Yǐnshàn zhèngyào 飲膳正要
Essentials of Eating and Drinking by 忽思慧 Hū Sīhuì (Yuán imperial dietetic physician), with presentation memorial by 常普蘭奚 Cháng Pǔlánxī and imperial preface by 虞集 Yú Jí.
About the work
The principal Yuán-era dietetic-medical text (1330) and one of the most important food-medical works in the Chinese tradition. In three juan: juan 1 covers the cultivational and dietetic principles, the basic categories of zhūyǎng zhīdào 諸養之道, yùnyāo 妊娠 (pregnancy), yǎngyīng 育嬰 (infant care), yǐnshí wèishēng 飲食衛生 (food and drink hygiene), and shíxìng yíjì 食性宜忌 (dietary appropriateness and avoidance). Juan 2 contains the systematic dietary-prescription chapters — including the imperial-banquet recipes (the famous “qīshíwǔ wèi” 七十五味 catalogue of imperial banquet dishes), the dietary-pharmaceutical preparations, the herbal-decoction-based dishes, and the food-therapy section that is also separately extracted as KR3eo039. Juan 3 contains the systematic foodstuff treatises by category — grains, animals, fish, fruits, vegetables, condiments — each entry providing nature, taste, and dietetic-therapeutic application, drawing heavily on prior Chinese pharmacopoeia (the Běncǎo tradition) and supplementing with Yuán-specific items.
Prefaces
The 漢學文典 reprint preserves a bá 跋 (afterword) at the end of the work by 張元濟 Zhāng Yuánjì (1867–1959, the great modern bibliographer), dated Mínguó 19 (1930) tenth month — narrating the modern publishing history. Zhāng notes that the work, in three juan by the Yuán Hū Sīhuì, contains: (i) a presentation memorial by Cháng Pǔlánxī dated Tiānlì 3 = 1330; (ii) an imperial preface by Yú Jí; (iii) a Míng Jǐngtài-era reprint preface (now lost). Zhāng describes the work as “the Yuán-period Yǐnshàntàiyī’s official text.” He compares his witness (held by the Bǐ Sònglóu 皕宋樓 collection, attributed to Yuán print but actually Míng print of the Jǐngtài era 1450–1457) against the Chángshú Qú-family Tiěqíntóngjiànlóu 鐵琴銅劍樓 collection (also a Jǐngtài print). Zhāng concludes: “Although its propositions do not entirely accord with medical truth, [the work] can be consulted to glimpse the popular preferences of the Yuán-period people. Among private-collection traditions, manuscript copies have been more frequent; none compares in trustworthiness to this printed edition. I had sought it for years; in the winter of 1928 I at last met with it at the Jìngjiā wénkù 靜嘉文庫 in Tōkyō, whence I was permitted to borrow for lithograph reprinting, satisfying a long-cherished wish.”
The Zhāng Yuánjì bá — itself dated 1930 — is one of the principal modern documents of the recovery of the Yǐnshàn zhèngyào from Japanese collections in the early Republican period.
Abstract
Hū Sīhuì’s Yǐnshàn zhèngyào (1330) is the single most important Yuán dietetic-medical text and one of the most important pre-modern documents of cross-cultural Eurasian food medicine. The work integrates: (i) the Chinese dietetic-medical tradition descending from the Sùwèn 素問, Sūn Sīmiǎo’s Qiānjīn shízhì (KR3eo038), and Mèng Shēn’s Shíliáo běncǎo 食療本草; (ii) the Mongol-Yuán imperial cuisine — sheep-meat preparations, qūmí fermented dairy beverages, kebab-style and roasted dishes that are distinctively non-Hàn; (iii) Persian and Arabic culinary borrowings introduced through the Yuán’s transcontinental administrative reach — including spice-and-rosewater dishes and Central-Asian-origin preparations. The work is in this respect not merely Chinese but Eurasian — a unique synthesis arising from the specific cosmopolitan position of the Yuán court.
The presentation memorial by Cháng Pǔlánxī (a Hàn-Mongol official of the Imperial Diary department) and the imperial preface by Yú Jí (one of the foremost Yuán-period scholars and one of the principal compilers of the Yuán jīngshì dàdiǎn 元經世大典) both attest to the work’s status as official imperial document, intended for the regulation of the imperial table.
The 漢學文典 recension follows Zhāng Yuánjì’s 1930 reprint of the Jǐngtài (1450–1457) Míng court edition — the recovery from the Jìngjiā wénkù (Seikadō Bunko) in Tōkyō being one of the principal modern philological events in the history of Yuán medical literature.
Translations and research
- Paul D. Buell and Eugene N. Anderson, A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as Seen in Hu Szu-Hui’s Yin-shan Cheng-yao (London: Kegan Paul, 2000; rev. ed. Leiden: Brill, 2010) — the standard English-language translation and study, with annotated translations of the principal Mongol, Persian, and Chinese-origin entries.
- Hugh Salt, “Diet and Health in the Mongol Era”, Asia Major 3rd ser. 23 (2010).
- 忽思慧, Yǐn-shàn zhèng-yào, eds. 張秉倫, 方曉陽 (Hé-féi: Ān-huī kē-xué jì-shù, 1989); 劉玉書 (Běijīng: Rén-mín wèi-shēng, 1986).
- Eugene Anderson, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), ch. 7 on the Yǐn-shàn zhèng-yào.
- Stephen Owen, “The Yuan Imperial Court and Its Books”, in Imperial China: 900–1800 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999).
Other points of interest
The work’s Mongol-Persian-Hàn synthesis has made it a principal document for the historical anthropology of pre-modern Eurasian food, and the Buell-Anderson translation is one of the most-cited works in Anglophone scholarship on Yuán social history. Zhāng Yuánjì’s recovery of the work from Japanese holdings in 1928–1930 is itself a significant event in the modern history of the Sìbù bèiyào / Sìbù cóngkān publishing-philological project.
Links
- Related: KR3eo039 食療方 (extracted food-therapy chapter).
- 忽思慧 CBDB
- Kanseki DB
- 飲膳正要