Yǎngshēng mìzhǐ 養生秘旨
Esoteric Essentials of Nourishing Life by 馬齊 Mǎ Qí (Manchu 馬佳氏 Magiyaca: Maci, 1652–1739, zì Èndūfū 恩都府, Manchu Zhèngbái 鑲黃旗-bannerman, Kāngxī- and Yōngzhèng-era 武英殿大學士 and 領侍衛內大臣). The work is a jí 輯 (anthology) rather than original composition: Mǎ extracts the best-attested yǎngshēng poems and prose treatises of the Sòng-Yuán-Míng tradition.
About the work
A one-juan anthology of canonical yǎngshēng texts, opening with the Sòng-attributed Sūnzhēnrén Wèishēng gē 孫真人衛生歌 (衛生歌, the Wèishēng gē “Song of Protecting Life”, attributed to 孫思邈 Sūn Sīmiǎo but in its received form a Sòng compilation), followed by further selections including the Sìjì tiáoshè 四季調攝, regulatory verse on the four seasons, and a small group of dietetic-pharmacological aide-mémoires (the Four Verses on the Five Phases, Three Cautions — dànù dàyù dàzuì 大怒大欲大醉 — and the Six Healing Sounds). The compilation is editorially conservative: each piece is reproduced in its received form without textual emendation. The work consequently reads as a Kāngxī-era anthology of yǎngshēng commonplaces filtered through a Manchu Grand-Secretarial sensibility — a remarkable document of the assimilation of Hàn medical-cultivational classics into the early-Qīng Manchu elite.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw reprint preserves no separate xù to the work itself. The transmitted text opens directly with the Wèishēng gē; the compiler’s role is signalled by the editorial title-block. The opening Wèishēng gē line “Between Heaven and Earth, the human is most prized; the head is like Heaven, the feet are like Earth” (天地之間人為貴，頭象天兮足象地，父母遺體宜寶之, 「洪範」五福壽為最) sets the canonical bāduàn jǐn / liùzì jué / dietary-restriction framework that the anthology then unpacks in successive entries.
Abstract
The compiler Mǎ Qí (Maci, 1652–1739) is one of the most prominent civil officials of the Kāngxī-Yōngzhèng transition — son of the Bordered Yellow Banner Manchu official 米思翰 Mǐ Sīhàn (Mishan), Director of the Board of Revenue 戶部尚書, eventual Wǔyīngdiàn Grand Secretary, and one of the four Manchu signatories of the Treaty of Kyakhta (1727). His prominent involvement in the Kāngxī succession crisis — Mǎ Qí led the faction supporting Aisin Gioro Yìnsì 胤禩 (“the Eighth Prince”) against the eventual Yōngzhèng emperor — led to his being deprived of office under Yōngzhèng but recalled to favour late in life under the Qiánlóng accession. The Yǎngshēng mìzhǐ belongs to his retirement period (probably c. 1725–1739, with terminus post quem the demotion of 1723–24 and ante quem his death in 1739) and reflects the Daoist-medical reading characteristic of the Manchu civil-official elite — Mǎ’s father Mishan having been a sponsor of the Sìbù yīdiǎn 四部醫典 (the Tibetan-Mongol medical classic) translation project.
The anthology’s principal historical value lies in two domains. (i) Textual transmission: Mǎ’s recension of the Sūnzhēnrén Wèishēng gē preserves the Sòng-Yuán transmitted form of the verse with several variant readings against the better-known Míng Sìkù-source recension (e.g., 三焦嘻出熱難停 against the Míng “難消”) and constitutes one of the principal early-Qīng witnesses to the Wèishēng gē corpus. (ii) Reception history: the work documents the integration of the Sòng-Yuán yǎngshēng commonplaces into the early-Qīng Manchu civil-elite reading-list, alongside Mǎ Qí’s own scholarship in Manchu language and ritual.
The catalog meta gives “Qīng” without dates; the present record brackets the work between Mǎ’s mature official career (post-1690) and his death (1739), with the most likely date band the late Kāngxī-early Yōngzhèng (1715–1735).
Translations and research
- ECCP (Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 1943), pp. 559–561 s.v. “Ma-ch’i” (Maci) — standard English biographical reference.
- 孟昭信, Mǎ Qí píng-zhuàn 馬齊評傳, in Qīng-shǐ luè-zhuàn 清史略傳 vol. 4.
- Pamela Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) — for the Mǎ-Magiyaca lineage’s political role.
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature on this specific anthology located.
Other points of interest
The combination — a Manchu Grand Secretary, exiled by Yōngzhèng and recalled by Qiánlóng, anthologising the canonical Hàn yǎngshēng repertoire — is unusual enough that the Yǎngshēng mìzhǐ has a value beyond its textual content as evidence of the cultural-political project of Manchu literati self-Sinicization in the early Qīng.
Links
- Wikipedia: Maci (Qing dynasty).
- 馬齊 CBDB
- Kanseki DB
- 養生秘旨