Yīxiá zhīyán 醫暇卮言
Casual Sayings in Medical Leisure by 程林 Chéng Lín (zì Yúnlái 雲來, hào Jìngguān jūshì 靜觀居士; early-Qīng Xiūníng 休寧 physician).
About the work
A two-juǎn miscellaneous medical-essay collection by Chéng Lín, in the zhīyán 卮言 (digressive / casual-saying) genre familiar from Zhuāngzǐ. The text mixes medical kǎojù (evidential discrimination of canonical sources) with cosmological and divinatory material — the opening section is a nàyīn shìyì 納音釋義 (interpretation of the nàyīn sexagenary tone-assignments, e.g. Jiǎzǐ Yǐchǒu = Hǎizhōng jīn 甲子乙丑海中金, “Gold-in-the-Sea”) which Chéng explicitly attributes to Zhū Guāngfǔ 朱光甫, the practitioner praised by Wú Cǎolú 吳草廬 (i.e. Wú Chéng 吳澄, 1249–1333). The work is presented as Chéng’s fù (appendix) to the Zhīyán — the nàyīn essays are appended to allow the reader to examine these “deep and recondite matters” in addition to the medical zhīyán proper.
Prefaces
The Kanripo source _000 opens with a parenthetical authorial note in which Chéng — signing as Jìngguān jūshì Chéng Lín Yúnlái shí 靜觀居士程林雲來識 — explains the rationale for the nàyīn appendix: he had questioned astrologers (xīngbǔ 星卜) and geomancers (xíngjiā 形家) on the principles of the nàyīn but received no satisfactory answer; the technical line by Zhū Guāngfǔ which Wú Cǎolú had recommended he is now printing as an appendix to the Zhīyán for the convenience of broad-minded readers. The Tiāntái Táo (天台陶氏) and Qiántáng Wáng Kuí 錢塘王逵 commentaries, and the Qīxiū lèigǎo 七修類藁 / Tōngshū explanations, Chéng dismisses as chuānzáo (forced interpretation) — yīnyángjiā kě bù liúyì “the yīnyáng specialists may pass these by”. The main text proper does not preserve a separately dated zìxù in the Kanripo source.
Abstract
Chéng Lín 程林 (zì Yúnlái 雲來, hào Jìngguān jūshì 靜觀居士) was an early-Qīng Xiūníng 休寧 (Huīzhōu, Ānhuī) physician, best known as the editor of the Shèngjì zǒnglù zuǎnyào 聖濟總錄纂要 (KR3ed013, an abridgement of the Sòng Shèngjì zǒnglù in 36 juǎn). The Yīxiá zhīyán belongs to his early-to-mid Kāngxī years; composition window 1672–1700 reflects this. The catalog meta gives dynasty as 清 and confirms attribution to Chéng Lín.
Substantively, the work is one of the more distinctive early-Qīng medical bǐjì: rather than the conventional case-records or doctrinal-discriminative format, Chéng follows the digressive-and-encyclopaedic zhīyán model in which medicine, nàyīn cosmology, Yìxué hexagram theory, and historical-philological remarks are placed side-by-side, on the assumption that they all belong to the same qì-and-xìng science. This positions Chéng on the Huīzhōu side of the early-Qīng medical-cosmological synthesis, alongside contemporaries such as Wāng Áng 汪昂. The book has a substantial transmission history but has been less studied than Chéng’s Shèngjì abridgement.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of Yī-xiá zhī-yán located. For the zhī-yán genre in late-Imperial medical writing see Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007); for Huī-zhōu medical scholarship in the late-Míng / early-Qīng see Yi-Li Wu, Reproducing Women (UC Press, 2010) and Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2011).