醫略抄

Yīluè Chāo 醫略抄

Selected Excerpts on Medicine (Japanese Iryaku-shō) by 丹波雅忠 (Tanba no Masatada, 1021–1088, Heian Japan); edited and printed by 丹波元簡 (Tanba no Mototane, 1755–1810; bakufu oku-ishi, Edo Japan)

About the work

A late-Heian Japanese clinical formulary — the principal Heian-Japanese medical work of the eleventh century outside of the better-known Ishinpō 醫心方 (982) of Tanba no Yasuyori 丹波康賴 — compiled by Tanba no Masatada 丹波雅忠 (1021–1088), Masatada’s great-grandson and the Heian Chikara-no-kami 主稅頭 (Head of the Bureau of Taxes, in addition to his medical office). The work is a brief topical excerpt-formulary in 50 mén (sections) containing 242 formulae drawn from 34 Jìn- and Táng-period Chinese formulary houses (Wàitái mìyào, Qiānjīn yàofāng, Bèijí qiānjīn yàofāng, Jīnguì yàolüè, etc.), focused on the zúbìng bàozhèn (sudden disease and acute distress) cases of greatest clinical urgency. The work survived in manuscript in the Tanba family archive for seven centuries and was first published in print by Tanba no Mototane 丹波元簡 in the Bunka era of Edo Japan.

Prefaces

Editorial Preface by Tanba no Mototane (the Edo bakufu’s oku-ishi, head of the Igaku-kan, and seventh-century descendant of Masatada).

“The ancient classical formulas, like those compiled by Gé Xiānwēng [Gé Hóng] and Sūn Zhēnrén [Sūn Sīmiǎo], when measured against the Běncǎo and Zhòngjǐng’s writings, seem in places not to conform to the proper standards — at times the methods of fāngshì (recipe-master) with their jìnzhòu (taboos and incantations) intrude in their interpolations; at times there are obscure substances no longer easily found; or there are vulgar ingredients unfit for use. So those that can still be applied today are exceedingly few. — Is it that the meaning of formula-establishment is so abstruse and subtle that the shallow and mediocre cannot fathom it? Or is it that the changes of the times, the differences of region, and the alterations of human constitution have made it so? And yet, when one comes to disease and matches symptom and formula, the response is divine. Things beyond the bounds of expectation cannot be enumerated case-by-case. This is what later-generations physicians, holding fast to the doctrine of jīngshǐ (channel-tropism) and bàoshǐ (drug-messenger), have set far apart [from their own way] — this is why the ancient classical formulas cannot be discarded in the present age.”

“The Yīluè chāo is a work by our family’s Chikara-no-kami-gōng [= Masatada], who excerpted single-formula and simple-and-easy recipes to prepare for sudden-illness and acute-distress clinical use. He divides them into fifty sections, with 242 formulae, drawing from thirty-four JìnTáng classical formularies. Although the fascicle is short, the gathering is exceptionally wide; some [formulae] are not found in the Qiānjīn or the Wàitái, and rare in later formularies. Whether all are fully applicable in the present age can be set aside without discussion. Of the old classical-formulary works of our country [Japan] only a few houses’ books survive — how could we not treasure this? In the spring of this year I happened to obtain the manuscript and rejoiced greatly. The successive transmitted copies were full of errors. So, in spite of my shallow capacity, I made a slight collation and quickly cut woodblocks…”

The preface is signed by Mototane in the Bunka era (the Edo woodblock printing’s colophon dates from Bunka / early 1800s).

Abstract

The work is firmly attributable to Tanba no Masatada 丹波雅忠 (1021–1088), the senior Heian Naikyō-no-suke 内薬正 (head of the bureau of medicines) and Chikara-no-kami of his generation, on the basis of (i) Mototane’s editorial preface, which identifies the author as “wújiā Zhǔshuì gōng” (our family’s Chikara-no-kami), (ii) the consistency of the formulary’s date-range (Jìn through mid-Táng, with no clearly later material), and (iii) the manuscript’s preservation in the Tanba family archive. The composition window is the last decade of Masatada’s life, ca. 1080–1088. The catalog’s bare author: 日本·丹波元簡 is therefore misleading: Mototane is the editor and 1800s woodblock-publisher; the actual author is Masatada, seven centuries earlier.

The work belongs alongside the Ishinpō 醫心方 of Tanba no Yasuyori (982) and the Honzō wamyō 本草和名 of Fukane no Sukehito (918) as one of the principal pieces of evidence for Heian-period Japanese assimilation of Sui-Tang Chinese medicine. The fact that the Yīluè chāo survived only in a single manuscript line within the Tanba family makes it less widely known than the Ishinpō, but its 242 formulae include some unique preservations from now-lost Táng formulary literature.

The work is therefore of bibliographic significance well beyond its small extent: it preserves quotations from 34 named JìnTáng classical formularies, several of which are not represented in the Wàitái or the Qiānjīn.

Translations and research

• Iryaku-shō, modern Japanese annotated edition: Maki Sachiko 槙佐知子, Iryaku-shō: gendai-go yaku 醫略抄·現代語訳, Tokyo, various editions.
• Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠, articles on Heian medical bibliography in Nihon ishigaku zasshi 日本醫史學雜誌.
• Vigouroux, M. “The Reception of the Sui-Tang Chinese Medical Tradition in Heian Japan,” in East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine.

Other points of interest

The very long gap between composition (1080s) and printing (early 1800s) — over 700 years of manuscript transmission within a single hereditary medical family — is unusual even by East Asian standards. The Edo Tamba house regarded this manuscript as part of their patrimony, and Mototane’s Bunka-era printing constituted the first public release of a text that had been their family secret since the Heian era.

Links

• See 丹波元簡 (Edo editor) and 丹波雅忠 (Heian-era author).
• For the Ishinpō tradition see KR3ec076 (if present in the corpus).
• 醫略抄 (jicheng.tw)
• Kanseki DB