Dānxī xīn fǎ 丹溪心法
The Heart-Methods of Dān-xī by 朱震亨 Zhū Zhènhēng (Dānxī 丹溪, 1281–1358), with editorial labour by his disciple 戴思恭 Dài Sīgōng (1324–1405); recompiled by 程充 Chéng Chōng in the Chénghuà 17 / 1481 redaction.
About the work
A five-juǎn (in some recensions three-juǎn) systematic clinical handbook presenting Zhū Dānxī’s mature medical doctrine, compiled by his disciples and successors from his clinical teaching and case-records. The work is the principal vehicle by which Dānxī’s yáng cháng yǒu yú, yīn cháng bù zú (yáng is always in surplus, yīn always deficient) doctrine and his xiānghuǒ 相火 (ministerial-fire) framework entered late-imperial clinical pedagogy. Each disease-category is treated in a tightly compressed form — pulse signature, aetiology, presentation, treatment principle, and a small set of canonical Dānxī formulae — with Dānxī’s own clinical àn 案 (case-notes) interleaved where applicable. The work is one of the most influential single texts of the JīnYuán medical synthesis; it stands at the head of the Dānxī school’s transmission into the Míng and is the principal source for the late-Míng wēnbǔ 溫補 (warming-tonifying) tradition’s appropriation of Dānxī, even though Dānxī himself was the yīn-nourishing master.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves an extended Sòng Lián 宋濂 Dānxī xiānshēng Zhū gōng shíbiǎo cí 丹溪先生朱公石表辭 — Sòng Lián’s funerary epitaph for Dānxī, composed shortly after Dānxī’s death in 1358 at the request of Dānxī’s son Yùrǔ 玉汝, his nephew Sìfán 嗣氾, and his cousin Wújì 無忌 (who had supplied the biographical zhuàng 狀 on which Sòng Lián based the epitaph). The epitaph provides the principal contemporary biographical evidence for Dānxī: his lineage in Yìwū 義烏 (Wùzhōu), his family’s SòngYuán Confucian scholarly career, his youthful turn from the legal-and-knightly milieu to Confucian study under Xǔ Wényì 許文懿 (a fourth-generation student of Zhū Xī 朱熹), and his subsequent turn from Confucian study at thirty-six to medicine. The epitaph closes with Dānxī’s death-date and the names of his successors. The Chéng Chōng 1481 recension also includes Chéng’s own redactor preface (not preserved in the present _000.txt excerpt) explaining his reorganisation of the disciple-collected materials into the five-juǎn form.
Abstract
Dānxī’s clinical teaching was disseminated by his disciples in several distinct manuscript forms, of which the present Xīnfǎ is the most widely circulated. The four canonical Dānxī works — Géyú lùn 格致餘論, Júfāng fāhuī 局方發揮, Běncǎo yǎnyì bǔyí 本草衍義補遺, and Shānghán biānyí 傷寒辨疑 — represent Dānxī’s own pen; the present Xīnfǎ belongs to the second tier of disciple-compiled clinical works. The standard recension is the Chéng Chōng 1481 redaction (Chénghuà 17), which became the basis for all subsequent Míng and Qīng editions; this Chéng recension is the textual basis of the present hxwd transmission. The composition window for the received recension is therefore 1481, though the underlying materials are Yuán-period; the dynasty field is left as 元 for catalogue-meta consistency and the notBefore / notAfter fields are anchored to the Chéng recension’s publication date. The work spawned a substantial Míng commentarial tradition, most importantly Fāng Guǎng’s 方廣 Dānxī xīnfǎ fùyú 丹溪心法附餘 (KR3er019), which adds extensive supplementary materials.
Translations and research
No comprehensive European-language translation of the Dān-xī xīn-fǎ located. For Dān-xī’s medical doctrine see Yu Yong 余瀛鰲, Zhū Dān-xī yī-xué jīng-yào 朱丹溪醫學精要 (Rénmín wèishēng, 2007); Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History 960–1665 (California, 1999), ch. 3; and Volker Scheid, Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine 1626–2006 (Eastland, 2007). For the Sòng Lián epitaph and the Dān-xī biographical materials see John Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (California, 1983), in passing.