Shānghán lùn (Sòng běn) 傷寒論（宋本）
Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders, Song-bureau recension by 張機 (Zhāng Jī, zì Zhòngjǐng 仲景, fl. Jiàn’ān reign 196–220, 東漢) — original; 王叔和 (Wáng Shūhé, late 3rd c., 晉) — Western-Jìn editor; 林億 (Lín Yì, fl. 1057–1068, 宋) and colleagues — Sòng校正醫書局 collators
About the work
The Sòng校正醫書局 recension of the Shānghán lùn in ten juan, 22 chapters, presenting Zhāng Jī’s foundational Hàn-period treatise on cold-damage (epidemic) disorders. This is the canonical “Sòng-edition” text (宋本) — the form prepared by 林億 Lín Yì, 孫奇 Sūn Qí, and 高保衡 Gāo Bǎohéng at the校正醫書局 in 1065, which has been the standard of every later commentary and the textual basis of the modern East Asian medical curriculum. The text is organized as a sequence of clinically-keyed prescriptions hung on a doctrinal framework of “six-channel” (六經 liùjīng) disease progression (太陽 Tàiyáng → 陽明 Yángmíng → 少陽 Shàoyáng → 太陰 Tàiyīn → 少陰 Shàoyīn → 厥陰 Juéyīn) plus chapters on conjoint and ancillary syndromes.
Abstract
The composition window of the underlying treatise is the Jiàn’ān 建安 era of Eastern Hàn (196–220), as fixed by Zhāng Jī’s own preface, which describes the loss of two-thirds of his clan to epidemic disease over a decade and identifies that calamity as the immediate motivation for the work. The original Shānghán zábìng lùn 傷寒雜病論 in sixteen juan was already incomplete by the late third century, when Wáng Shūhé recovered and re-edited it: he split off the cold-damage portion (the upper third) as the Shānghán lùn proper, while the remainder became the seed for the later Jīnguì yàoluè 金匱要略 (preserved separately as KR3ef079). The text was transmitted through TángSòng manuscripts in unstable form until 1065, when the校正醫書局 prepared the present ten-juan recension under imperial commission. Lín Yì’s preface is the standard textual-critical witness; it notes that the bureau collated multiple manuscript witnesses, normalized the prescriptions, and ordered the chapters in the form that has been standard ever since. The “Sòng-edition” survives directly only in the so-called 趙開美 Zhào Kāiměi facsimile printed in the Wànlì 27 (1599) edition of the Zhòngjǐng quánshū 仲景全書 (仲景全書) — by mechanical reproduction of a Northern Sòng print — and through every commentary tradition based on it.
The catalog meta places the work in the 東漢, which is the conventional dating of the source-stratum; the actual surviving recension is, of course, Sòng. The two are inseparable in practice and the cataloging convention follows the underlying composition date.
Translations and research
- Mitchell, Craig; Féng Yè 馮燁; Wiseman, Nigel. Shāng Hán Lùn: On Cold Damage, Translation & Commentaries. Brookline: Paradigm, 1999. The standard English translation, with a parallel-text presentation of the Sòng-recension Chinese.
- Yáng Shàoyī 楊紹伊, Shānghán lùn jiào jiān jì 傷寒論校勘記 (republished Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1957) — the classic modern critical edition.
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Shānghán lùn jiào zhù 傷寒論校註, Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1991. The standard modern textual edition, collating the Zhào Kāiměi facsimile with Yuán prints and Japanese witnesses.
- Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200. London: Routledge, 2009 — chapters 5–7 on the Sòng校正醫書局 collation of the Shānghán lùn and the subsequent revival of Zhāng Jī’s clinical canon.
- Despeux, Catherine, “The System of the Five Circulatory Phases and the Six Seasonal Influences (wuyun liuqi), a Source of Innovation in Medicine under the Song (960–1279),” in E. Hsu (ed.) Innovation in Chinese Medicine (Cambridge UP, 2001), 121–165 — background on the Sòng medical-bureau context.
- Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual (Harvard, 2018), §35.7.1 lists this as the foundational clinical canon for the entire later imperial tradition.
- Hinrichs and Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing (Harvard Belknap, 2013), pp. 75–95 (Hanson) for the Sòng revival and the Jiājìng / Wànlì re-prints.
Other points of interest
The “Sòng běn” 宋本 designation in the catalog is shorthand for the 趙開美 Zhào Kāiměi 1599 facsimile and its modern descendants, since no actual Northern Sòng print of the Shānghán lùn survives. The other principal Sòng-line recension is the Jīnguì yùhán jīng 金匱玉函經 (KR3ef080), which preserves a parallel eight-juan textual stratum.