Jīngluò huìbiān 經絡彙編
Compendium of Channels and Collaterals by 翟良 Zhái Liáng (撰)
About the work
A late-Míng monograph on the channel-collateral system (jīngluò 經絡), composed by the Shāndōng physician 翟良 Zhái Liáng (hào Yùhú 玉壺, late Wànlì to Chóngzhēn period). Zhái’s polemic, set out in the opening Jīngluò tǒngxù 經絡統序, is that the channel-system is not the proprietary concern of acupuncturists but the foundation of all clinical reasoning, including pharmacotherapy: “Those who do not understand the twelve channels and collaterals — the moment they open their mouths or move their hands, they are already wrong” (不明十二經絡，開口動手便錯). The work develops the full zǐwǔ liúzhù mapping of the twelve channels onto the twelve double-hours (寅-肺, 卯-大腸, etc.), reproduces the Língshū jīngmài chapter point-trajectory with extensive annotation, and adds Zhái’s own chapter on the origins of disease in terms of channel-impedance. The second juan turns to clinical applications: which channel is implicated in which kind of headache, eye-disease, leg-pain, etc., with annotated formulary.
Abstract
The Jīngluò huìbiān is dated by internal evidence to the late Wànlì or Chóngzhēn period — the latest internal reference is to 李杲 Lǐ Dōngyuán’s zhōngyǎng lùn, and the printing-style of the surviving editions is mid-17th-century. Zhái Liáng is documented in late-Míng / early-Qīng local gazetteers of Yìzhōu 益州 (Shāndōng) as a literatus-physician who repeatedly declined office. His Jīngluò huìbiān belongs to the same late-Míng wave of “channel-doctrine” treatises as 沈子祿 Shěn Zǐlù and 徐師曾 Xú Shīcēng’s Jīngluò quánshū (KR3ee011), 張三錫 Zhāng Sānxī’s Jīngluò kǎo (KR3ee025), and 滑壽 Huá Shòu’s earlier Shísì jīng fāhuī (KR3ee026) — collectively, the genre that re-centered Chinese clinical reasoning on the jīngluò mapping after the heavy formulary-orientation of the Sòng. The work was published privately in a Shāndōng family-print edition and survives in late-Míng manuscript witnesses; it is not registered in the Sìkù.
Translations and research
- 王民鶴 Wáng Mínhú (ed.), Zhōngguó yīxué dàcídiǎn 中國醫學大辭典, entry “翟良”.
- 嚴世芸 Yán Shìyún (ed.), Zhōngyī rénwù cídiǎn, Shanghai: Císhū, 1988 — Zhái Liáng entry.
Links
- Zhōngguó zhōngyī gǔjí zǒngmù, zhēnjiǔ section.
- 經絡彙編 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB