Zhēnjiǔ shénshū 針灸神書
Spirit Book of Acupuncture and Moxibustion attributed to 瓊瑤真人 Qióngyáo zhēnrén
About the work
A Southern Sòng acupuncture manual transmitted under the name of the legendary Daoist zhēnrén Qióngyáo 瓊瑤真人 (“Perfected One of Qióngyáo”), surviving in Qīng manuscript and print recensions. The work — also called the Qióngyáo shénshū 瓊瑤神書 — is the principal source for the so-called “Qióngyáo manual techniques” (Qióngyáo shǒufǎ 瓊瑤手法), an unusually rich technical vocabulary for needle manipulation (guā 刮, zhàn 戰, yáo 搖, àn 按, shè 攝, tán 彈, cuō 搓, sōu 搜) and a distinctive “abdominal pan-pan” (fùbù pánpán 腹部盤盤) palpation/treatment method. It covers 360 acupoints with explicit indications on needling depth, breathing coordination, the zǐwǔ left-right contralateral selection (“left disease take right, right disease take left, disease above take below, disease below take above”), and the heating/cooling manipulation reversals (“hot in the cold, cold in the hot”).
Abstract
The text is internally undated but ascribed to “Qióngyáo zhēnrén” — almost certainly a pseudonymous Daoist persona, traditionally identified with a late-12th-century Southern Sòng physician active in the JiāngZhè region. The work survives only in a small number of late-Qīng manuscript and printed recensions; the most influential is the 1836 (Dàoguāng bǐngshēn, “桃月下浣吉旦”) edition opened by a preface by the 82-year-old 詹景炎 Zhān Jǐngyán (Gǔ Lè 古扐). Zhān’s preface frames the Zhēnjiǔ shénshū as the Urtext behind both the Míng Zhēnjiǔ dàquán 針灸大全 (KR3ee002) and the Zhēnjiǔ dàchéng 針灸大成 (KR3ee027): “Zhēnjiǔ dàquán and Zhēnjiǔ dàchéng are widely current in the world, yet readers do not realize that both are grounded in the Qióngyáo” (《針灸大全》、《針灸大成》遍行於世，而不知其皆本於《瓊瑤》乎). This is an exaggerated polemical claim — the Dàquán and Dàchéng do not depend textually on the Qióngyáo — but the technical vocabulary of needle manipulation in the Qióngyáo shénshū does feed substantially into the late-Míng manipulation tradition, and modern Chinese-medicine historians regularly cite it as a key Sòng witness for the so-called “twenty-four manipulations” (èrshísì fǎ 二十四法). The pseudepigraphic Daoist framing (a “perfected one” transmitting a secret manual) is typical of late-Sòng and Yuán medical Daoism. The date bracket 1186–1200 followed here corresponds to the broad late-Southern-Sòng period to which the bulk of internal-evidence and modern Chinese scholarship (Huáng Lóngxiáng, 魏稼 Wèi Jià) assigns the text; the Sìkù compilers did not register it. The catalog meta dynasty 宋 is followed.
Translations and research
- 魏稼 Wèi Jià et al., Qióngyáo shénshū jiào-zhù 瓊瑤神書校註 (Beijing: People’s Medical Publishing House, 2007) — the standard modern critical edition with full punctuation, glosses, and a long introduction on transmission and dating.
- 黄龍祥 Huáng Lóngxiáng, Zhōngguó zhēnjiǔ xué shùyǔ cídiǎn 中國針灸學術語辭典 (1999), entries on the Qióngyáo manipulation set.
- Liú Bīng 劉冰, “Zhēnjiǔ shénshū xíngzhì biàn” 針灸神書性質辨, Zhōngguó zhēnjiǔ (1998).
Other points of interest
The Qióngyáo technical vocabulary (guā-zhàn-yáo-àn-shè-tán-cuō-sōu and the fùbù pánpán maneuvers) is not found in any Sòng-imperial acupuncture treatise (e.g. 王惟一 Wáng Wéiyī’s Tóngrén shùxué zhēnjiǔ tújīng, KR3ee056) — it is the principal evidence for the existence of an autonomous, non-court Sòng manipulation tradition.
Links
- Wikidata Q105875080 (针灸神书)
- Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒngmù, zhēnjiǔ section.
- 針灸神書 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB