Tāichǎn xīnshū 胎產新書
New Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth compiled by 雪巖禪師 Xuěyán chánshī (fl. late-Qīng), edited by 靜光輪應禪師 Jìngguānglún Yīng chánshī
About the work
A late-Qīng obstetrical-and-childbirth manual compiled and edited by Chán Buddhist monk-physicians and circulated under the late-Qīng popular-charity (císhàn) medical-publishing model. The catalog meta records the work as “Xuěyán chánshī zuǎnjí, Jìngguānglún Yīng chánshī kǎodìng” — “compiled by Master Xuěyán, verified and fixed by Master Jìngguānglún Yīng.” This explicit temple-based attribution places the work in the same tradition as the better-known Bamboo-Grove (Zhúlín) monastery obstetrical formulary of northern Zhèjiāng — see Yi-Li Wu (2000), “The Bamboo Grove Monastery and Popular Gynecology in Qing China.”
Abstract
The text body in the krp source-file for KR3ei078 contains only the org-mode header — the work is preserved bibliographically rather than reproduced. The catalog meta gives the dynasty as 清 and the two Chán-monk compilers; no further bibliographic detail is recorded. Composition window 1800–1900 — the late-Qīng period — set on the basis of the popular-charity císhàn publishing context, which flourished from the Jiāqìng and Dàoguāng periods through to the end of the dynasty.
The work belongs to the broader Qīng temple-based obstetrical compilation genre, in which Buddhist or Daoist temple physicians compiled clinical formularies for free distribution as merit-accumulation works (gōngdé). The 1715 Dáshēng biān (KR3ei055) of Jízhāi Jūshì is the most-famous example; the Bamboo-Grove formulary genre studied by Wu (2000) is another; the Tāichǎn xīnshū is a third. The genre is characterised by its explicit lay-Buddhist framing, the merit-accumulation publishing model, and the use of Buddhist studio-pseudonyms or temple-master appellations rather than secular author-names.
The Hǎiwài huíguī series preserves the work as a bibliographic witness; detailed textual study of this work has not been undertaken in Chinese-medicine scholarship.
Translations and research
- Yi-Li Wu, “The Bamboo Grove Monastery and Popular Gynecology in Qing China.” Late Imperial China 21.1 (2000): 41–76.
- Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
- No standalone English translation located.
Links
- 海外回歸中醫善本古籍叢書 (Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī shànběn gǔjí cóngshū).
- 胎產新書 jicheng.tw
- Kanseki DB