Huáshì zhōngzàng jīng 華氏中藏經
The Inner Treasury Scripture of Master Huá attributed to 華佗 Huá Tuó (zì Yuánhuà 元化, c. 145 – c. 208).
About the work
A three-juǎn (in some recensions one-juǎn with extensive appendices) pseudepigraphic Daoist-medical work ascribed to the late-Hàn surgeon-physician Huá Tuó, but in fact almost certainly compiled in the Northern Sòng on the basis of a heterogeneous body of earlier materials. The text combines a substantial theoretical-anatomical framework (pulse, yīnyáng and wǔxíng doctrine, viscera-and-bowels physiology) with a clinical-formulary section that includes a number of distinctive drug recipes not securely attested elsewhere in the medical-literary tradition. The work is doctrinally important as one of the principal medieval Daoist-inflected medical syntheses — it reads the zàngfǔ under a strongly xínghuà 形化 (transformation-of-form) and qìjiāo 氣交 framework, and it is the source for a number of pulse and drug-categorisation passages later cited as authoritative by Jīn–Yuán and Míng physicians (e.g. Lǐ Shízhēn 李時珍 in the Běncǎo gāngmù 本草綱目 cites the Zhōngzàng jīng repeatedly).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves two prefatory paratexts. (1) A Daoist origin-myth preface in which the work’s transmission to Huá Tuó is recounted as the result of his accidental encounter with two old men in a cave at Gōngyíshān 公宜山, who confer the Zhōngzàng jīng upon him on condition that he treat all patients without regard to status, wealth, or material gain. The preface is signed by Huá’s grand-nephew 余乃先生外孫也 and is dated jiǎyín qiū jiǔyuè 甲寅秋九月; the editor of the hxwd text adds the parenthetical note “此序趙寫本所無，似是後人偽作，姑附存之” (“this preface is not present in the Zhào-recension manuscript and appears to be a later forgery, but is appended here for reference”). (2) A short colophon-postface by Lù Túlǎo 陸徒老 (古汴, “the Kāifēng region”) preserving a discussion-fragment on the pulse, comparing Huá Tuó’s reported pulse-doctrine with the canonical Màijīng 脈經.
Abstract
The work is securely pseudepigraphic. The earliest reliable bibliographic notice is in the Sòngshǐ 宋史 yìwénzhì 藝文志, where it is recorded as a Sòng-period medical compilation; it does not appear in the Suíshū 隋書 jīngjízhì 經籍志 or in the Táng Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚 bibliographies. The conventional view in modern textual scholarship, articulated most fully by Sūn Guāngróng 孫光榮 in his Zhōngzàng jīng jiàozhù 中藏經校註 (Rénmín wèishēng, 1990), is that the work was assembled in the Northern Sòng (probably late tenth to twelfth century) from a stratified body of earlier — possibly partly genuine Hàn–Six-Dynasties — clinical and theoretical materials, and given its present pseudepigraphic frame at that point. The composition window for the received recension is therefore the Northern Sòng (960–1127) and the Southern Sòng (extending to c. 1200); the notBefore / notAfter fields reflect this. The dynasty field is left as 東漢 for catalogue-meta consistency with the (pseudepigraphic) attribution. The work circulated continuously through the Yuán, Míng and Qīng and is preserved in multiple manuscript witnesses; the hxwd version is from a Japanese collection.
Translations and research
The principal critical edition is Sūn Guāng-róng, Zhōng-zàng jīng jiào-zhù (Rénmín wèishēng, 1990). For the pseudepigraphic transmission and the work’s status in Sòng medicine see Asaf Goldschmidt, The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200 (Routledge, 2009); for the wider Daoist-medical context of the work’s framing see Catherine Despeux, Taoïsme et corps humain: Le xiuzhen tu (Guy Trédaniel, 1994). No comprehensive European-language translation of the Zhōng-zàng jīng located.
Links
- Zhōngzàng jīng (zh.wikipedia)
- Person note 華佗.
- Parallel pseudepigraphic Huá Tuó transmissions: KR3er119 Xuánmén màijué nèizhào tú, KR3er125 Xīnkè Huá Tuó nèizhào tú.