Jīnguì yào lüè xīn diǎn 金匱要略心典
Heart-Canon of the Jīnguì yào lüè by 尤怡 (Yóu Yí, zì Zàijīng 在涇, hào Zhuózhái 拙齋, ca. 1650–ca. 1749, 清)
About the work
A three-juan late-Kāngxī / early-Qiánlóng commentary on the Jīnguì yào lüè by 尤怡 Yóu Yí (字 Zàijīng 在涇), the Sūzhōu–Chángshú scholar-physician who is one of the most influential commentators on the entire Zhāng Zhòngjǐng canon from the early-to-mid Qīng. The Xīn diǎn — companion to Yóu’s better-known Shānghán guànzhū jí 傷寒貫珠集 (KR3ef019) — is one of the principal eighteenth-century Jīnguì commentaries and has had wide pedagogical use through the late Qīng and into the modern period.
Abstract
Composition window 1729–1749 is bracketed by the completion of Yóu’s Shānghán guànzhū jí in 1729 and his death ca. 1749. The Kanripo source preserves the “Xú xù” 徐序 — preface by 徐大椿 Xú Dàchūn — which is one of the most-cited eighteenth-century critiques of the conventional “Four Masters” (Four Great Masters of Jīn–Yuán: 張機 Zhòngjǐng, 劉完素 Liú Héjiān, 李杲 Lǐ Dōngyuán, 朱震亨 Zhū Dānxī) schema. Xú argues that (1) the conventional ranking — Zhòngjǐng for Shānghán, then Liú Héjiān, Lǐ Dōngyuán, Zhū Dānxī — is inappropriately equal-handed: the latter three “去仲景相懸。不可以道里計” (are so far from Zhòngjǐng that the distance cannot be measured); (2) Zhòngjǐng is not “specialist in Shānghán” as is conventionally claimed — his Jīnguì yào lüè is precisely his treatise on zá bìng 雜病 (miscellaneous disorders), and the 113 Shānghán prescriptions all derive from the broader zá bìng prescription corpus.
Xú’s preface frames Yóu’s Xīn diǎn — and the canonical Jīnguì yào lüè — as the essential corrective to the “Zhòngjǐng specialist in Shānghán” misconception. Within the canonical text Yóu’s commentary is clinically focused, concise, and pedagogically lucid — the characteristic features of his guànzhū method applied to the Jīnguì canon.
The work is one of the principal mid-Qīng Jīnguì commentaries and remains a foundational reference in modern Chinese-medicine education.
Translations and research
- Modern critical editions in standard Chinese-medicine collectanea (Rénmín wèishēng, multiple editions).
- No comprehensive English-language translation located.
Other points of interest
Xú Dàchūn’s preface is one of the most important early-modern statements of the canonical-text identity of the Jīnguì yào lüè and its relationship to the Shānghán lùn. The argument that the two works were originally a single corpus (the Shānghán zábìng lùn 傷寒雜病論), divided by 林億 Lín Yì of the Sòng校正 only as an editorial convenience, is now standard but was articulated with particular force in this preface.
Links
- See KR3ef079 (parent Jīnguì yào lüè).
- See KR3ef019 (Yóu’s parallel Shānghán guànzhū jí).
- 金匱要略心典 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB