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扁鵲神應針灸玉龍經

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Text ID
KR3ee008
Date
1329–1329
Dynasty
元

Biǎnquè shényìng zhēnjiǔ Yùlóng jīng 扁鵲神應針灸玉龍經

Biǎn Què’s Spiritual-Response Jade-Dragon Acupuncture Classic by 王國瑞 Wáng Guóruì (撰)

About the work

A single-juan Yuán acupuncture treatise completed in Tiānlì 天曆 2 (1329) by the Wùyuán 婺源 (Jiāngxī) acupuncturist 王國瑞 Wáng Guóruì. The work pseudepigraphically attributes its core didactic verse — the Yùlóng gē 玉龍歌 (“Jade-Dragon Song”) of 120 acupoints — to the legendary physician 扁鵲 Biǎn Què. The disciple 周仲良 Zhōu Zhòngliáng’s postface, dated 1329, frames the Yùlóng jīng as a hereditary transmission from Wáng Guóruì: “From the year I was personally taught by [Wáng], I have practiced this art for forty years between the Seven-Mǐn and Two-Zhè regions; whenever I met an illness, I cured it; cures always succeeded — believing in the Way of this book is like the spreading splendor of jade, whose lustre cannot be polished away” (遊藝於七閩兩浙之間者，凡四十年，遇病則醫，醫必見效). The text consists of (1) the Liúzhù xù 流注序 (preface on the zǐwǔ liúzhù timing of the celestial-stem channel correspondences); (2) the 120-acupuncture-point Jade-Dragon Songs (一百二十穴玉龍歌, around 85 quatrains, each pairing a clinical syndrome with one or two acupoints, needling depth, moxa dose, and supplement-or-drain instructions); (3) the Acupoint Correspondence Pairings (穴法相應) listing 37 paired “principal-and-responding” acupoints (主應); (4) the annotated Biāoyōu fù 標幽賦 (Wáng’s own commentary on 竇漢卿 Dōu Hànqīng’s late-Sòng acupuncture rhapsody, cf. KR3ee017); (5) the Tiānxīng shíyī xué gē 天星十一穴歌訣; (6) the Nine-Section Body-Spirit and Nine-Palace Buttock-Spirit chronopuncture verses; (7) the Six-Sixty-Sixth Acupoint Indication-Table (六十六穴治證); (8) Wáng’s own clinical secret “iron-plate gold direct-needling” (磐石金直刺秘傳) clinical-prescription chapter; (9) the Flying-Soaring Eight Methods (飛騰八法起例) on the Língguī bāfǎ chronoacupuncture.

Tiyao

The Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào (Zǐbù · Yījiā lèi) notes that the work’s attribution to Biǎn Què is “extravagant” (誇詞) and that Wáng Guóruì is the actual author; it praises the Yùlóng gē for being “extremely well-suited to clinical practice and to memorization” (頗便於用，易於記誦) and observes that the Biāoyōu fù annotations are “concise and to the point” (簡而當).

Abstract

The Yùlóng jīng is the first Yuán-period acupuncture work to systematize an entire clinical curriculum as mnemonic verse, prefiguring the much-larger Míng compilations of 徐鳳 Xú Fèng (KR3ee002) and 楊繼洲 Yáng Jìzhōu (KR3ee027). Wáng Guóruì’s distinctive technical contribution is the Xuéfǎ xiāngyīng 穴法相應 (“acupoint-correspondence”) schema: each “principal” point is paired with a “responding” point, giving a two-point clinical formula for every major syndrome — this is the source of the famous zhǔyìng (主應) idiom in later acupuncture textbooks. The Biāoyōu fù annotated commentary is the earliest extant systematic Chinese annotation of Dōu Hànqīng’s late-Sòng acupuncture rhapsody (the rhapsody itself is reproduced in KR3ee017 Zhēn jīng zhǐnán) and preserves substantial otherwise-lost technical doctrine. The text was included in the SKQS proper (Zǐbù · Yījiā). The work survives in a Yuán Tiānlì edition (extremely rare), a Míng Yǒnglè recension, the SKQS recension, and the jicheng.tw electronic edition reproduced from the WYG (文淵閣) Sìkù recension used here.

Translations and research

  • 黄龍祥 Huáng Lóngxiáng (ed.), Zhēnjiǔ míngzhù jíchéng 針灸名著集成 (Beijing: Huá-Xià, 1996), vol. Yuán dài juǎn, critical edition.
  • 陸瘦燕 Lù Shòuyàn and 朱汝功 Zhū Rǔgōng, “Wáng Guóruì Yùlóng jīng yánjiū” (1960s, repr. in Lù Shòuyàn zhēnjiǔ lùnzhù jí, Shanghai, 2008).
  • Catherine Despeux’s annotated French translations in Le poinçon de jade, Paris: Trédaniel, 1981 — covers selected Yùlóng gē verses.

Other points of interest

The Xuéfǎ xiāngyīng pairing scheme of the Yùlóng jīng is the conceptual ancestor of the later “eight-confluent-point” pairing (Bāfǎ bāxué) and of the modern Chinese-medicine pedagogical convention of “principal-and-secondary” point selection (主穴 / 配穴).

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