Bǎoyòu xīnpiān 保幼新編
A New Compilation for Protecting the Young preface by 盧光履 Lú Guānglǚ (序); text attributed to a lost Míng-period author 無忌先生 Wújì xiānshēng
About the work
A Joseon-Korean transmission of a Chinese paediatric handbook of unknown Míng-period authorship. The work survives in the Korean recension published with a preface by 盧光履 Lú Guānglǚ (No Kwang-ri, 1730–1784) of Joseon Korea, dated yǐsì 乙巳 = 1785. The preface attributes the original text to gǔ HuángMíng chéngsīwén yì qí mínghào 古皇明成斯文逸其名號 — a Confucian scholar of the former Imperial Míng whose name and style have been lost — known only by the pen-name 無忌先生 Wújì xiānshēng (“Master No-Taboo”). The text was preserved by the Buddhist monk 正訓 Zhèngxùn (Kor. Jeong-hun), who brought a copy to Lú Guānglǚ and requested a prefatory inscription before publication. The work circulated in late-Joseon Korea as a household paediatric reference. It belongs functionally — alongside the Dōngyī bǎojiàn 東醫寶鑑 and the late-Joseon paediatric memorials — to the Korean tradition of practical paediatric handbooks rather than to the Chinese scholarly-paediatric mainstream.
Prefaces
Lú Guānglǚ’s preface (“龍集乙巳七夕勿齋病夫盧光履撰”) observes the maxim níng yī shí zhàngfū, nán yī yī xiǎoér 寧醫十丈夫，難醫一小兒 — easier to treat ten grown men than one small child — and recounts the transmission: the previous autumn the monk Zhèngxùn produced from his sleeve a single fascicle, identifying it as the lost work of the Míng-period scholar Wújìxiānshēng, the Bǎoyòu xīnpiān. Lú confesses incompetence in medicine but, on inspection, finds the work to derive from the ancient canon (古經) supplemented with xīnfāng 新方 (new prescriptions), pruned of redundancy, and integrating yùnqì 運氣 cosmological doctrine with the Five Phases (wǔxíng 五行) and yīnyáng 陰陽 — clinically efficacious rú chí zuǒ qì 如持左契 (as if holding the matching tally). He notes the irony that rú zhī chì fó, yǐ qí yòng gōng yú xūwú jímiè ér zhǐ ěr 儒之斥佛，以其用功於虛無寂滅而止耳 — Confucians condemn Buddhists for cultivating only nothingness and quiescence — yet here is a Buddhist monk performing the meritorious Confucian act of disseminating a life-saving paediatric text. The work’s editorial principles (fánlì 凡例) note that prescriptions have been adapted by removing toxic ingredients and substituting locally available Korean materia medica (xiāngchǎn 鄉產), making the book practical for poor rural households where the rare ingredients of Chinese formularies are unobtainable.
Abstract
The body of the Bǎoyòu xīnpiān opens with a yùnqì liúxíng fǎ 運氣流行法 (method of cosmological qi-circulation), tying the year, month, and day branches to corresponding zàngfǔ organ-systems and disease categories — a methodological approach more characteristic of Korean than mainland-Chinese paediatric texts. It then proceeds through xiǎoér bìngyuán zǒnglùn 小兒病源總論 (general etiology of paediatric disease — all childhood disorders are referred to tāirè 胎熱 fetal heat as their ultimate root) and the conventional disorders: jīngfēng 驚風 (in its three forms jíjīng 急驚, mànjīng 慢驚, mànpífēng 慢脾風, with the eight characteristic hòu 候 signs chōu nuò chè zhàn fǎn yǐn cuàn shì 搐搦掣顫反引竄視), gān 疳, xièlì 瀉痢, dòuzhěn 痘疹, and others. The work’s date bracket is wide: the lost Míng original could be anywhere from c. 1500 to 1640 (the late Míng), and the received Korean recension is fixed by Lú’s 1785 preface — hence notBefore: 1500 / notAfter: 1785. The text’s inclusion in the jicheng.tw corpus reflects its preservation in Korean rather than Chinese repositories.
Translations and research
- Hangugin Munhwa Daebaekgwa Sajeon 한국민족문화대백과사전 (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture), Boyu sinpyeon 보유신편 entry — notes a related Korean compilation by King Jeongjo 正祖 based on the Dōngyī bǎojiàn; the relation of these compilations to the present text is unclear, with two distinct works of the same title possibly circulating.
- Soyoung Suh, Naming the Local: Medicine, Language, and Identity in Korea since the 15th Century (Harvard Asia Center, 2017) — context for Korean medical-text production and the Dōngyī bǎojiàn tradition.
- Don Baker, Korean Spirituality (University of Hawaii Press, 2008) — context for the Joseon Confucian-Buddhist interface visible in the preface.
- No substantial English-language study of the Bǎoyòu xīnpiān located.
Other points of interest
The preface is unusual in the Sinitic paediatric corpus for its explicit acknowledgement of a Buddhist monk’s role in textual transmission and for its Confucian-Buddhist mediation rhetoric. This is a marker of the Joseon-Korean rather than Míng-Qīng cultural context. The work’s substitution of Korean local materia medica (xiāngchǎn 鄉產) for inaccessible Chinese ingredients is a typical practical adaptation in late-Joseon medical publishing.