. The format and content closely parallel other Qīng jiùshēng “saving-lives” titles (Jiùshēng fāng 救生方, Jiùshēng kǔhǎi 救生苦海) and the broader genre of charitable (or Tóng-shàn-shè-style) medical print of which the work is part.
The dating window: the jiǎshēn of the preface = 1764; Xūbái continued to wander “over a decade” after that, and the print compilation was carried out by Lǐshēng during Xūbái’s continued activity. We set notBefore to 1764 (the meeting year) and notAfter to c. 1800.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
The work survives in late-Qing and Republican reprints in popular formulary anthologies.
Other points of interest
The work’s itinerant-Daoist register — the master of unknown origins, the chance encounter that produces the disciple-relationship, the recipes “never departing from those of the ancient masters,” the merit-and-demerit donor-network — is the cleanest single mid-Qīng documentary record of the popular-Daoist clinical practitioner as a Qīng social type. The preface’s poignant tone (“through the dust of travel,” “white-water and reed-sedge thoughts of the [Master]”) is itself a small literary masterpiece of the popular preface genre.
Links
- Wikidata: no dedicated entry.
- 救生集 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB