Zhōngguó yījí kǎo 中國醫籍考
Inquiry into Chinese Medical Books by 丹波元胤 (續撰) — begun by 丹波元簡 (始撰)
About the work
The Zhōngguó yījí kǎo 中國醫籍考 (also published as Yījí kǎo 醫籍考; Japanese Iseki-kō), 80 juàn, is the magnum opus of bibliographic philology of the Chinese medical tradition produced by the Tamba (Taki) family of bakufu oku-ishi 奧醫師 at the Igaku-kan 醫學館 in late-Edo Japan. The work was begun by 丹波元簡 Tamba no Mototane (1755–1810) and brought to completion after his death by his elder son 丹波元胤 Tamba no Motoin (1789–1827); printed posthumously in Tenpō 2 = 1831 / 1832. It is an exhaustive bibliographic survey of Chinese medical literature from the Hàn through the late Míng — covering some 3,000 separate works in 50 categorical chapters — with a kǎozhèng 考證 apparatus for each entry citing the relevant prefatorial, biographical, bibliographic-catalog and inter-textual evidence for authorship, dating, transmission, juan-count, and editorial history.
Abstract
The work is recognised — both in modern East Asia and in international sinology — as the indispensable single reference for the philology of Chinese medical literature. Its scope is unmatched: where the 11th-century Sòng Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 medical section listed a few hundred works, where Lǐ Liǎn 李濂’s 16th-century Yī shǐ 醫史 surveyed only authors and not books, and where the late-Míng Shīwéibózhǎi shūmù surveyed only a few hundred medical titles, the Yījí kǎo attempts a complete cumulative bibliography of the entire pre-modern Chinese medical literature, with the philological apparatus carried by each entry. The structural plan: Yī jīng 醫經 (medical classics), Běncǎo 本草 (materia medica), Shízhì 食治 (dietetics), Cángxiàng 藏象 (visceral physiology), Màifǎ 脈法 (pulse), Míngtáng jīngmài 明堂經脈 (acupuncture), Fānglùn 方論 (prescription), Shǐzhuàn 史傳 (medical history and biography), Yùnqì 運氣 (cosmological-medical doctrine), and so on.
The work was carried back to Qīng China by Yáng Shǒujìng 楊守敬 from his Tokyo mission of 1880–1884; the first Chinese print (Pekín 1936) and the modern Chinese standard edition (Beijing: Rénmín Wèishēng, 1956 and subsequent reprints) made the work the indispensable reference of 20th-century Chinese medical philology. The work is the principal source for modern dating, attribution, and textual-history claims about the entire pre-Qīng Chinese medical corpus.
Composition window: 1810 (Mototane’s death, after which Motoin continued the work) → 1827 (Motoin’s own death). The work was already substantially complete at Mototane’s death; Motoin’s contribution is principally completion, integration, and editorial finalisation.
Translations and research
- Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠. Numerous Japanese articles, accessible at http://square.umin.ac.jp/mayanagi/index_e.html — the principal modern philological commentary on the Iseki-kō and Tamba scholarship.
- Mǎ Jìxīng 馬繼興. 1990. Zhōng-yī wénxiàn xué 中醫文獻學. Shànghǎi: Shànghǎi Kēxué Jìshù — uses the Yī-jí kǎo throughout as the foundational bibliographic authority.
- Despeux, Catherine, and Frédéric Obringer (eds.). 1997. La maladie dans la Chine médiévale: La toux. Paris: L’Harmattan — example of the Iseki-kō’s use in Western sinology.
- Goldschmidt, Asaf. 2009. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song Dynasty, 960–1200. London: Routledge — extensive use of the Iseki-kō for Sòng bibliographic dating.
Other points of interest
The Yījí kǎo is the principal channel through which the lost or fragmentarily-transmitted Chinese medical literature is now reconstructable: many works whose Chinese transmission is broken survive only as cited fragments in the Yījí kǎo’s kǎozhèng apparatus, drawing on Edo-Japanese manuscript-and-print copies that had been preserved from Sòng-and-Yuán Chinese editions long lost in China itself. This is the indirect philological effect of the Edo bakufu’s official medical-canon collection at the Igaku-kan: by preserving early Chinese editions through Japanese transmission, the Tamba family enabled the reconstruction of medical-bibliographic memory that imperial-Chinese tradition had lost.
Links
- Author: 丹波元胤 (with 丹波元簡 as the originating author).
- Wikipedia (Iseki-kō): https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8C%BB%E7%B1%8D%E8%80%83