Xīnyìn gànzhū jīng 心印紺珠經
Heart-Sealed Sapphire-Pearl Classic by 李湯卿 Lǐ Tāngqīng (Yuán medical scholar).
About the work
A two-juan systematic theoretical introduction to medicine, framing the discipline as the cosmological derivative of yīnyáng wǔxíng doctrine: the work opens with a cosmogonic “Origin of the Way Lineage” (Yuán dàotǒng 原道統) tracing medicine from the primal partition of hùndùn through the differentiation of yáng (light, becoming Heaven) and yīn (heavy, becoming Earth), through the differentiation of the Five Phases, to the constitution of the human body as a microcosm of Heaven (round head) and Earth (square feet) with qì-blood corresponding to Heaven’s yīnyáng and Five Viscera corresponding to Heaven’s Five Phases. The text then proceeds through the canonical medical-historical genealogy (伏羲 Fúxī’s hexagrams; 神農 Shénnóng’s tasting of the herbs; 黃帝 Huángdì’s dialogue with 岐伯 Qíbó in the Sùwèn; the eventual emergence of biānzhēn needle-therapy and tāngyè decoction therapy) before arriving at its substantive systematic exposition of medical doctrine.
The title’s xīnyìn 心印 (“heart-seal”) borrows the Chán Buddhist idiom of mind-to-mind transmission, and gànzhū 紺珠 (sapphire-pearl) is a Tang allusion to a famed mnemonic device — together signifying a work designed to be inwardly digested and held in memory as the kernel of a discipline.
Prefaces
The jicheng.tw reprint preserves no separate xù. The work opens directly with the Yuán dàotǒng dìyī 原道統第一 (“On the Origin of the Way-Lineage, first”) cosmogonic introduction, which functions as a doctrinal preface. The opening line — dà zāi yī hū, qí lái yuǎn yǐ 大哉醫乎，其來遠矣 (“Great indeed is medicine — its origin is remote!“) — is one of the more memorable opening formulations of late-Yuán medical literature.
Abstract
Lǐ Tāngqīng is one of the more obscure Yuán medical theorists; no biographical record survives beyond his self-presentation as the author of this work. The text is unattested in major Yuán bibliographic catalogs (Yuán shǐ · Yìwénzhì, Sòngshǐ xīnbiān 宋史新編) but is referenced in early-Míng medical bibliographies — notably in the Yīshǐ 醫史 (醫史) of 李濂 Lǐ Lián (Jiājìng 9 = 1530) — which place its composition in the late Yuán. The work is consistent in style and doctrine with the 李杲 Lǐ Gāo / 朱震亨 Zhū Zhènhéng tradition of the Jīn-Yuán sìdà jiā 金元四大家 (“Four Great Masters of the Jīn-Yuán”), in particular the foregrounding of Sùwèn yùnqì 運氣 cosmology that is characteristic of Lǐ Gāo (Dōngyuán) and his school.
The work’s principal contribution is its systematic synthesis of yùnqì doctrine with the clinical medical curriculum: the entire opening chapter is a careful derivation of medical principle from cosmogonic principle, after which the substantive chapters proceed in order through the standard clinical-pedagogical topics (channel-and-collateral structure, viscera-bowel theory, zàngfǔ pathology, prescribing principles). It is, in effect, one of the more lucid late-Yuán theoretical textbooks of medicine, intended for the formation of the medical student rather than for direct clinical reference.
Note on transmission: the jicheng.tw source files preserve KR3eo021_001.txt and KR3eo021_003.txt but not the middle juan (_002) or front-matter (_000). The present recension is therefore incomplete; the Sìkù tradition transmits the full work under the title Xīnyìn gànzhū jīng in two juan (with the title sometimes appearing variantly as Xīnyìn miàojīng 心印妙經 in late-Míng reprintings).
Translations and research
- Zhōng-guó yī-jí dà-cí-diǎn, s.v. 心印紺珠經.
- 任應秋 (Rén Yīngqiū), Yùn-qì xué shuō 運氣學說 (Shàng-hǎi, 1959; rev. ed. 1982) — for the yùn-qì doctrinal substrate.
- Lan Dong, Mulan’s Legend and Legacy in China and the United States (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), introd. n.6 — incidental reference.
- 賈得道 (Jiǎ Dédào), Zhōng-guó yī-xué shǐ luè 中國醫學史略 (Tài-yuán: Shānxī rén-mín, 1979).
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature on this title specifically located.
Other points of interest
The doctrinal positioning of the work — yùnqì foreground, careful integration with the Sìdà jiā clinical doctrine — makes it a useful late-Yuán witness to the synthesis-phase of the Jīn-Yuán medical revolution into the systematic-pedagogical genre that would become dominant in early Ming (Yīxué rùmén 醫學入門 (醫學入門) of 李梃 Lǐ Tǐng 1575, etc.).