Qīngnáng mìjué 青囊秘訣
Secret Instructions of the Green-Bag [Surgical Tradition] attributed to 傅山 (Fù Shān, zì Qīngzhǔ 青主, 1607–1684); transmitted via 王大德 (Wáng Dàdé, zì Fānchuān 帆川) in a Yōngzhèng 1 (1723) manuscript transcript.
About the work
A short surgical formulary that circulates anonymously in the textual tradition and is conventionally attributed to the great Míng-loyalist scholar-physician Fù Shān (1607–1684). The earliest dated witness is Wáng Dàdé’s 1723 (Yōngzhèng 1) hand-copy, whose preface — preserved in the Kanripo _000.txt — explicitly records that the author’s name had already been lost (“書傳而人不傳”). The Fù Shān attribution rests on stylistic and content-based arguments and on Fù’s known interest in surgical medicine; it has been challenged by recent epigraphic research on the Shǒuzhuózhāi 守拙齋 lineage. The catalog meta gives no author, properly so.
Abstract
The sole paratext in _000.txt is the short xù 序 signed fānchuān Wáng Dàdé 帆川王大德 at Jīntáng 金堂 (Sìchuān) in Yōngzhèng 1 guǐmǎo qiǎoyuè (eighth lunar month, 1723). Wáng recounts that he borrowed a manuscript titled Qīngnáng mìjué from a friend, copied it under summer-heat conditions, and subsequently tested it in the capital on duìkǒu 對口 (nape carbuncles) and zhìlòu 痔漏 (anal fistulas), finding the methods “as effective as the divine arts of Biǎn Què 扁鵲 and Lú Yī 盧醫” (鵲、盧之神術). He laments that the original compiler, an obscure Pānzǐ 潘子, has been lost to history, and promises to publish the work one day as Wúmíngshì Qīngnáng mìjué 無名氏青囊秘訣 (“Mr Anonymous’s Green-Bag Secrets”). A provenance colophon at the end records the manuscript’s prior location: Hénán Huáiqìng Jìyuán miàodào Zhāng Shìxué mìcáng 河南懷慶濟源廟道張士學秘藏 — secretly held by the Daoist Zhāng Shìxué of the temple at Jìyuán, Huáiqìng, Hénán.
The work itself is a short, terse surgical formulary. The FùShān recensions divide it into ailment-by-ailment essays on principal wàikē conditions — duìkǒu (cervical carbuncle), zhìlòu (haemorrhoidal fistula), rǔyán 乳岩 (breast-rock), chángyōng 腸癰 (intestinal abscess), luǒlì 瘰癧 (scrofula), yángméi chuāng 楊梅瘡 (syphilis), and assorted toxic sores — each with brief discussion and formula. The register is terse, formulaic, almost Daoist — distinct from the more discursive Míng surgical idiom.
The composition window adopted here (1670–1723) reflects the FùShān attribution (his mature years as a Míng-loyalist recluse-physician) at the earlier end and Wáng Dàdé’s 1723 transcript at the later end. The catalog meta is silent on dynasty; the Qīng setting reflects Wáng’s transcription rather than the underlying composition date, which — if the FùShān attribution is correct — straddles the MíngQīng transition.
Translations and research
- 何高民 校考, 《青囊秘訣》, 太原: 山西人民出版社, 1985 — modern critical edition.
- 何高民, “Discussion on the transcription and circulation of the ‘Shǒu-zhuó-zhāi’ version of Qīng-náng mì-jué”, PubMed 30669776 (2018).
- 《傅山醫學全書》, 中國中醫藥, 2002 — includes this text and the other Fù Qīng-zhǔ attributions.
- No Western-language translation located.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the principal test cases in the textual transmission of pseudepigraphic Chinese medical works: the documentary chain (Pānzǐ — Zhāng Shìxué — Wáng Dàdé — printed editions of the late 18th c.) is much better documented than the FùShān attribution itself. Compare KR3ek031 Fùshì wàikē, where a parallel transmission claim is made for the same body of material with Wáng Dàdé as the linking copyist.