Chuànyǎ Bǔ 串雅補
A Supplement to the Chuànyǎ by 魯照 (Lǔ Zhào, hào Sānqiáo 三橋, fl. 1825; Fùjīngshì 復經室)
About the work
A supplementary compilation in the four zǒufāng (itinerant-medicine) categories — dǐng 頂 (topping / emetics), chuàn 串 (stringing-through / cathartics), dǐ 抵 (countering / exotic-substance prescribing), sè 色 (display / theatrical-physical treatments) — extending the corpus of Zhào Xuémǐn’s Chuànyǎ (KR3ed105) by Lǔ Zhào. Lǔ states in his self-preface that he had been collecting itinerant-healer recipes for some twenty years before encountering Zhào’s Chuànyǎ, and that on seeing the prior work he reorganised his own materials to fit Zhào’s four-fold structure but to preserve recipes that Zhào had not included.
Prefaces
Self-Preface (zìxù), Dàoguāng wǔ nián làyuè zhōngxún 道光五年臘月中旬 = mid-12th-lunar-month, 1825, signed Sānqiáo 三橋 lù yú Fùjīngshì 三橋錄於復經室 (“recorded by Sānqiáo at the Fùjīng Studio”).
The preface develops a careful methodological self-positioning:
“The fāngshì once told me: ‘One Dǐng, two Chuàn, húhǎi (lake-and-sea) walked through’ — meaning the [itinerant healer’s] way ranges across the whole realm. Their formulas each succeed to their master’s skill; many have the same name but different drugs. They guard their jué (mnemonic-verses) for their living, so that even wife and child do not know — because the drug-prescription is their lord, and it cannot be discussed with others. The art has four divisions: one Dǐng (topping), two Chuàn (stringing-through), three Dǐ (countering), four Sè (display).
“What does Dǐng mean? Dǐng is the upward-erupting sweat. The alchemical preparations are also called Dǐng. Chuàn is the downward-purging cathartic. Toxic drugs are also called Chuàn. Dǐ means the piānyào (one-sided / specialised drugs) used to counter-prescribe and cheat people. Sè (the display category) means tooth-extraction, mole-removal, branding, cupping, and the various performance-tricks.
“The Chuànyǎ compiled by Shùxuān [= Zhào Xuémǐn] differs from what the itinerant healers themselves transmit. But examining its category-headings of jié (cutting / interrupting) and jìn (taboo), the methods do not depart from dǐ and sè. The seventy-two jié mentioned [in Zhào] are perhaps separately transmitted [outside his sources]. Twenty years ago I once tried to collect the various itinerant-arts and refine them into a compilation — long stored in my old book-trunk. Since Shùxuān’s book is large and unselective, I have now extracted the more refined (yǎ) ones by category and, retaining the old four headings of dǐng / chuàn / dǐ / sè, set them as a supplement to what is wanting. I call it Chuànyǎ bǔ.”
Abstract
A precisely-dated 1825 supplement to Zhào Xuémǐn’s 1759 Chuànyǎ. Lǔ Zhào (hào Sānqiáo, of the Fùjīngshì) is a Dào-guāng-era literatus of whom little biographical data survives beyond what this preface gives. The work continues Zhào’s anthropological project of preserving the itinerant-healer corpus, but with a more discriminating selection-criterion: Lǔ explicitly characterises his compilation as more yǎ (refined) than Zhào’s, choosing only those formulas that he considered authentically efficacious and properly transmitted. Lǔ’s preface is also itself a valuable emic source on the itinerant healer’s self-organisation: the fāngshì maxim that Lǔ records, “yī dǐng èr chuàn, hú hǎi zǒu biàn” (“one dǐng, two chuàn, [you can] walk through lake and sea”) — names the itinerant healer’s principal professional categories from the inside.
The work circulated alongside Zhào’s Chuànyǎ in the late Qīng and is sometimes printed as an integrated Chuànyǎ with Lǔ’s supplement appended. Modern annotated editions: Chuànyǎ bǔ, Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè, Beijing, with Zhào Xuémǐn’s Chuànyǎ.
Translations and research
- Bian, He. Know Your Remedies (Princeton, 2020) — for the broader zǒufāng / chuànyī context.
- Chuànyǎ bǔ, modern annotated edition, in Zhōngguó zhōngyīyào gǔjí cóngshū 中國中醫藥古籍叢書.
Links
- See 魯照 for biography.
- Companion volume: KR3ed105 Chuànyǎ nèi wài biān.
- 串雅補 (jicheng.tw)
- Kanseki DB