Gǔfāng fēnliàng kǎo 古方分量考
A Study of the Doses of the Ancient Formulas by 平井庭石 (撰)
About the work
The Gǔfāng fēnliàng kǎo 古方分量考 (Japanese Kohō bunryōkō), 1 juàn, is a dose-calibration reference for Zhāng Zhòngjǐng’s Shānghán lùn and Jīnguì yàolüè formulas, composed by the late-Edo Japanese physician-house 平井庭石 Hirai-shi 平井氏 in the Kohō-ha 古方派 (Ancient-Formula School) tradition founded by 吉益爲則 Yoshimasu Tōdō. The published recension was collated by Tei’an Sanjin 貞庵山人 with a fánlì dated Kansei 5 / 1 = early 1793 (寬政五年癸丑孟春). The work is independently catalogued in the hxwd series as KR3ed102 in the present knowledgebase.
Abstract
The fánlì sets out the work’s specific intellectual function. Yoshimasu Tōdō had recovered the Shānghán and Jīnguì formulas in his Fāng jí 方極 and Lèijù fāng 類聚方 (KR3eu065, KR3eu063), but the Hàn-period dose units of the originals — liǎng 兩, zhū 銖, shēng 升 — are not equivalent to the Tokugawa Japanese measures (qián 錢, fēn 分, gō 合) actually used in 18th-century practice. Tōdō, in the Jiāshú fāng KR3eu065 period, had begun the work of conversion (“東洞氏分割本劑, 而考其宜定之銖兩, 而記之以國秤”) but had not published it. Hirai’s contribution is the systematic completion of this conversion: a formula-by-formula recalibration of every Zhāng Zhòngjǐng prescription, using a single defended conversion scheme, in Japanese national-standard measures (國秤). The collator Tei’an Sanjin reports that he is publishing the work because the unpublished manuscripts had begun to deteriorate from successive hand-copyings (傳寫之久其泯焉).
The conversion scheme is set out in the fánlì before the body of the formula list. Three key equivalences:
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A Hàn shēng 升 (i.e. a single qiánzhǎn 錢盞 measure-cup) ≈ a contemporary Japanese xiǎogō 小合 (i.e. a weak 1-gō = ca. 180 ml unit), with classical-philological justification: the Shījīng “Hángwěi” poem xǐ jué diàn jiǎ 洗爵奠斝 commentary identifies jiǎ-cup = jué-cup = the Xià-dynasty zhǎn 醆 ⇄ Shāng jiǎ ⇄ Zhōu jué; Mǎ Róng 馬融’s gloss equates a jué with a “1-shēng” measure-cup; the zìshū dictionary identifies zhǎn / jiàn / cuō-jǎn 盞琖醆 as a single graph-variant.
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A fāngcùnbǐ 方寸匕 of powder, made into honey-pills the size of wútóng (Firmiana) seeds, yields ten pills — used as the dose calibration for any powder-pill formula. (Hirai’s source: an unspecified classical reference identified as 平井氏分量考).
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A qiánbǐ 錢匕 of powder yields five pills, with the contemporary Japanese yīqián 一錢 weight identified as the operational equivalent of the classical qiánbǐ.
The body of the text then sets out every formula of the Fāng jí sequence — guìzhī tāng 桂枝湯 in fractional Japanese qián and fēn (六分桂枝, 六分芍藥, 六分大棗, 六分生薑, 四分甘草, etc.), with cooking-water volumes in fractional zhǎn units, and yield volumes (zhǔqǔ 煮取). The reproduction of Tōdō’s Fāng jí one-line symptom-pattern indications is exact; the contribution is the numerical specification of the doses that the Fāng jí itself leaves unstated.
A note at the head of the text, attributed to a separate Hirai Yī héng 醫衡 (“Hirai’s Medical Balance”) treatise, gives the practical-safety rule that the three high-aconite formulas — Dà wūtóu jiān 大烏頭煎, Wūtóu tāng 烏頭湯, and Wūtóu guìzhī tāng 烏頭桂枝湯 — are strictly single-dose and must never be re-administered: an empirical-observation rule that Tei’an Sanjin says should be “written down on the practitioner’s sash.”
Composition is securely 1793 by the fánlì date; the underlying conversion scheme is presumably somewhat older but the published recension is 1793. The work was transmitted to China and entered the Shanghai HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), ed. Chén Cúnrén 陳存仁 — the immediate vector for the hxwd-series text.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language scholarship of the work specifically located.
- Trambaiolo, Daniel. 2014. “Ancient Texts and New Medical Ideas in Eighteenth-Century Japan.” Asian Medicine 9 (1–2): 78–104 — engages the dose-calibration problem in late-Edo kohō practice.
- Mayanagi Makoto 真柳誠. Iseki kō 醫籍考 kenkyū — Japanese-language scholarship on the Edo medical-bibliographical apparatus.
- For background: the Hàn-period dose problem and its modern reconstruction is most accessibly treated in Wáng Yīrén 王禕仁. 2016. “Hàn-dài yī-yào duó-liàng kǎo-shì” 漢代醫藥度量考釋. Zhōnghuá yī-shǐ zázhì 46 (4): 195–203.
Other points of interest
The Gǔfāng fēnliàng kǎo is one of the few late-Edo kohō technical reference works dedicated specifically to the clinical-practical bridge between the philological reconstruction of Zhāng Zhòngjǐng (Yoshimasu Tōdō’s project) and the actual prescribing practice in 18th-century Japan. The 1793 conversion scheme of Hirai-shi was widely adopted in subsequent Edo kohō practice and is one of the principal historical sources for the modern Japanese-school kanpō clinical dose tradition, which uses substantially smaller doses than contemporary Mainland Chinese Zhōngyī practice — a divergence that traces directly to the late-Edo conversion arithmetic of works like this one.
Links
- Author: 平井庭石 (Hirai-shi).
- Editor / collator of 1793 recension: Tei’an Sanjin 貞庵山人 (no separate person note).
- Companion treatise: Hirai’s Yī héng 醫衡 (not preserved in the hxwd corpus).
- Dose-calibration target: 吉益爲則 / Yoshimasu Tōdō’s Fāng jí (1755, in KR3eu065) and Lèijù fāng (1762, KR3eu063).
- Parallel listing: KR3ed102.
- Series: HuángHàn yīxué cóngshū 皇漢醫學叢書 (Shanghai: Shìjiè Shūjú, 1936), ed. 陳存仁.