Yúnlín shéngòu 雲林神彀
Yún-lín’s Divine Bowsight by 龔廷賢 Gōng Tíngxián (zì Zǐcái 子才, hào Yúnlín 雲林 / Yúnlín shānrén 雲林山人, c. 1522 – c. 1619, Jīnqī 金谿, Jiāngxī).
About the work
A four-juǎn clinical handbook by the late-Míng Tàiyī yuàn 太醫院 (Imperial Medical Bureau) physician Gōng Tíngxián, completed and prefaced in Wànlì 19 / 1591. The title-metaphor shéngòu 神彀 — “divine bowsight” (gòu being the marksman’s correct draw-position, alluding to Mèngzǐ 7A.41 yì zhě bì zhì yú gòu 羿之教人射，必志於彀) — frames clinical reasoning as the disciplined alignment of the physician’s yì 意 (intuitive assessment) with the patient’s zhèng 證 (pattern-presentation), in analogy to the archer aligning bow with target.
The four juǎn organise the major internal-medicine categories, gynaecology, and paediatrics, with each topic-essay followed by a gējué 歌訣 (mnemonic verse) summarising the formula or pulse-signature — a pedagogical device for which Gōng’s works became famous, and which Máo Kūn’s 1591 preface explicitly singles out as the work’s distinguishing feature relative to Gōng’s earlier Gǔjīn yījiàn 古今醫鑑 and Wànbìng huíchūn 萬病回春.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries the single 1591 preface of 茅坤 Máo Kūn (hào Lùmén shānrén 鹿門山人, 1512–1601, Guīān 歸安 / Húzhōu, Zhèjiāng), the great late-Míng gǔwén literatus and Tang-Sòng-prose anthologist. Máo’s preface is dated Wànlì xīnmǎo chūn yuè jí 萬曆辛卯春月吉 (an auspicious day of the spring month of xīnmǎo = Wànlì 19 / 1591). Máo records: that Gōng was then resident at the dàliáng zhī dū 大梁之都 (the Tàiyī yuàn in Běijīng); that his Gǔjīn yījiàn and Wànbìng huíchūn were already widely circulating; that the Shéngòu was being copied so eagerly that Luòyáng zhī jià 洛陽之價 (paper prices) were rising in consequence; and that the publication was being sponsored by Gōng’s yīnduì (in-law) Zhōu Duìfēng 周對峰, who had commissioned the preface. Máo notes that he himself, from his retirement at Tiáozhuó 苕逴 (the Húzhōu region), had earlier received the two prior works “across a thousand lǐ” and was now receiving the Shéngòu through the same Zhōu-family channel.
Abstract
The 1591 dating is established by Máo Kūn’s Wànlì xīnmǎo preface and is consistent with the work’s place between Gōng’s better-known Gǔjīn yījiàn 古今醫鑑 (1576, prefaced by Wáng Shìzhēn 王世貞) and Wànbìng huíchūn 萬病回春 (1587). Gōng Tíngxián was the son of Gōng Xìn 龔信 (compiler of the Gǔjīn yījiàn) and one of the principal late-Míng Tàiyī yuàn physicians; he was awarded the title tàiyī yuàn lìmù 太醫院吏目 after curing the consort of 朱載堉 Zhū Zǎiyù’s father, Prince Zhū Hòuwǎn 朱厚烷 of Zhèngfān 鄭藩 (Henan).
The work was reprinted multiple times in the late Míng and Qīng; the hxwd recension descends from a Wàn-lì-era imprint repatriated from Japan. Gōng is not in CBDB under c_personid traceable to this exact identification.
Translations and research
No European-language translation of the Yún-lín shén-gòu located. For Gōng Tíng-xián’s place in the late-Míng Tài-yī yuàn milieu and the yī-shū tōng-sú 醫書通俗 (medical popularisation) movement of which his gē-jué style was the most successful exponent, see Hinrichs & Barnes, eds., Chinese Medicine and Healing (Belknap, 2013), and Angela Ki Che Leung, Leprosy in China: A History (Columbia, 2009), ch. 4 (which discusses Gōng’s Wàn-bìng huí-chūn in detail).
Links
- Gōng Tíngxián (zh)
- Person notes 龔廷賢 (author), 茅坤 (1591 preface-writer).