Shānghán lùn tiáo biàn 傷寒論條辨
Section-by-Section Discrimination of the Treatise on Cold Damage by 方有執 (Fāng Yǒuzhí, zì Zhōngxíng 中行, b. 1523, fl. late Wànlì, 明)
About the work
The foundational late-Míng (1592) revisionist commentary on the Shānghán lùn, in 8 juan (with appended Běncǎo chāo 本草鈔 1 juan, Huò wèn 或問 1 juan, Jìng shū 痙書 1 juan), by 方有執 Fāng Yǒuzhí of Shèxiàn 歙縣 (Ānhuī). The work is the first sustained argument for “restoring the ancient Chángshā [Hàn] text” (Chángshā fùgǔ 長沙復古) of Zhāng Jī’s canon — against the 王叔和 Wáng Shūhé editorial sequence (Western Jìn) and against 成無己 Chéng Wúyǐ’s annotation (Jīn). Fāng’s reconstruction tries to recover what he takes to be the original chapter order; the Tiáo biàn is the immediate ancestor of 喻昌 Yú Chāng’s Shànglùn piān (KR3ef026) and the foundational document of the late-Míng / early-Qīng Shānghán ancient-text-restoration school.
Abstract
The composition window of 1589–1593 reflects: preface 1589, postface 1591, yǐn 引 1593, with printing at Wànlì rénchén 萬曆壬辰 (1592). The text was composed over more than twenty years of Fāng’s clinical practice. Fāng’s argument has two layers. First, philological: Wáng Shūhé’s late-3rd-century editing of Zhāng Jī’s Shānghán zábìng lùn obscured the original 16-juan structure by splitting it into cold-damage and miscellaneous-disease portions and resequencing the cold-damage chapters; the Tiáo biàn attempts a reconstruction. Second, polemical: Chéng Wúyǐ’s 1144 annotation (KR3ef005) further distorted the text by importing Sùwèn-derived doctrinal apparatus that is foreign to Zhāng Jī’s clinical thinking; Fāng’s commentary tries to ground the text instead in the Nèijīng’s “Rèlùn” 熱論 framework.
The work was reprinted (often with 林起龍 Lín Qǐlóng’s 1674 preface that fiercely accused Yú Chāng of plagiarizing from it) repeatedly through the late Míng and Qīng. Modern Chinese textual scholarship (Mǎ Jìxīng) treats the Tiáo biàn as the foundational document of the entire late-imperial Shānghán revisionist tradition.
Translations and research
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Shānghán lùn jiào zhù (1991).
- Goldschmidt, Evolution of Chinese Medicine (2009) — chapter 8 on the long late-Míng Shānghán revival.
- Hinrichs and Barnes (2013), 145–179.
- Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, §35.7.1.
Other points of interest
The 林起龍 Lín Qǐlóng 1674 reprint accused 喻昌 Yú Chāng of plagiarizing the Tiáo biàn in his Shànglùn piān. The controversy was central to early-Qīng Shānghán scholarship and continues to generate scholarly comment.
Links
- ctext.org
- See also KR3ef026 (Yú Chāng’s Shànglùn piān), the direct descendant.
- 傷寒論條辨 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB