Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo xīn shū 壽親養老新書
New Book of Long-Life-for-Parents and Caring-for-the-Elderly by 陳直 Chén Zhí (Northern Sòng) + supplemented by 鄒鉉 Zōu Xuàn (Yuán, fl. Dàdé era, fl. 1301).
About the work
The expanded form of Chén Zhí’s foundational Northern-Sòng geriatric monograph Yǎnglǎo fèngqīn shū (KR3eo001 / KR3eo016), to which Zōu Xuàn of Fùshā 富沙 added three further juan during the early Yuán Dàdé 大德 era (1297–1307). The complete seven-juan recension became the standard transmitted form of the yǎnglǎo literature in late-imperial China and is also preserved separately in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū as KR3e0021.
The 漢學文典 reprint preserves only the title-block (the source files KR3eo031_001 through _005 contain only header data, with the body of the work transmitted in the parallel WYG-tradition KR3e0021); the substantive analysis of the seven-juan combined recension is therefore to be sought there.
Prefaces
The original Chén Zhí preface to juan 1–4 is the same as that preserved in KR3eo001; for the Yuán expansion (juan 5–7), Zōu Xuàn’s xù and 李洋 Lǐ Yáng’s secondary xù are preserved in the WYG transmission. The 漢學文典 source files for KR3eo031 are skeletal: only the title-block is preserved, with no body-text. The work is recoverable only through cross-reference to KR3e0021.
Abstract
The Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo xīn shū is the most influential of the late-imperial yǎnglǎo compendia. Its structure: juan 1–4 reproduce Chén Zhí’s Yǎnglǎo fèngqīn shū (Northern Sòng, 1078–1085); juan 5 records elder-care anecdotes (the Sòucǎo lǎorén 叟草老人 narratives and similar); juan 6 records Zōu Xuàn’s own additional yǎngshēng prescriptions; juan 7 transmits Zōu’s selection of poems and admonitory aphorisms on age and elder-honour. The expanded recension was widely re-engraved in the Yuán and Míng, with the principal extant edition being the Yuán Zhìzhèng 至正 (1341–1370) Zhèjiāng print that became the basis of the Sìkù transmission.
The work served as the standard reference for late-imperial elder-care medicine, with no successor of comparable stature until the Lǎolǎo héngyán 老老恆言 of 曹庭棟 Cáo Tíngdòng (1773). In the Yuán-Míng transition it was the principal vehicle for the survival of Chén Zhí’s foundational doctrine.
For substantive analysis, see KR3e0021 Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo xīn shū (the parallel WYG transmission), KR3eo001 Yǎnglǎo fèngqīn shū (the parallel 漢學文典 transmission of the Chén Zhí original alone), and KR3eo016 Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo shū (a further parallel 漢學文典 transmission of the Chén Zhí original).
The 漢學文典 source-file skeletality is a curiosity: the existence of a recension nominally separate from KR3e0021 was registered by the editors but no body-text was made available. The present record provides the bibliographic frame and points the reader to the substantive analysis at the parallel transmissions.
Translations and research
- See KR3e0021 for full bibliography on the Shòu-qīn yǎng-lǎo xīn shū.
- 陳直 / 鄒鉉, Shòu-qīn yǎng-lǎo xīn shū, ed. 趙惠玲 et al. (Tiān-jīn kē-xué jì-shù chū-bǎn-shè, 1988).
Other points of interest
The threefold preservation in the 漢學文典 corpus alone — KR3eo001 (Yǎnglǎo fèngqīn shū recension), KR3eo016 (Shòuqīn yǎnglǎo shū recension), and the present KR3eo031 — is one of the most extensive philological re-presentations of any single early medical text in the 漢學文典 series, signalling the editorial team’s awareness of the textual complexity of the Chén Zhí corpus.