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串雅外編

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Text ID
KR3ed107
Date
1759–1759
Dynasty
清

Chuànyǎ Wài Biān 串雅外編

The Refined Pedlar’s Manual: Outer Compilation by 趙學敏 (Zhào Xuémǐn, zì Shùxuān 恕軒, ca. 1719–1805; Qiántáng 錢唐, Hángzhōu)

About the work

The Outer Compilation of the Chuànyǎ itinerant-healer corpus — the four-juǎn supplement to the Nèi Biān containing the broader range of zǒufāng material that did not fit the four-fold inner dǐng / chuàn / dǐ / sè organisational scheme. The KR digital text of KR3ed107 is the Wài Biān as a stand-alone publication, separate from the combined NèiWài biān of KR3ed105; the two KR entries thus represent two recensional moments of the same work.

The Wài Biān’s four juǎn in the KR text:

  • Juǎn 1: Jìnyào mén 禁藥門 — jìn (charm-and-prohibition) pharmacy: anti-epidemic talismanic preparations (the Lǐ Zǐjiàn shāguǐ wán 殺鬼丸 to ward off pestilential demons), pest-control (mosquito-and-flea preparations), epidemic-prophylaxis (the throwing of black-beans into the household water-cistern), insect-repellent and snake-poison antidotes.
  • Juǎn 2: Zhēnfǎ mén 針法門 — acupuncture: the Húsūn láo (paediatric láo-malady), the mènzhěnzǐ eruption-fever, the hóubì throat-obstruction, the Bǎifā shénzhēn 百發神針 (a hundred-hits divine needle) for various conditions, the Xiāopǐ shén huǒ zhēn (a fire-needle for masses), and the Yīnzhèng sàndú zhēn (a yīn-syndrome poison-dispersing needle).
  • Juǎn 3: Jiǔfǎ mén 灸法門 — moxibustion: infantile moxa, female jīzhuǎfēng (chicken-claw-spasm) moxa for post-partum tetany, dry-cholera zhìmìng zhī moxa, fùzǐ jiǔ (aconite moxibustion) for chronic suppurating wounds, huánglà jiǔ (yellow-wax moxibustion), and so on.
  • Juǎn 4 — miscellaneous zǒufāng recipes not fitting into the other categories.

Prefaces

The KR source KR3ed107 lacks a _000.txt front-matter file; the standard 1759 self-preface of Zhào Xuémǐn (the same as for the combined NèiWài biān) is not preserved in this particular KR sub-deposit.

Abstract

The Wài Biān is the Chuànyǎ’s broader supplementary half — covering material that did not fit Zhào’s primary anthropological organisation of itinerant-healer practice into the four dǐng / chuàn / dǐ / sè categories. The Wài Biān’s Jìnyào section is the principal Qīng record of charm-pharmacy, including the Bìyì fāng anti-epidemic protocols of folk practice (oil in the nostrils before entering a plague-house; black beans into the cistern), and the Lǐ Zǐjiàn shāguǐ wán preserved here from the Sòng pharmacological tradition. The Zhēnfǎ and Jiǔfǎ sections give acupuncture and moxibustion protocols for emergency and rural-clinical use that the standard Shānghán / Wèishēngpǔjì literature does not transmit.

The work is part of the same 1759 Chuànyǎ publication-event but its independent transmission as a stand-alone Wài Biān — as represented in the KR3ed107 text — testifies to the late-Qīng popular-print habit of disaggregating large collections into freely-circulating thematic excerpts. Bibliographers therefore sometimes treat Chuànyǎ Wài Biān as a separate work; substantively, it is half of the combined Chuànyǎ Nèi Wài Biān of KR3ed105.

Translations and research

  • See KR3ed105 for full bibliography.
  • Bian, He. Know Your Remedies (Princeton, 2020) — sustained treatment of Zhào Xuémǐn.
  • Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine (Eastland, 2007).

Other points of interest

The Jìnyào (charm-pharmacy) section is the place where the Chuànyǎ corpus most directly intersects with religious-Daoist pharmacology — the Lǐ Zǐjiàn shāguǐ wán is an explicitly demonifuge preparation in the Lǐngbǎo talismanic tradition, transmitted as a recipe rather than as a rite. Zhào’s editorial choice to preserve this material is anthropologically significant: it implicitly recognises charm-pharmacy as part of the zǒufāng corpus rather than as something to be excluded as superstition.

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