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Curing the Incurable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2014

Jeffrey Riegel 王安國*
Affiliation:
School of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Rm 510 MacCallum Building A18, The University of Sydney, Sidney NSW 2006, Australia, [email protected]

Abstract

This paper compares how ancient Chinese sources discussed the causes and treatment of ailments suffered by the elite. It focuses on the Zuozhuan account of the long-term illness of Duke Ping of Jin (r. 557–532 B.C.E.) but contextualizes this passage by introducing as well other examples of stories—found in transmitted literature as well as in recently excavated manuscripts—about sick rulers who consulted with a sage in search of a cure for their troubles. The Zuozhuan passage is also viewed in the light of the Yin shu, an excavated text written on bamboo strips that is concerned with the treatment of elite ailments. A comparison of the two sources suggests that the claim in the Zuozhuan that Duke Ping's illness was “incurable” was not simply based on the medical knowledge and practices of the day.

本文比較了傳世典籍對春秋戰國時代患病貴族的病因及其治療方法的 記載,著重分析了《左傳》所記晉平公 (公元前 557–532 年在位) 受痼 疾困擾的故事,並借鑒其它資料豐富了該故事的背景信息–––這些資 料分別來自傳世的文學作品和新近出土的文獻,記述的都是疾病纏身 的統治者們如何向聖賢求醫問病的事跡。文中對《左傳》的分析,也 比較了漢簡《引書》所見醫學資料。對這兩種不同資料的比較表明, 《左傳》記述的有關晉平公所患疾病無法被治癒的觀點,並不是簡單 地依據當時的醫學知識和行醫經驗得出的。

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 2013

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References

* West, M. L., trans, Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 6 Google Scholar, lines 120–22.

1. See Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi 呂氏春秋校釋, ed. Qiyou, Chen 陳奇猷 (Shanghai: Xuelin, 1984), 21 Google Scholar. Lü Buwei's text observes that their easy access to an abundance of material things and pleasurable pursuits renders the elite vulnerable to a great variety of harms and dangers that threaten their very lives: “If one is noble and wealthy but does not know the Dao [of nurturing life], this is tantamount to creating calamity. It would be better to be poor and humble, for it is difficult to acquire material things when one is poor and humble. In this case, though one's desires might lead one to excess, how could they be fulfilled? ‘Going out, one uses a chariot; returning home, one uses a sedan chair’—people love these for the comfort they provide, but they should be called ‘mechanisms that make one lame.’ ‘Fat meat and rich wine’—people are devoted to them for the strength they give one, but they should be called ‘foods that rot the intestines.’ ‘Languid limbs and gleaming teeth’ and ‘the tunes of Zheng and Wey’—people are devoted to these for the pleasure they give, but they should be called ‘axes that hack at one's inborn nature.’ For this translation, see Knoblock, John and Riegel, Jeffrey, trans., The Annals of Lü Buwei (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 6667 Google Scholar.

2. All dates are B.C.E. unless otherwise indicated.

3. I am grateful to Donald Harper for originally suggesting to me that the two texts could be profitably read together. Needless to say the conclusions I have drawn from the comparison are my own. I am equally grateful to the anonymous reader who vetted my work for Early China. The suggestions included in the reader's report have helped me avoid several errors of fact and interpretation. For the Yin shu, see below, n.40.

4. See Bojun, Yang 楊伯峻, Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu 春秋左傳注 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981)Google Scholar, 4.1217–21. (References to the other titles of the Thirteen Classics are to Shisan jing zhushu 十三經注疏, ed. Yuan, Ruan 阮元 (Jiangxi: Nanchang fuxue, 1816)Google Scholar. Zi Chan is well-known for having promulgated a law code and for other reforms that he introduced in the state of Zheng. See Rubin, V. A., “Tzu-Ch'an and the City-State of Ancient China,” T'oung Pao 52.1 (1965), 834.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu 4.1220: 君子有四時, 朝以聽政, 晝以訪問, 夕以脩令, 夜 以安身.

7. For the three versions see: Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu 4.1415–18 (which has a close parallel in the Yanzi chunqiu [referred to in these notes as YZCQ 1], for which see Yanzi chunqiu jishi 晏子春秋集釋 [Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962], 7.446–7Google Scholar); Yanzi chunqiu jishi 1.42 (referred to in these notes as YZCQ 2); and Shanghai bowuguan zang Zhanguo Chu zhushu 上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書, vol. 6 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2007), 157–91Google Scholar. The jing 競 in the title of the manuscript is an alternate form of the duke's posthumous name. The Zuo zhuan version is approximately 700 characters in length. The YZCQ 2 version is approximately 450 characters in length. The bamboo text manuscript was damaged: each of its thirteen bamboo strips had been broken into three pieces and the scholars at the Shanghai Museum recovered only two of the three pieces into which each strip was broken. The surviving fragments have a total of 489 characters. Had the entirety of the manuscript survived it would have been approximately 750 characters in length, longer than the other two versions. For the purposes of the present study, I paraphrase the longest and most complete version, that of the Zuo zhuan, noting where necessary differences between it and the other two versions.

8. We should probably understand the term jie 疥 “scabies,” as it is used in the Zuo zhuan and other early sources referred to in this paper, to mean a scabby itch rather than the parasitic skin disease caused by the itch mite Sarcoptes scabiei. Harper, Donald, Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts (London: Kegan Paul, 1998), 285n.6Google Scholar, understands jia 痂, the term for scabies in the Mawangdui medical literature, in this way. He also notes that only later sources, such as the ca. 610 C.E. Chaoshi zhubing yuanhoulun 巢氏諸病源候論 (Siku quanshu ed.), 50.9a, provide definite evidence of the observation of the itch mite in connection with a diagnosis of jie 疥. Shan 痁 is synonymous with nüe 瘧, commonly rendered “malaria.” Shuowen jiezi zhu 說文解字注 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1986)Google Scholar, 7B.31a–b, defines shan as you re nüe 有熱 瘧, “malaria with heat,” that is, with fever but without chills. YZCQ 1 gives the same two ailments, jie and shan. YZCQ 2 says the duke suffered from jie and nüe “malaria.” As its title says, in the Jing gong nüe, the duke is said to have suffered from malaria; no mention is made of jie. Unschuld, Paul, Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003), 191 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that we are justified in “rendering nüe as ‘malaria’, as long as one keeps in mind that the Chinese concept of malaria as a disease being caused by ‘wind’ at no time included the European notion of ‘air’ being infected with a noxious agent able to cause this particular disease.” Of course neither the Europeans who coined mala aria nor the Chinese who coined nüe had any concept of malaria as a disease caused by a parasite carried by anopheles mosquitoes. Bojun, Yang, Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, 1415 Google Scholar, cites Yan Zhitui 顏之推 (531–91 C.E.) who follows Liang Yuandi 梁元帝 (r. 552–55 C.e.) in proposing that, in the Zuo zhuan passage, jie 疥 should be read jie 痎 “tertian malaria,” that is the form of malaria in which the febrile seizures occur every forty-two to forty-seven hours. See Zhitui, Yan, Yanshi jiaxun jijie 顏氏家訓集解 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1980), 6.391 Google Scholar (“Shu zheng” 書證). In this reading Duke Jing suffered through a progression of two different, though related, forms of malaria. Yang Bojun also notes that this reading of the Zuo zhuan was refuted by Lu Deming 陸德明 (556–627 C.E.) and subsequently rejected by a host of Qing dynasty text critics.

9. In YZCQ 2, Duke Jing himself, not his two favorites, comes up with the idea that a priest and a scribe should be executed. In the Jing gong nüe, the ruler's two favorites are joined by the heads of the Gao 高 and Guo 國 families in recommending the execution.

10. In both YZCQ 2 and Jing gong nüe, Master Yan recommends that the duke dismiss the two favorites who had encouraged the execution of the priest and the scribe because they, rather than the latter, were the source of the problem.

11. For the manuscript, see Shanghai bowuguan zang Zhanguo Chu zhushu, vol. 4 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2004), 191215 Google Scholar, where it is transcribed and annotated by Pu Maozuo 濮茅左. King Jian is mentioned very briefly in Shiji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 40.1719–20Google Scholar (“Chu shijia” 楚世家), and does not otherwise appear prominently in early historical sources. The drought mentioned in the manuscript is not mentioned in the transmitted literature. Sao 㿋 “dry itch” is mentioned in strip 8 in the text and Pu Maozuo notes that it should be read as sao 瘙; the latter occurs in the Mawangdui medical corpus as the name of a category of ailment. Harper, , Early Chinese Medical Literature, 296 Google Scholar, translates it as “dry itch” and, at 297n.6, says, “Sao means literally ‘scratch’ and by extension refers broadly to skin itch.” It is thus similar to the understanding of “scabies” discussed above, n.8.

12. See Yanzi chunqiu jishi, 1.55.

13. For the ancient practice of rulers exposing themselves in order to seek rainfall, see Schafer, Edward, “Ritual Exposure in Ancient China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 14 (1951), 130–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. While the manuscript appears to have survived intact, not unlike other bamboo strip texts, it presents numerous problems of graph decipherment as well as of determining the proper sequence of its twenty-three bamboo strips. Readers interested in an overview of the scholarship that supplements Pu Maozuo's work in the Shanghai Museum volume can consult Xusheng, Ji 季旭昇, “Jian da wang bohan jie ti” 《柬大王泊 旱》 解題, Zhexue yu wenhua 34.3 (2007), 5565 Google Scholar, and Asano Yūichi (Qianye Yuyi 淺野 裕一), “Shangbo Chu jian Jian da wang bohan zhi zaiyi sixiang” 上博楚簡 《柬大王泊 旱》 之災異思想, published 13 September 2009, on the website of the Fudan University Excavated Manuscripts and Ancient Texts Research Center (www.gwz.fudan.edu.cn/srcschow.asp?src_id=904). My interpretation of the text is largely based on the sequence of its bamboo strips as reconstructed by Ji and Asano.

15. In the extensive scholarly literature on the subject, at least six different explanations are given of the meaning of the word bo 泊 in the opening sentence of the manuscript. Maozuo, Pu, Shanghai bowuguan zang Zhanguo Chu zhushu, vol. 4, 195 Google Scholar, glosses it as zhi 止 “stop, put an end to.” I more or less follow Xusheng, Ji, “Jian da wang bohan jie ti,” 64 Google Scholar, and understand the word to mean something like “oppressed by, afflicted with.” In his discussion of the theme of ritual exposure in the manuscript, Zhun, Wang 王准, “ Shang bo si Jian da wang bohan zhong de qiyu wushu ji xiangguan wenti” 《上 博》 四 《柬大王泊旱》 中的祈雨巫術及相關問題, Jiang Han luntan 江漢論壇 2008.5, 105–10Google Scholar, argues that bo should be understood as synonymous with pu 暴 “expose.” On p. 110 of his article, Wang also notes the manuscript's similarity to the Yanzi chunqiu passage on the drought in Qi.

16. The praise for the grand steward occurs on strips 10 and 19, Shanghai bowuguan zang Zhanguo Chu zhushu, vol. 4, 204 and 212 Google Scholar. The Zuo zhuan has the Lu nobleman Meng Xizi 孟僖子 say of Kongzi that he was a sheng ren zhi hou 聖人之後 “descendant of a sage.” See Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, 1294. The grand steward is also referred to as Jin hou 晉侯, the marquis of Jin, as well as by the name Zi Bu 子步, but these references are insufficient to permit identifying him more precisely. See strips 10 and 22, Shanghai bowuguan zang Zhanguo Chu zhushu, vol. 4, 204 and 214 Google Scholar, for these names.

17. The drought goddess is usually called han ba 旱魃, or alternatively nüba 女魃 or nübo 女妭. She is sometimes portrayed as demonic, as in Shijing 詩經, 18B.661 (Mao 258 “Yun Han” 雲漢). Elsewhere the goddess appears as a more benign figure. See Schafer, , “Ritual Exposure in Ancient China,” 162169 Google Scholar, for a discussion of her names and appearance in ancient as well as medieval times. The Jian da wang bohan is the locus classicus of the name han mu “drought mother.” What the manuscript says of her adds significantly to our understanding of the conception of the goddess in antiquity.

18. Asano Yūichi, “Shangbo Chu jian Jian da wang bohan zhi zaiyi sixiang,” understands the text to mean that the grand steward advised the king to repair city walls.

19. For this quotation see strip 16, Shanghai bowuguan zang Zhanguo Chu zhushu, vol. 4, 209 Google Scholar.

20. There are two accounts of the doctor's visit to the duke. It is one of the stories that form the Guo yu chapter on events in the reign of Duke Ping. See Guo yu 國語 (Taipei: Liren shuju 里人書局, 1980), 473–74Google Scholar (“Jin yu” 晉語 8). Another, somewhat longer and considerably more elaborate, version is found in the Zuo zhuan record of events that transpired in the first year of Duke Zhao of Lu 魯昭公, i.e., 541. See Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, 4.1221–23. The Zuo zhuan account of the doctor's visit and diagnosis is approximately forty percent longer than that of the Guo yu. Because of its greater length and complexity as well as features of its contents that are discussed in more detail below, the present study focuses for the most part on the Zuo zhuan version of the story.

21. In his sub-commentary at Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhengyi 春秋左傳正義, 41.26a, Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574–648 C.E.) observed: “The subject of moderating contact with women could not be spoken of and so he [Physician He] uses music as an analogy for it.” Bojun, Yang, Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, 4:1222 Google Scholar, citing parallel usages in Shijing, Mao 1 and Mao 164, says that “lute and zither” is a simile for having sex with a woman. Xiang ji 相及, the term used by Physician He to describe how the sounds of lute and zither should “match one another,” also referred to the copulation of men and women. See Guo yu, 356 (“Jin yu” 晉語 4).

22. See, for example, the Mawangdui manuscripts He Yin Yang 合陰陽 and Tianxia zhi dao tan 天下至道談. Transcriptions of these texts can be found at Mawangdui Han mu boshu 馬王堆漢墓帛書, ed. Han, Mawangdui mu boshu zhengli xiaozu, vol. 4 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985), 153–56, 161–67Google Scholar. An early version of Donald Harper's study and translation of these documents can be found in his The Sexual Arts in Ancient China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47 (1987), 239–83Google Scholar. His more recent work on the texts is found in Early Chinese Medical Literature. See especially pp. 412–38. See also, Ling, Li and McMahon, K., “The Contents and Terminology of the Mawangdui Texts on the Arts of the Bedchamber,” Early China 17 (1992), 145–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also worth consulting is Wile, Douglas, Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 7783 Google Scholar.

23. Because the doctor talks about how the “Six Ethers” produce the five tastes, are manifest in the five colors, and are verified by the five sounds, this passage is regarded as important early evidence for the theory of the Wuxing 五行 or “Five Activities.” See the discussion in Graham, A.C., Disputers of the Tao (Illinois: Open Court, 1989), 325 Google Scholar, and Harper, Donald J., “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China, ed. Loewe, Michael and Shaughnessy, Edward (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 862 Google Scholar.

24. Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu 4.1222: 陰淫寒疾, 陽淫熱疾, 風淫末疾, 雨淫腹疾, 晦淫 惑疾, 明淫心疾.

25. Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu 4.1458.

26. What You Ji calls “impulses” are termed ren qing 人情 (“a man's natural emotions”) in the “Li yun” 禮運 chapter of the Liji. The chapter gives seven rather than six and the list varies somewhat from that of the Zuo zhuan. See Liji zhushu 22.4a. The “Zhongyong” 中庸 lists only four of the six. See Liji zhushu 52.1b. In his commentary to the “Li yun” chapter of the Liji, Kong Yingda paraphrases the “Zhao 25” passage to mean that the “Six Ethers” of the heavens correspond to the “Six Natural Emotions” of the human body. See Liji zhushu 22.4b.

27. The Latter Han Zuo zhuan authority Jia Kui 賈逵 (30–101 C.E.) suggests the following alignment of the “Six Impulses” with the “Six Ethers”: hao 好 “desire” = yang 陽 “sunlight”; wu 惡 “aversion” = yin 陰 “shade”; xi 喜 “joy” = feng 風 “wind”; nu 怒 “anger” = yu 雨 “rain”; ai 哀 “grief” = hui 晦 “the dark of night”; le 樂 “delight” = ming 明 “the light of day.”

If this scheme is adopted it means that Physician He was claiming that the duke's ailment was caused by an excess of desire as well as grief. Jia Kui's views are quoted in Kong Yingda's sub-commentary to Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhengyi, Zhao 25, 51.14a. The Yin shu manuscript discussed below says that xi, or “joy,” is what causes an excess of “sunlight.” See n.49 below. Thus there may have been in antiquity more than one way of aligning the ethers and the impulses.

28. Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu 4.1222: 今君不節不時. 能無及此乎?

29. The Guo yu version of the story has the doctor say, “Now, the lord of Jin makes the night and day one.”

30. Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu 4.1221: 天命不祐.

31. In both the Zuo zhuan and the Guo yu, the doctor's diagnosis is but one episode in a longer historical narrative that charts the rise and fall of the chief minister of Jin, Zhao Meng. In the doctor's diagnosis and in adjoining episodes, both sources predict the death of the extraordinarily powerful minister, also known as Zhao Wu 趙武 and Viscount Wen of Zhao 趙文子, who served Duke Ping for seven years and predeceased him in 541.

32. According to the Zuo zhuan, the Jin chief minister Xu Ke 胥克 (fl. 620–600) suffered from a case of gu that was so debilitating he had to be removed from office. Yang Bojun, Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, 2.697, suggests that Xu Ke's illness was the result of food poisoning. According to the Shuowen jiezi, the ghosts of those who have been executed are a source of gu. See Shuowen jiezi zhu13B.6B. The classic western scholarship on gu is Feng, H. Y. and Shryock, J. K., “The Black Magic in China known as Ku,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 55 (1935), 130 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Loewe, Michael, Crisis and Conflict in Han China (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974), 8287 Google Scholar, and Harper, Donald, Early Chinese Medical Literature, 7475 Google Scholar.

33. First, the doctor defines the term gu by describing how promiscuity and licentiousness produce the illness. Then he analyzes the graph used to write the word by dividing it into its upper element “noxious insects” and the lower element “container.” The doctor then says that insects produced by grain cause the disease. Finally the doctor analyzes the hexagram called “Gu” in the Zhou Yi 周易 (see Zhou Yi, “Hexagram 18,” 3.46-6b), finding in the two trigrams that form it corroboration that gu is associated with female destructiveness. The Guo yu version of Physician He's diagnosis of Duke Ping contains a related, though more complicated, explanation of the meaning of gu. That text suggests that gu 穀 “grain,” characterized as active and flourishing, is emblematic of male virtue while gu in the sense of “noxious insects in a container,” having the opposite characteristics of being hidden, still, and harmful, is emblematic of female virtue. According to the doctor, the ideal way to live is to be one who both ingests gu grain—i.e., spends the day in the company of male virtue in order to replicate the illumination of the grain—and spends the nighttime in quiet repose with female virtue in order to “suppress” (fu 伏) the harm brought about by the “noxious insects in a container.” The Guo yu version of the story strongly suggests that the doctor's criticism of the duke is meant as a comment on his larger failings as a ruler of which his sexual impropriety is but one example. This relates to the doctor's observation in the Guo yu passage, already highlighted in n. 29 above, that the ruler has failed to keep separate the activities proper to day and those proper to the night and thus allows things that should remain confined to the night to release their harmful effects during the light of day.

34. The Mawangdui sexual cultivation text Tianxia zhidao tan—for which see above, n.22—identifies nei re as a condition that results when having intercourse impulsively produces feverishness that cannot be treated (fu neng zhi chan nei rei 弗能治產內熱). See Harper, , Early Chinese Medical Literature, 429 Google Scholar.

35. Shuowen jiezi zhu 7B.34b. Huainan Honglie jie 淮南鴻烈解, Kanbun taikei. (Tokyo: Fuzanbō 富山房, 1915)Google Scholar, 6.1 (“Lanming” 覽冥); Major, John, et al., trans., The Huainanzi, (New York: Columbia, 2010), 214 Google Scholar. Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian 睡虎地秦墓竹簡 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1990)Google Scholar, slips 32–33 and slip 133. Zhangjiashan ersiqihao Han mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu 張家山二四七號漢墓竹簡整理小組, Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian 張家山漢墓竹 簡 (Beijing: Wenwu, 2006), 58 and 64 Google Scholar. Cf. also Hanshu 漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962)Google Scholar, 24A.1143 (“Shi huo zhi” 食貨志), and Hulsewé, A. F. P., Remnants of Qin Law (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 115n.4Google Scholar.

36. For the definition of long as “retention of urine in the bladder,” see Huangdi neijing suwen jiaoshi 黃帝內經素問校釋 (Beijing: Renmin weisheng 人民衛生, 1982), 328–30 and 617–20Google Scholar. Harper, Donald, Early Chinese Medical Literature, 252n.1Google Scholar, cites a range of early medical sources that confirm this definition. On p. 209 of his study, Harper translates a passage from the Mawangdui text Yin Yang shiyi mai jiujing jiaben 陰陽十一脈灸經 甲本 in which re zhong and long are listed as the first two of five ailments produced by the “Ceasing Yin vessel.” Harper, 315n.2, points out that in the Mawangdui medical literature re zhong and jiong zhong are synonymous.

37. Han Feizi jishi 韓非子集釋 (Taipei: Chengwen, 1980), 172 Google Scholar; Huainan honglie jie, 6.1 (“Lanming”); Lun heng jiaoshi 論衡校釋, ed. Hui, Huang 黃暉 (Taipei: Shangwu, 1964), 241 Google Scholar.

38. The Huangdi neijing mentions long occurring together with shen re 身熱 “body heat” and also says that the dysfunction is the result of bao yi re yu pangguang 胞移熱於 膀胱 “its membrane transmitting heat to the urinary bladder.” For these descriptions of long see Huangdi neijing suwen jiaoshi, 486–87 and 617–20. Such references suggest that some in the early Chinese medical tradition attributed long to internal heat that gradually dries up urine leaving none to be expelled in one's daily routine.

39. See n.36 above.

40. For a general discussion of the Zhangjiashan Han tombs and their contents, see Wenwu 1985.1, 18 Google Scholar. For a transcription of the Yin shu, see Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian, 169–87. Peng Hao 彭浩, “Zhangjiashan Hanjian Yin shu chutan” 張家山漢簡引書初 探, Wenwu 1990.10, 87–91, provides an important initial study of the manuscript and discusses the date of the tomb in which it was discovered. Dalun, Gao 高大倫, Zhangjiashan Hanjian Yin shu yanjiu 張家山漢簡引書研究 (Chengdu: Ba-Shu, 1995)Google Scholar gives a good overview of the text. See also Harper, Donald, Early Chinese Medical Literature, 110–11Google Scholar, and Lo, Vivienne, “On the Nature and Purpose of Early Chinese Medical Writing: A Study of the Structure of Zhangjiashan 張家山 Yinshu 引書,” in The Medical View of Chinese History, ed. Jianmin, Li, (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2008), 2943 Google Scholar. In preparing my summary of the contents of the Yin shu I have very much benefitted from the efforts of these scholars.

41. Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian, 171: 春產夏長秋收冬 (臧>藏此彭祖之道也. (Here and in the quotations from the Yin shu below, the text critical device (X>Y means that graph X should be understood to be graph Y.) Pengzu is of course the exemplar of longevity in the received literature of the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. and he is clearly the patriarch—the “Ancestor”—of those who practiced the techniques listed in the Yin shu. Thus Pengzu's “Way” refers not only to this particular formula but to all the activities—the hygiene regimen, breathing techniques, exercise, and sex—that are set forth in detail in the Yin shu. That, at the very least, Pengzu was commonly associated with therapeutic exercises of the sort described in the Yin shu is confirmed for us by a well-known passage in the Zhuangzi that, at the same time, criticizes Pengzu's Way as not the true Way: “To huff and puff, exhale and inhale, blow out the old and draw in the new, do the ‘bear-ramble’ and the ‘bird-stretch’—all merely for the sake of living a long time. This is what the knights who ‘guide and pull,’ the men who nurture their bodies, the Pengzu-like geriatrics are addicted to.” See Zhuangzi jijie (Beijing, Zhonghua shuju, 1987), 535 Google Scholar.

42. Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian, 171, strips 4–5: 夏日數沐希浴毋 (莫>暮 [起] 多食 (采>菜 (蚤>早起棄水之後用水澡 (㱃>漱疏齒被髮步足堂下有閒而> 飲水一 (桮> 杯入宮從昏到夜半止益之傷氣.

43. Han Feizi, 627, is the locus classicus for understanding rugong 入宮 “enter the palace” as “engage in sex.”

44. Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian, 172–84.

45. Xueqin, Li, “ Yin shu yu Daoyin tu 引書與導引圖,” Wenwu tiandi 文物天地 1991.2, 79 Google Scholar.

46. A photograph and a hand-drawn facsimile of the contents of the Daoyin tu along with a booklet entitled “Daoyin tu lunwen ji” 導引圖論文集 that contains brief discussions of the illustrated manuscript and its inscriptions by Tang Lan 唐蘭 and others was published as Daoyin tu (Beijing: Wenwu, 1979)Google Scholar. See also Mawangdui Han mu boshu 馬王堆漢墓帛書, vol. 4 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985), 4952 Google Scholar.

47. Harper, Donald, Early Chinese Medical Literature, 310–27Google Scholar, provides a detailed accounting of the significance of the Yin shu in interpreting the Daoyin tu. See also Lo, Vivienne, “Imagining Practice: Sense and Sensuality in Early Chinese Medical Illustration,” in Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China, ed. Bray, Francesca et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 383–423, esp. 406–13Google Scholar.

48. Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian, 185, strip 298: 人之所以得病者必於暑濕風寒雨露 (奏>腠理啟闔食 (㱃>飲不和起居不能與寒暑相>應故得病焉.

49. Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian, 185, strips 107–8: 貴人之所以得病者以其喜怒之 不和也喜則陽氣多怒則 ( >陰氣多是以道者喜則急 (昫>呴怒則劇 (炊>吹以和之吸天 地之精氣實其 (>陰故能毋病.

50. Zhangjiashan Han mu zhujian, 179: 引癃端立抱柱令人□其 (要>腰毋息而力引尻.

51. Transcribed into modern graphs, the inscription reads: 沐猴讙引炅中. On the identification of muhou 沐猴, see Lan's, Tang comments in the “Daoyin tu lunwen ji,” 910 Google Scholar, published as part of the 1979 Daoyin tu (for which, see n. 46 above).

52. The Yin shu and other texts in the daoyin tradition associate animals with the exercises they prescribe. Lo, “Imagining Practice: Sense and Sensuality in Early Chinese Medical Illustration,” 409–13, discusses the broader cultural significance of this practice.