類證普濟本事方釋義

Lèizhèng Pǔjì Běnshì Fāng Shìyì 類證普濟本事方釋義

An Explication of the Pǔjì Běnshì Fāng Categorised by Syndrome by 葉桂 (Yè Guì, zì Tiānshì 天士, 1666–1745, 清) — annotated commentary on the Pǔjì běnshì fāng of 許叔微 (Xǔ Shūwēi, 1080–c. 1154, 南宋) — base text

About the work

The Lèizhèng Pǔjì běnshì fāng shìyì is a 10-juǎn annotated commentary by the great Sūzhōu warm-disease master Yè Tiānshì 葉桂 on the Pǔjì běnshì fāng 普濟本事方 KR3ed015 of the Southern-Sòng physician Xǔ Shūwēi 許叔微 (1080–c. 1154). Yè’s annotations expand each of Xǔ’s recipes with discussion of the prescribing rationale, drug-by-drug analysis, and connections to the wider classical pharmaco-therapeutic corpus.

Prefaces

The work’s most important paratext is the 後序 hòuxù (postface) by Yè Tiānshì’s great-grandson, which provides extraordinarily clear documentation of the work’s transmission history:

1. Composition. “The Běnshì fāng shìyì in 10 juǎn was composed by my great-grandfather Xiāngyánfǔjūn 香岩府君 [= Yè Tiānshì, hào Xiāngyán]. The fǔjūn was deeply learned in medicine and brought out many new insights. Single phrases and lone glosses, his students copied back and forth among themselves. This book was completed in Qiánlóng 10 = 1745 and was just being readied for the printer when the fǔjūn unexpectedly passed away in the spring of the following year; printing was abandoned and the manuscript itself was scattered.”
2. Recovery. “By Jiāqìng 8 = 1803, more than fifty years had passed. My younger cousin Jūn 鈞 happened to be sorting our remaining family papers and found a damaged fragment with the preface and supplementary biographies still bound. Heart-sick that the full work was nowhere to be found, we reasoned that someone in Sūzhōu must hold a duplicate. We heard that Gù Xīchóu 顧西疇 of the southern city held the book; Gù too had received the fǔjūn’s teaching and was a noted physician. But before we could borrow, both Jūn and Gù died, and the matter was delayed until now.”
3. Editorial reconstruction. “My nephew Cháo 潮 and son’s-cousin Zī 滋 then approached Gù’s disciple Liú Jǐnghuáng 劉景黃, who borrowed the copy from Gù’s grandson Dàtián 大田 for transcription. But this transcription differed greatly from the marketplace printed editions. We then borrowed from the xiàolián Huáng Yáopǔ 黃蕘圃 [Huáng Pīliè 黃丕烈, the great Qīng bibliophile] a Sòng-block-printed damaged copy of the original Xǔ Shūwēi Běnshì fāng and compared the variants. By this collation we became certain that this manuscript is the true book and that the marketplace prints are not to be trusted.”
4. Editorial principle. “Guīyú Shěnzōngbó [Shěn Déqián 沈德潛] made a biographical zhuàn for the fǔjūn and noted that ‘in medicine he did not hold to fixed opinions.’ Yet this book clings strictly to the ancient masters’ words and analyses them sentence by sentence, character by character — like the Táng exegetes who annotated the classics without entertaining variant opinions. Surely it must be that to vary from established methods one must first illuminate them perfectly.”
5. The Sìkù acknowledgement. “I read in the imperial Sìkù quánshū jiǎnmíng mùlù that this work is praised for its ‘phrasing simple and elegant, with many subtle insights, which common physicians cannot fully understand, and so it is rarely studied.’ Today’s medical practitioners do not penetrate the subtle but cling to shallow words, treating life with experimentation.”

Abstract

The work is one of the most important Qīng commentaries on a Sòng classical formulary. Yè Tiānshì’s choice of Xǔ Shūwēi’s Pǔjì běnshì fāng — itself a classic Shānghán-school text from the Southern Sòng — as the object of close commentary, rather than the Shānghán lùn itself, is methodologically interesting: Yè takes Xǔ’s application of classical-formula thinking to contemporary clinical practice as a model for his own teaching to students. The work is therefore both a commentary on Xǔ and a window onto Yè’s own pedagogical method.

The transmission history is exceptionally well documented (1745 composition; 1745–1746 first abortive printing; 1746–1803 manuscript scattered; 1803 onward editorial reconstruction by the great-grandson with use of a Sòng-block fragment from Huáng Pīliè’s collection). The work was finally printed in the JiāqìngDàoguāng decades. The 1745 terminus a quo for composition is firm; the editio princeps falls c. 1810–1820.

Translations and research

• Yè Tiānshì. Yè Tiān-shì yīxué quánshū 葉天士醫學全書 (modern punctuated edition: Beijing: Zhōngguó Zhōngyīyào chūbǎnshè, 1999). Contains the Běnshì fāng shìyì with apparatus.
• Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (2011). Surveys the Yè Tiānshì textual corpus.
• No major Western-language monograph dedicated specifically to this work.

Other points of interest

The postface’s account of Huáng Pīliè’s Sòng-block-printed copy being lent for collation is one of the cleanest documentary records in Chinese medical bibliography of the Qīng kǎozhèng movement’s impact on medical textual scholarship. Huáng Pīliè (1763–1825) was the most famous bibliophile of his generation; his Sòng-block-print collection was the principal resource for textual restoration of medical and other classics in the early-19th-century Jiāngsū kǎozhèng community. That Yè’s posthumous editorial team consulted his Sòng fragment for the Běnshì fāng speaks to the scholarly seriousness of the reconstruction project.

Links

• Wikidata Q67137068 (placeholder).
• 類證普濟本事方釋義 jicheng.tw
• Kanseki DB