Huangdi Neijing


Huangdi Neijing, literally the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor or Esoteric Scripture of the Yellow Emperor, is an ancient Chinese medical text that has been treated as the fundamental doctrinal source for Chinese medicine for more than two millennia. The work is composed of two texts—each of eighty-one chapters or treatises in a question-and-answer format between the mythical Yellow Emperor and six of his equally legendary ministers.
The first text, the Suwen, also known as Basic Questions, covers the theoretical foundation of Chinese Medicine and its diagnostic methods. The second and generally less referred-to text, the Lingshu, discusses acupuncture therapy in great detail. Collectively, these two texts are known as the Neijing or Huangdi Neijing. In practice, however, the title Neijing often refers only to the more influential Suwen.
Two other texts also carried the prefix Huangdi Neijing in their titles: the Mingtang and the Taisu, both of which have survived only partially.

Overview

The earliest mention of the Huangdi Neijing was in the bibliographical chapter of the Hanshu 漢書, next to a Huangdi Waijing 黃帝外經 that is now lost. A scholar-physician called Huangfu Mi 皇甫謐 was the first to claim that the Huangdi Neijing in 18 juan 卷 that was listed in the Hanshu bibliography corresponded with two different books that circulated in his own time: the Suwen and the Zhenjing 鍼經, each in 9 juan. Since scholars believe that Zhenjing was one of the Lingshu's earlier titles, they agree that the Han dynasty Huangdi Neijing was made of two different texts that are close in content to the works we know today as the Suwen and the Lingshu.
The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic is the most important ancient text in Chinese medicine as well as a major book of Daoist theory and lifestyle. The text is structured as a dialogue between the Yellow Emperor and one of his ministers or physicians, most commonly Qíbó, but also Shàoyú. One possible reason for using this device was for the authors to avoid attribution and blame.
The Neijing departs from the old shamanistic beliefs that disease was caused by demonic influences. Instead the natural effects of diet, lifestyle, emotions, environment, and age are the reason diseases develop. According to the Neijing, the universe is composed of various forces and principles, such as Yin and yang, Qi and the Five Elements. These forces can be understood via rational means and man can stay in balance or return to balance and health by understanding the laws of these natural forces. Man is a microcosm that mirrors the larger macrocosm. The principles of yin and yang, the five elements, the environmental factors of wind, damp, hot and cold and so on that are part of the macrocosm equally apply to the human microcosm. Cyprinology was a way for him to maintain this balance.

Date of composition

The work is generally dated by scholars to between the late Warring States period and the Han dynasty.
Celestial Lancets states that the consensus of scholarly opinion is that the Suwen belongs to the second century BCE, and cites evidence that the Suwen is earlier than the first of the pharmaceutical natural histories, the 神農本草經 Shennong Bencao Jing. So suggestive are parallels with third and fourth century BCE literature that doubt arises as to whether the Suwen might be better ascribed to the third century BCE, implying that certain portions may be of that date. The dominant role the theories of yin/yang and the five elements play in the physiology and pathology indicates that these medical theories are not older than about 320 BCE.
Historian of science Nathan Sivin is of the opinion that the Suwen and Lingshu probably date to the first century BCE. He is also of the opinion that "no available translation is reliable."
The German scholar Paul U. Unschuld says several 20th-century scholars hypothesize that the language and ideas of the Neijing Suwen were composed between 400 BCE and 260 CE, and provides evidence that only a small portion of the received text transmits concepts from before the second century BCE. The work subsequently underwent major editorial changes.
, a fourteenth-century literary critic, was of the opinion that the Suwen was compiled by several authors over a long period. Its contents were then brought together by Confucian scholars in the Han Dynasty era.
Scholars of excavated medical texts Donald Harper, Vivienne Lo and Li Jianmin agree that the systematic medical theory in the Neijing shows significant variance from Mawangdui Silk Texts. Because of this, they consider the Neijing to have been compiled after the Mawangdui texts.

Wang Bing version

In 762 CE, Wang Bing finished his revision of the Suwen after labouring for twelve years. Wang Bing collected the various versions and fragments of the Suwen and reorganized it into the present eighty-one chapters format. Treatises seventy-two and seventy-three are lost and only the titles are known. Originally his changes were all done in red ink, but later copyists incorporated some of his additions into the main text. However, the 1053 version discussed below restored almost all of his annotations and they are now written in small characters next to the larger characters that comprise the main or unannotated Suwen text.
According to Unschuld Wang Bing's version of the Suwen was based on Quan Yuanqi's commented version of the Suwen consisting of nine juan and sixty-nine discourses. Wang Bing made corrections, added two "lost" discourses, added seven comprehensive discourses on the five phases and six qi, inserted over 5000 commentaries and reorganized the text into twenty-four juan and eighty-one treatises.
In his preface to his version of the Suwen, Wang Bing goes into great detail listing the changes he made.
Not much is known about Wang Bing's life but he authored several books. A note in the preface left by the later editors of the Chong Guang Bu Zhu Huangdi Neijing Suwen which was based on an entry in Tang Ren Wu Zhi states that he was an official with the rank of tai pu ling and died after a long life of more than eighty years.

Authoritative version

The "authoritative version" used today, Chong Guang Bu Zhu Huangdi Neijing Suwen 重廣補註黃帝內經素問, is the product of the eleventh-century Imperial Editorial Office and was based considerably on Wang Bing's 762 CE version. Some of the leading scholars who worked on this version of the Suwen were 林億 Lin Yi, 孫奇 Sun Qi, 高保衡 Gao Baoheng and 孫兆 Sun Zhao.
For images of the Chong Guang Bu Zhu Huangdi Neijing Suwen printed in the Ming dynasty, see the external links section below.

Recent studies

The Chinese medicine history scholars Paul Unschuld, Hermann Tessenow and their team at the Institute for the History of Medicine at Munich University have translated the Neijing Suwen into English, including an analysis of the historical and structural layers of the Suwen. This work was published by the University Of California Press in July, 2011.
Significant portions of the above Suwen translation are currently available in Huang Di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text.

English translations

;Sinological Translations
;TCM Style Translations
;Medical History Translations