Dānxī shǒu jìng 丹溪手鏡
The Hand-Mirror of Dān-xī attributed to 朱震亨 Zhū Zhènhēng (Dānxī 丹溪, 1281–1358); recovered and brought to print by 黃濟之 Huáng Jìzhī, magistrate of Yìwū 義烏, in Wànlì xīnyǒu (1621).
About the work
A three-juǎn compact clinical handbook attributed to Zhū Dānxī and presented in the prefatory framing as the secret hand-transmission of Dānxī’s clinical doctrine, preserved within his descendant family for three centuries before being released to public circulation in the Wànlì era. The title Shǒu jìng — “hand-mirror” — frames the work as a clinical-portable mirror through which the physician can rapidly identify the pattern presented by the patient and locate the corresponding therapeutic formula. The body of the work treats internal medicine, gynaecology, and pediatrics under disease-categories, with each entry presenting Dānxī’s characteristic pulse-and-formula pairing. The work pairs with the related Qiáoyǐn 樵隱, which the prefacer Huáng Jìzhī reports as having been recovered from the Dānxī family in the same transmission. The historical authenticity of the Dānxī attribution is contested in modern Chinese-medicine textual scholarship; the Shǒujìng is generally treated as a late-Míng compilation of Dān-xī-school materials rather than as Dānxī’s own pen.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves Huáng Jìzhī’s editorial preface, which narrates a remarkable transmission story. Huáng arrived as magistrate of Yìwū (Dānxī’s home county) in bǐngchén (= 1616) and from local conversation learned that Dānxī’s medical inheritance circulated locally as Xīnfǎ 心法 (KR3er018) and the Cuányào 纂要; he secured copies of these. In jǐwèi (= 1619), serving concurrently as magistrate of Wúníng 吳寧, he obtained a Wúníng edition of the Cuányào. Then in xīnyǒu zhī qiū mèng (= autumn 1621), upon being told by a local scholar (xuébó Chén) that the Dānxī family held a “secret transmission” (秘傳) not previously released, he investigated and the family produced two works — Shǒujìng and Qiáoyǐn — which the family had kept in private hands for three centuries (三百年而未行其書一日而行之). Huáng’s preface frames the recovery as a kind of providential transmission: “how can Dānxī’s spiritual presence not be the cause of opening up both my mind and that of Chénxiānshēng to extend the transmission?” (豈先生之靈有以啟余與陳先生之靈而衍其傳乎).
Abstract
The composition window for the received recension is therefore the 1620–1621 Wànlì edition brought to print by Huáng Jìzhī; the underlying material (if authentic) belongs to Dānxī’s mature period c. 1335–1358. The dynasty field is left as 元 only for catalogue-meta consistency; the work as transmitted is a Míng compilation. The prefatory account contains a striking historical reflection: Huáng notes that Dānxī “lived at the end of the Yuán; with such talent and insight, could he not have managed worldly affairs and exercised himself in transformative governance? — instead he applied himself only to medicine, and only later became renowned for medicine in our Tàizōng [Yǒnglè] reign — so the implication is that in his own day Dānxī was hidden in medicine rather than displayed in it” (先生生於元之末 … 後乃顯於我太宗文皇帝之朝，則後日以醫顯，當日實以醫隱也). This is one of the principal early-Míng historiographical sources for the framing of Dānxī as a Confucian yǐn 隱 (hidden one) who applied himself to medicine in a politically untenable situation. The work is preserved in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū through Japanese collections.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Dān-xī shǒu-jìng located. The Dān-xī family-transmission narrative is discussed in passing in John Dardess, Confucianism and Autocracy: Professional Elites in the Founding of the Ming Dynasty (California, 1983); for the Dān-xī corpus more generally see Yu Yong 余瀛鰲, Zhū Dān-xī yī-xué jīng-yào (Rénmín wèishēng, 2007).