If All Else Fails Read the Sources:A Review of the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen Project

By Paul U. Unschuld

Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text

Publisher: University of California Press

Berkeley, CA 94704-1012

Website: www.ucpress.edu

April 2003

ISBN: 9780520233225

536 pages; $80

By Hermann Tessenow and Paul U. Unschuld

A Dictionary of the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen

Publisher: University of California Press

Berkeley, CA 94704-1012

Website: www.ucpress.edu

May 2008

ISBN: 9780520253582

824 pages; $95

By Paul U. Unschuld and Hermann Tessenow

Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: An Annotated Translation of Huang Di's Inner Classic—Basic Questions: 2 Volumes

Publisher: University of California Press

Berkeley, CA 94704-1012

Website: www.ucpress.edu

July 2011

ISBN: 9780520266988

1560 pages; $195

The adage above, by my late thesis advisor, Imre Boba, recalls to us all that in our research, in our reading, in our lives, we can, without thinking, get farther and farther away from what is real and important. In this case, I am referring to the enormous verbiage surrounding Chinese medicine. It has yielded a fruit, particularly what is called Traditional Chinese Medicine, about which one can feel one way or the other; I prefer to remain neutral. But it seems to have less and less to do with the roots of that medicine. To be sure, all medical traditions have to be honed and polished to make them fit for today, for progress, and the forms of Chinese medicine being practiced are no exception. Nonetheless, we do well not to lose sight of origins and from where today's ideas have come.

Fortunately, Paul Unschuld and his team have made one very important set of medical origins available to us in a way that they have not been made available before. His efforts allow us to take another look at from where we have come. I am referring to his now-completed project, although not all of it has been published as such; it is too big to print everything, to provide a text, introduction, and complete translation, with full notes and bibliography (some on CD-ROM) to the most ancient and most important medical classic, the text that has come down to us as the Huang di nei jing su wen, “Plain Questions about the Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor” (HDNJSW).

A word on this text: to begin with, no one knows when it was written, although Unschuld and his team have their suspicions, and the most that we can say is that there is a great deal in the present version that is unvarnished Han Dynasty lore. Nonetheless, the textual tradition that we have, however old it is, is a Northern Song recension for a printing of versions of the text, and there is more than one, including the Huang di nei jing ling shu, “Numinous Pivot of the Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor.” This is a less full text but with considerable additional information. The Song version, in turn, is based largely upon Tang-era editions, which, in turn, are more versions of still earlier versions of the text.

But here we are talking about a manuscript tradition, with all the weaknesses implied by that. This is one of the main reasons why the HDNJSW is so difficult to translate and interpret. While many Chinese books came into being during the age of printing and we can speak of first editions from this or that dynasty, and rely on them as a basis for textual criticism, the manuscript tradition is utterly different. Not only were texts written on quite fragile materials, in largely unique editions, if one can call them that, but the rats could easily chew the leather ties holding the common bamboo editions together, creating lose fragments of text (bamboo with writing was less interesting to rats) that could become lost, or more seriously, could become disarranged. Thus Unschuld and team, tackling such an early work, one at least 2000 years old in large part, had their work cut out for them.

Of the four published volumes, the first to appear was Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text, University of California Press, 2003. I find this book invaluable not only for the general history that it provides. I use it frequently in my own work, but I particularly like its discussion of the late tradition of the climatological lore called wu yun liu qi, “Five Periods and Six Qi,” by commentator and edition producer (of the HDNJSW) Wang Bing. This is because the ideas in it became mainstream Chinese thought and medicine, even if not purely ancient HDNJSW.

Next published, in 2008, by the same publisher was A Dictionary of the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen by Hermann Tessenow and Paul Unschuld. This book provides a complete text of the HDNJSW analyzed and dissected in a most usable manner. If you need to know what a passage means, the dictionary not only explains the key terms, all of them, but provides full contexts and a reference back to the main text. If you need more, there is a complete textual concordance on a CD. Barring a large Dunhuang discovery of a new text, this version will not be superseded in our lifetimes.

Finally, published in 2011 by the same publisher, the two-volume Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: An Annotated Translation of Huang Di's Inner Classic—Basic Questions, by Unschuld and Tessenow, appeared. The full translation, with appropriate methodological introduction, actually took a while to get out. It is definite. Only a major archaeological find or an alien visitation will change things now. This is a translation for the ages. Specialists in Chinese medicine should have no fear that if they buy this translation it will be replaced by some other any time soon. If that were not enough, the two volumes of the full translation also include a CD-ROM containing the dream of all bibliographies, both traditional literature and recent, compiled with the help of Zheng Jinsheng and Zhang Tongjun. Some 5000 items are included and annotated. Some are quite rare and obscure.

In conclusion, there is no longer any excuse whatsoever for not using such a work to get to the very roots of a key classic of Chinese medicine. Unschuld and team have made it entirely available. Its riches are there for the taking. If all else fails, indeed, go back to this seminal text now in a definitive edition and translation.