Jīnguì yùhán jīng 金匱玉函經
The Golden-Casket Jade-Cabinet Canon by 張機 (Zhāng Jī / Zhòngjǐng 仲景, fl. Jiàn’ān period, late Hàn), compiled by 王叔和 (Wáng Shūhé), edited under the Sòng校正醫書局 collation
About the work
An eight-juan parallel recension of the Shānghán lùn attributed to 張機 Zhāng Zhòngjǐng (張仲景) and compiled by 王叔和 Wáng Shūhé, identified by the Sòng Jiàozhèng Yīshū jú 校正醫書局 as one of three distinct surviving works of the Zhāng Zhòngjǐng canon (alongside the Shānghán lùn 傷寒論 and the Jīnguì fāng lùn 金匱方論, see KR3ef079). The title “jīn guì yù hán” 金匱玉函 (“golden casket, jade cabinet”) refers to the imperial-archive containers used for canonical-text safekeeping and is a later honorific epithet — the title is, as the Qīng-period reprint preface notes, “蓋亦後人所加，取珍秘之意” (also added by later hands, intending the connotation of preciousness).
Abstract
Composition window 196–220 CE conventional (Jiàn’ān-period for the Zhāng Zhòngjǐng / Wáng Shūhé textual stratum). The Yùhán jīng is bibliographically distinct from the Shānghán lùn in the Sòng校正 reconstruction: where the Shānghán lùn received its principal Northern-Sòng edition (1057) directly, the Yùhán jīng circulated independently. The principal early-modern reprint is the 何焯 Hé Zhōuxiōng (字 屺瞻, Yìmén nèihàn 義門內翰, 1661–1722) recension — Hé in Rénzhèn 壬辰 = Kāngxī 51 = 1712, passed his hand-copy of the Sòng-edition Yùhán jīng to the editor of the received Qīng reprint, who then collated and supplemented the manuscript through textual cross-reference to other classical medical sources (“補亡滅誤，十得八九”), producing the recension that has been transmitted ever since. The preface signed at completion (preserved in the Kanripo source) records this textual-recovery process.
The Sòng校正 had originally identified the Yùhán jīng as a parallel recension of the Shānghán material — 馬端臨 Mǎ Duānlín’s Wénxiàn tōng kǎo 文獻通考 / Jīng jí kǎo 經籍考 lists it but cites Cháo’s preface, which actually refers to the Jīnguì yùhán yào lüè — indicating that bibliographic confusion between the Yùhán jīng (8 juan, Shānghán parallel recension) and the Jīnguì yùhán yào lüè (= Jīnguì yào lüè, zá bìng recension) was a continuing problem. Hé Zhōuxiōng’s manuscript recovery in the early Qīng resolved the confusion and re-established the Yùhán jīng as an independent text-witness.
The work is one of the principal Sòng校正 collation outputs and a key text for any text-critical work on the Shānghán canon. It is the principal alternate-recension witness to the canonical Shānghán material outside the Shānghán lùn proper.
Translations and research
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興, Zhōngyī wénxiàn xué (1990) — substantive textual history of the Yùhán recension.
- Mitchell-Féng-Wiseman, Shang Han Lun: On Cold Damage (Paradigm, 1999) — references the Yùhán variant readings throughout.
- The standard modern Chinese critical edition: Mǎ Jìxīng et al., Jīn guì yù hán jīng jiào zhù (Renmin weisheng, multiple editions).
- No comprehensive English-language translation of the Yùhán jīng located.
Other points of interest
The Hé Zhōuxiōng / Hé Yìménnèihàn recension is one of the most important examples of Qīng kǎo zhèng 考證 (evidential research) bibliographic recovery: the work had been lost in standard transmission since the Yuán, and Hé’s manuscript copy of the Sòng-edition (transmitted privately) was the only line of recovery available. The preface’s discussion of the editorial method (“掩卷而嘆曰：『是可報命於內翰矣。』”) is one of the more characteristic Qīng-period accounts of philological text-recovery work.
Links
- See KR3ef001 (parallel Shānghán lùn recension).
- See KR3ef079 (the parallel Jīnguì yào lüè — zá bìng recension).
- 金匱玉函經 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB