Bèijí qiānjīn yàofāng 備急千金要方
Essential Formulae Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold for Emergency Use by 孫思邈 Sūn Sīmiǎo (c. 581 – 682, Huáyuán 華原, Jīngzhào 京兆 / Yàozhōu 耀州, Shǎnxī).
About the work
A thirty-juǎn early-Táng medical encyclopaedia — together with the Héshì zhūbìng yuánhòu lùn 諸病源候論 (c. 610) of 巢元方 Cháo Yuánfāng and Wáng Tāo’s KR3er091 Wàitái mìyào 外臺秘要 (752), one of the three principal monuments of medieval Chinese medical literature. The work was compiled by the Buddho-Daoist physician Sūn Sīmiǎo in his Huáyuán retirement during the Yǒnghuī 永徽 era (650–656) of Táng Gāozōng, and is the principal extant witness for the medical-pharmacological synthesis of the Liùcháo (Six Dynasties) period, transmitting and systematising the lost formulary corpus of the Hàn–Wèi–Jìn tradition along with the early-Táng integration of Indian āyurveda materials brought into China via the Buddhist translation literature.
The work is organised in a coherent topical sequence: juǎn 1 (general principles — the great essays on medical ethics Dà yī xíyè 大醫習業 and Dà yī jīngchéng 大醫精誠 (separately preserved here as KR3er089); juǎn 2–4 (women’s medicine, prefixed before all other clinical categories — the first such systematic gynaecology in the Chinese tradition); juǎn 5 (paediatrics, similarly prioritised); juǎn 6–7 (head, throat, mouth, ear-nose-eye); juǎn 8–10 (shānghán and fēng doctrines, plus kuángquǎn 狂犬 rabies); juǎn 11–20 (the wǔzàng 五臟 internal-medicine sequence, organised by viscus); juǎn 21 (xiāokě 消渴 / wasting-thirst, dropsy, jaundice); juǎn 22 (yōngjū 癰疽 / abscesses and ulcers); juǎn 23 (haemorrhoids and gāngmén 肛門 disorders); juǎn 24 (jiědú 解毒); juǎn 25 (emergencies and jíjiù 急救); juǎn 26–27 (yǎngxìng 養性 / nourishing the vital nature, integrating Daoist longevity practice); juǎn 28 (pulse-diagnosis); juǎn 29–30 (acupuncture-moxibustion zhēnjiǔ 針灸 and the míngtáng 明堂 channels).
The work’s title metaphor — qiānjīn 千金 (“a thousand pieces of gold”) — derives from Sūn’s self-preface: rénmìng zhì zhòng, yǒu guì qiānjīn; yī fāng jì zhī, dé yú yú cǐ 人命至重，有貴千金，一方濟之，德逾於此 (“human life is supreme in weight, more precious than a thousand jīn; that a single formula should save it — what virtue could exceed this?”).
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt carries Sūn’s own self-preface (Bèijí qiānjīn yàofāng xù 備急千金要方序), which begins with the cosmogonic frame (Suìrén → Fúxī → Shénnóng → Huángdì → Qíbó / Léigōng / Yīhé / Yīhuǎn / Biǎnquè / Cānggōng / Zhòngjǐng / Huátuó); narrates Sūn’s own childhood illnesses and the family’s expenditure on medical care that drove him to medicine; criticises the late-Sui / early-Táng shìzú 士族 disdain for medical learning; quotes the famous Zhāng Zhòngjǐng preface-passage jīn jūshì zhī shì, céng bù liúshén yīyào 今居世之士，曾不留神醫藥…; and explains the work’s title-metaphor.
Abstract
Sūn Sīmiǎo’s traditional lifedates (581–682) make him a centenarian; modern scholarship is divided, with some scholars (e.g. Paul Unschuld) accepting the traditional dates and others (Nathan Sivin) preferring a later birth-date in the early 7th c. The work is conventionally dated c. 650–659 from internal evidence (Sūn refers to Sūi imperial drug-rationing and to early-Táng administrative reforms but not to events after the early Yǒnghuī era). It was extensively revised by Sūn himself in the Qiānjīn yìfāng 千金翼方 (KR3er090, c. 681–682), conceived as a “wing-formulary” supplementing the Yàofāng.
The textual history is complex: the work was transmitted in multiple recensions through the Táng and Sòng, and was extensively re-edited in the Sòng by 林億 Lín Yì (fl. mid-11th c.) under imperial commission together with the parallel Wàitái mìyào, Sùwèn, Língshū, and Màijīng re-editions of the Jiàozhèng yīshū jú 校正醫書局. The SòngLín recension is the textus receptus of all later Chinese editions and is the basis of the present hxwd recension (which descends from a Japanese Edo-period reprinting of a Sòng-or-Yuán print).
A separate textual tradition — the Sūn Zhēnrén qiānjīn fāng 孫真人千金方 in a longer pre-Sòng-edited form, preserved in Northern Song imperial holdings — was rediscovered in the late 20th c. (the so-called Xīnzhāo Sòngběn 新雕宋本) and demonstrates substantial Sòng editorial intervention in the standard recension; modern critical work prefers the pre-Sòng recension for philological purposes.
Translations and research
The standard English study of Sūn Sī-miǎo is Sabine Wilms, Bèi jí qiān jīn yào fāng. Volume 2–4: Gynaecology (Happy Goat Productions, 2007–), a substantial annotated translation of the women’s-medicine sections (juǎn 2–4). For Sūn’s medical-ethics chapter (Dà yī jīng-chéng) see KR3er089 separately, and Paul Unschuld, Medical Ethics in Imperial China (California, 1979). For Sūn’s place in medieval Chinese medicine see Nathan Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies (Harvard, 1968); Frédéric Obringer, L’aconit et l’orpiment: drogues et poisons en Chine ancienne et médiévale (Fayard, 1997); and Hinrichs & Barnes, eds., Chinese Medicine and Healing (Belknap, 2013), entry by Victor Xiong on Sūn Sī-miǎo. For the Liù-cháo formulary tradition Sūn synthesised see Chen Ming, Indian Medicine and the Buddhist Network in Medieval China (various studies). The recent Japanese-edited critical edition of the Sòng-Lín recension is Endō Jirō 遠藤次郎 et al., eds., Bei kyū sen kin yō hō kō chū 備急千金要方校注 (Tōkyō, ongoing).
Other points of interest
The work’s positioning of fùrén 婦人 (women’s medicine) and xiǎoér 小兒 (paediatrics) before the standard internal-medicine sequence (rather than after, as in the Língshū / Sùwèn tradition) is a deliberate doctrinal-political statement: Sūn argues in the gynaecology preface that fùrén bìng nán liáo 婦人病難療 (women’s disease is harder to treat) because of the additional vulnerabilities of pregnancy and post-partum, and accordingly should be addressed first. This re-ordering became standard in the East-Asian medical tradition and is one of Sūn’s most consequential structural innovations.
Links
- Sūn Sīmiǎo (en)
- Sūn Sīmiǎo (zh)
- Person notes 孫思邈 (author).
- Sequel: KR3er090 Qiānjīn yìfāng 千金翼方.
- Independent excerpt: KR3er089 Dàyī jīngchéng 大醫精誠.