Chuánshī bìng jiǔzhì 傳屍病灸治
Moxa Treatment of the Corpse-Transmitting Disease Author unknown
About the work
A single-fascicle medical-iconographic handbook consisting almost entirely of moxibustion-point diagrams for the treatment of chuánshī bìng 傳屍病 (consumption / pulmonary tuberculosis). The text is the iconographic companion to KR6t0213 Denshibyō kuden: where the latter describes the moxa-points in prose with measurement instructions, the present work presents them as labeled body-diagrams showing the precise anatomical location of each. Anonymous; neither CANWWW nor the catalog meta records an author.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: anonymous; the work appears together with KR6t0213 in the Taishō canon and the two were transmitted as a paired textual-iconographic unit. The composition window is ca. 1100–1300, contemporary with KR6t0213 (no later than 1173 by the earliest known copyist’s colophon).
Content: the work as preserved in the Taishō text consists of 25 diagrams (here represented in the digital edition as [IMAGE] placeholders). The diagrams correspond to the moxa-points described in prose in KR6t0213: the crown ten-character point (頂十字), wind-gate point (風門穴), altar-mirror upper and lower (壇鏡上下), heart-organ (心藏), cinnabar field (丹田), Wind-bazaar (風巿), Pangjiao point (彭矯穴), shoulder-well (肩井), Ren point (仁穴), head-back point (頭背穴), and others.
The text is one of the principal medieval Japanese moxibustion-iconography manuscripts in the Buddhist canonical tradition. Because the actual diagrams are reproduced in the Taishō only as bracketed [IMAGE] placeholders, the work is incompletely represented in the digital edition; consultation of the printed Taishō (vol. 78) is necessary for the actual diagrams.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- See KR6t0213 for the broader medieval Japanese denshibyō literature; Andrew Goble, Confluences of Medicine in Medieval Japan (2011), discusses the Buddhist-Chinese-Islamic synthesis of medieval Japanese medical practice.
Other points of interest
This work is one of the very few items in the Taishō canon that is fundamentally iconographic rather than textual — and is thus systematically incomplete in any digital edition that omits the printed-edition figures. Scholars working on it must consult the printed Taishō (vol. 78, p. 915).
Links
- CBETA: T78n2508
- Related: KR6t0213 Denshibyō kuden (the textual companion).