Xīfāngzǐ Míngtáng jiǔ jīng 西方子明堂灸經
Master of the West’s Hall-of-Light Moxibustion Classic attributed to 西方子 Xīfāngzǐ (anonymous early Yuán)
About the work
An eight-juan Yuán moxibustion catalog transmitted under the pseudonymous attribution “Xīfāngzǐ” 西方子 (“Master of the West”); the actual author is unknown. The work catalogs acupoints face-by-face and body-region-by-body-region, with diagrams (the Zhèngrén tóumiàn tú 正人頭面圖 etc.), giving for each acupoint its location with respect to bone-landmarks, the moxa dose, the contraindications, and the indications. The text systematically extends and refines the parent Huángdì Míngtáng jiǔ jīng (KR3ee018) — adding many more clinical indications, more precise locations, and a fuller diagrammatic apparatus. As with KR3ee018, the work focuses exclusively on moxibustion, not needling.
Abstract
The “Xīfāngzǐ” attribution is one of several Yuán-Daoist pseudonyms in the moxibustion-textbook tradition; modern scholarship (黄龍祥 Huáng Lóngxiáng) treats the author as an early-Yuán figure with strong access to the Sòng Tóngrén tújīng and to the lost Míngtáng corpus. The work is registered in the Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào (Zǐbù · Yījiā lèi), which praises its diagrammatic precision. The composition window 1295–1330 followed here is the consensus modern dating; the work was first printed in the Yuánzhèng 元正 reign-period and reprinted multiple times in the Míng. As a Yuán-period moxibustion catalog, it is one of three principal surviving witnesses for the lost Míngtáng tradition (the others being KR3ee018 and 皇甫謐 Huángfǔ Mì’s Jiǎyǐ jīng KR3ee005).
Translations and research
- 黄龍祥 Huáng Lóngxiáng, Huángdì Míngtáng jīng jíjiào 黃帝明堂經輯校 (Beijing, 1988) — reconstruction of the Míngtáng corpus drawing on Xīfāngzǐ.
- Catherine Despeux, in Encyclopedia of Taoism, “Acupuncture” entry, 2008.
Links
- Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào, Zǐbù · Yījiā lèi.
- 西方子明堂灸經 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB