Zhōngguó yījí kǎo 中國醫籍考
A Bibliographic Study of Chinese Medical Literature (originally Yījí kǎo 醫籍考) by 丹波元胤 (撰)
About the work
The Yījí kǎo 醫籍考, more commonly known to modern Chinese readers as Zhōngguó yījí kǎo 中國醫籍考 (the title under which the People’s Medical Publishing House issued it in 1956), is an eighty-juan annotated bibliography of Chinese medical literature compiled in late-Edo Japan by 丹波元胤 Taki Motoin 多紀元胤 (1789–1827), the principal continuator of the kǎojù 考據 medical-philological program of the shogunal Igaku-kan 醫學館. Begun by Motoin’s father 多紀元簡 Taki Mototane (1755–1810) and substantially completed by Motoin by Bunsei 2 = 1819, it was printed posthumously by Motoin’s younger brother 丹波元堅 Taki Motokata in 1831/1832. The work is organised in seven categories — yī jīng 醫經, běncǎo 本草, shízhì 食治, cángxiàng 藏象, zhěnfǎ 診法, míngtáng jīngmài 明堂經脈, and fānglùn 方論 — and within each category it lists each title with juan-count, transmission status (存 extant / 佚 lost / 闕 fragment / 未見 unseen), and a chronologically arranged anthology of bibliographic-historical notices excerpted from the zhèngshǐ 正史 jīngjí zhì and yìwén zhì, jīngjí mù such as the Chóngwén zǒngmù and Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì / Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí, and the prefaces and postfaces of physicians from the Hàn down through MíngQīng. It is the single most exhaustive pre-modern bibliography of the Chinese medical corpus, and remains, two centuries after composition, an indispensable starting point for any philological investigation of a Chinese medical title.
Abstract
The catalog meta gives the author as 丹波元胤; the dynasty field is left blank but is properly 江戶 (Late Edo), since Taki was a hereditary Edo shogunal physician — the catalog’s habit of placing Edo Japanese authors of Chinese-language works in 清 should be corrected. The Kanripo edition is drawn from the hxwd / Hǎiwài huíguī Zhōngyī shànběn (海外回歸中醫善本) collection of medical rarities, and follows the philological tradition embodied in the 1956 PRC reprint that retitled the original Yījí kǎo as Zhōngguó yījí kǎo with added title and personal-name indices. The textual base is ultimately the Bunsei edition prepared posthumously under Motokata’s direction.
The compositional history is as follows. Taki Mototane began the Yījí kǎo in the late Kansei / early Kyōwa period (i.e. from the 1790s) but died in 1810 with the work still in draft. The seventeen-year-old Motoin took over and worked on it for some two decades, bringing it to substantial completion by 1819 (the date given in most Chinese reference works as the chéngshū date). Motoin himself died in Bunsei 10 = 1827 without seeing the work printed; the engraving was supervised by 丹波元堅 and issued in 1831 (alternative date 1832, depending on the colophon). The composition window 1799–1819 used here brackets the active drafting from the period in which the work would have been seriously underway up to its substantial completion, and signals that the project crosses the father-son boundary while attribution rests with Motoin as the principal compiler. (The frontmatter follows the catalog’s single-author attribution; the father’s foundational role is documented in prose.)
The opening juan reproduced in the Kanripo source begins, predictably, with the Huángdì nèijīng 黃帝內經, citing in canonical order the Hàn shū yìwén zhì (which catalogued the Nèijīng and Wàijīng), the Suí shū jīngjí zhì, the Jiǎyǐ jīng xù of 皇甫謐 Huángfǔ Mì, the Chǔ shì yí shū fragment of Chǔ Chéng 褚澄, Shào Yōng’s 邵雍 Huángjí jīngshì, the Èr Chéng quánshū, the Sīmǎ Wéngōng chuánjiā jí of Sīmǎ Guāng, the Sùwèn xīn jiàozhèng of Lín Yì 林億 et al., and Zhū Xī’s Yǔlèi — a synoptic anthology rather than a polemic, giving the reader the full doxography in chronological array. The same method is applied to each of the c. 2,800 titles surveyed in the eighty juan.
Translations and research
- Zhōngguó yījí kǎo 中國醫籍考, ed. Rénmín wèishēng chūbǎnshè 人民衛生出版社, Beijing 1956 (numerous reprints) — the standard modern edition, with added title and personal-name indices.
- Okanishi Tameto 岡西為人, Sōng yǐqián yī-jí kǎo 宋以前醫籍考, Taipei: Gǔtíng shūwū, 1969 — Okanishi’s massive Republican-era continuation and correction of Motoin’s pre-Sòng coverage, methodologically descended from the Yījí kǎo.
- Ma Jixing 馬繼興, Zhōngyī wénxiàn-xué 中醫文獻學, Shanghai: Shànghǎi kēxué jìshù chūbǎnshè, 1990 — places the Yījí kǎo in the broader history of Chinese medical bibliography.
- Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠, several articles in Nihon ishigaku zasshi 日本醫史學雜誌 (1990s–2010s) reconstructing the Taki / Edo kǎo-jù-medical philological tradition.
- Marta Hanson, Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine (London: Routledge, 2011) — context on the international circulation of Chinese medical philology.
- No complete European-language translation exists; entries are routinely cited piecemeal in Western sinological work on individual medical texts.
Other points of interest
The Yījí kǎo exemplifies the late-Edo kǎojù igaku 考証醫學 tradition at its most ambitious. Its method — combining the Qing-dynasty Chinese kǎojù school’s textual-historical apparatus with the Tamba family’s hereditary medical archive and their access to titles long since lost in China but preserved in Japanese manuscript collections — explains why this work was compiled in Edo rather than in Beijing. Many of its citations preserve material from texts no longer extant either in China or Japan.