Shòushì chuánzhēn 壽世傳真
Transmitting the True [Arts] for Prolonging the Generations by 徐文弼 Xú Wénbì (hào Míngfēng 鳴峰, Qiánlóng-era official from Yùzhāng 豫章 [Jiāngxī]).
About the work
A late-Qiánlóng compendium of yǎngshēng 養生 (“nourishing-life”) practice in eight juan covering daily-life regimen (qǐjū 起居), dǎoyǐn 導引 (gymnastic) sequences, sexual moderation (fángshì 房事 cautions), the Six Healing Sounds (liùzì jué 六字訣), the Eight-Section Brocade (bāduàn jǐn 八段錦) and related qì-circulation methods, dietary cautions, and emergency prescriptions, framed in the “plain-cloth-and-grain” (bùbó shūsù 布帛菽粟) idiom — i.e., an explicit reaction against the obscurantist Daoist alchemical literature (“fùshí liànyǎngjiā tánkōng shuōmiǎo 服食煉養家談空說渺”) that Xú’s preface-writer condemns as inaccessible to ordinary readers.
Prefaces
The transmitted xù was composed by 王世芳 Wáng Shìfāng (1659–1772?), Kāngxī-era jìnshì and Hànlín sīyè 司業 emeritus, in the twelfth lunar month of Qiánlóng 36 = 1771 (the jiāpíng month of xīnmǎo), at the great age of 113 (年家舊寅弟王世芳拜撰時年一百一十三歲) — making the preface itself a small monument to yǎngshēng success. Wáng records his friendship with Xú in the capital following his return to Běijīng in gēngyín (1770) for the Imperial 大慶 of Empress Dowager Chóngqìng (慈寧大慶, the empress dowager’s 80th birthday), and notes that Xú had been a fellow examiner in the Hànlín. Wáng describes Xú as “the man of Dào and letters of our generation” (今之有道而文者), already author of two well-known compilations on poetics and on administrative practice (詩法、吏治二書), and praises the present work for “drawing out the essence of nourishing the inner nature and preserving the whole zhēn, the methods for warding off illness and prolonging years” in plain-cloth-and-grain language. Xú’s own opening matter (“總述”) cites the Sòng philosopher 程頤 Chéng Yí (伊川) on the three domains in which “human effort can conquer Heaven’s craftsmanship” — administering a state to the point of imploring Heaven for eternal mandate, cultivating the body to the point of warding off disease and extending years, and learning to the point of approaching sagehood.
Abstract
Xú Wénbì — Qiánlóng-era civil official, Jiāngxī native, also author of Shīfǎ shùyǐ 詩法述義 (詩法述義) and a manual on circuit-level administration, Lìzhì xuánjìng 吏治懸鏡 (吏治懸鏡) — compiled the Shòushì chuánzhēn during his Běijīng residence in the 1768–1771 window. The work is one of the more widely transmitted late-Qīng popular yǎngshēng manuals — repeatedly reprinted under the Qīng and again in the Republic — and a standard reference for the so-called “Wǔfǎ” 五法 framework (養心養肝養脾養肺養腎 — care of each of the Five Viscera) supplemented by dǎoyǐn and dietary tables. Together with 汪昂 Wāng Áng’s Yǎngshēng zǒngyào 養生總要 (養生總要, 1690s) and 曹庭棟 Cáo Tíngdòng’s Lǎolǎo héngyán 老老恒言 (老老恒言, 1773), it forms the canonical late-Qiánlóng triad of household yǎngshēng compendia. The jicheng.tw reprint follows the earliest surviving Qiánlóng xīnmǎo (1771) Běijīng print.
The catalog meta gives no dates; the present record brackets 1768 (Xú’s return to the capital) to 1771 (the xù date) on the basis of Wáng Shìfāng’s preface — Wáng’s age of 113 suì and dating to the twelfth month of Qiánlóng 36 cinch the year. Several Republican-era reprints (e.g. 1922 Shànghǎi 廣益書局) circulate under variant titles (Shòushì biānzhēn 壽世編真), but the present text is the eight-juan Chuánzhēn recension.
Translations and research
- Zhōng-yī yǎng-shēng kāng-fù xué cí-diǎn 中醫養生康復學辭典, ed. 馬烈光 (Běijīng: Zhōng-guó zhōng-yī-yào chū-bǎn-shè, 2007), s.v. 壽世傳真.
- 周一謀, 《Yǎng-shēng wén-xiàn tōng-kǎo* 養生文獻通考 (Shàng-hǎi: Shàng-hǎi gǔ-jí chū-bǎn-shè, 2008).
- Catherine Despeux, Taoïsme et corps humain: le Xiuzhen tu (Paris: Guy Trédaniel, 1994) — for the late-Qīng popular yǎng-shēng iconographic tradition that Xú’s manual exemplifies in textual form.
- Hinrichs and Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing, chapter 8 on yǎng-shēng in the Qiánlóng-Republic transition.
Other points of interest
The transmitted preface is one of the most striking documents of late-imperial yǎngshēng self-fashioning: Wáng Shìfāng, dating his subscription at age 113 suì, served as the xù-writer precisely because he was the living advertisement for what the book promises. Whether Wáng was in fact 113 or whether his self-styling was conventional hyperbole (Qiánlóng-era yǎngshēng prefaces were habitually signed with inflated ages) is unresolved; but the preface remains the earliest dated witness to the work’s circulation.
Links
- Wikipedia (Chinese): 徐文弼 (stub)
- 徐文弼 CBDB
- Kanseki DB
- 壽世傳真