Cāngshēng sīmìng 蒼生司命
Steward of Common Life by 虞摶 Yú Tuán (zì Tiānmín 天民, hào Huāxī hénglǎo 花溪恆老, 1438–1517, Yìwū 義烏 / Zhèjiāng); edited and printed by the early-Qīng physician 程雲來 Chéng Yúnlái.
About the work
An eight-juǎn clinical compendium originally composed by the mid-Míng Dān-xī-school physician Yú Tuán of Yìwū. The title — “Steward of Common Life” (cāngshēng sīmìng 蒼生司命) — frames the physician as the official-administrator (sīmìng 司命, lit. “controller of fates”) of the populace at large; the rhetorical move sets the work in the context of Yú’s other Dānxī-school writings, principally the Yīxué zhèngchuán 醫學正傳 (KR3e0066) of 1515, the year that conventionally dates the Cāngshēng sīmìng as well.
The work is structured under the eight zàngfǔ and the standard miscellaneous-disease categories, with each entry organised as: doctrinal exposition → standard prescriptions → clinical case-records → Yú’s editorial ànyǔ 案語. Yú’s clinical positioning is that of a third-generation Dānxī follower with attention to the formulaic synthesis of Zhū Zhènhēng 朱震亨, Liú Wánsù 劉完素, Zhāng Cóngzhèng 張從正, and Lǐ Gǎo 李杲 — the four JīnYuán masters — read through the lens of his teacher’s teacher’s transmission.
Prefaces
The hxwd _001.txt carries the publication preface of 李錦 Lǐ Jǐn of Dàliáng 大梁 (Kāifēng 開封, Hénán), dated Kāngxī dīngsì 康熙丁巳 = 1677, guìyuè 桂月 (eighth month), post-15th-day, written from his Xīlíng 西冷 (Hangzhou) residence. The preface narrates: (i) Lǐ’s earlier 1653 (癸丑) joint expedition with the Xīnān physician 程雲來 Chéng Yúnlái to Bǎowù 寶婺 (modern Jīnhuá 金華), where they explored Běishān 北山 and the Lóngdòng 龍洞 spring; (ii) Chéng Yúnlái’s then-presentation of his hand-annotated Jīnguì yàolüè zhíjiě 金匱要略直解; (iii) Lǐ’s funding of that work’s printing; (iv) Lǐ’s renewed encounter with Chéng at his Qiántáng 錢塘 official residence in autumn 1677, during which conversation Lǐ commissioned Chéng to undertake further medical-editorial work — out of which came Chéng’s recension of the Cāngshēng sīmìng. The 1677 preface is thus a window onto the Lǐ Jǐn / Chéng Yúnlái patronage circle through which Yú Tuán’s Míng manuscript was rescued and reprinted.
Abstract
Yú Tuán (1438–1517) was a Yìwū native, son of 虞誠齋 Yú Chéngzhāi (himself a third-generation Dānxī disciple), and one of the principal mid-Míng transmitters of the Dānxī tradition. His major works are the Yīxué zhèngchuán 醫學正傳 (KR3e0066, 1515) and the Cāngshēng sīmìng. The composition date of the Cāngshēng sīmìng is conventionally placed at 1515 (the Yīxué zhèngchuán year) or shortly after; we bracket the work 1515–1677 to acknowledge both Yú’s original composition and Chéng Yúnlái’s substantive 1677 editorial recension that is preserved in the printed tradition.
The 1677 printing under Lǐ Jǐn’s patronage is the editio princeps and the basis of all later transmission. The hxwd recension descends from a Japanese reprinting of the 1677 edition.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Cāng-shēng sī-mìng located. For Yú Tuán’s place in the mid-Míng Dān-xī tradition and his major Yī-xué zhèng-chuán see Charlotte Furth, A Flourishing Yin (California, 1999), and TJ Hinrichs and Linda Barnes (eds.), Chinese Medicine and Healing (Harvard, 2013).