很高兴认识 the blog’s owner.
我是中国人，喜爱中医。
很高兴今天在这里结交到学习中医的国外朋友。

不过，我只是中医（岐黄之术）的爱好者。

The best approach of studying classical Chinese medicial texts, in my opinion, is to pick one text and stick with it and to understand the difference between classical or literary Chinese grammar from modern Chinese grammar. Paul Unschuld has a great classical Chinese medical reader that I highly recomend, though it pulls from multiple texts and commentaries.

Are you studying Chinese medicine or practicing? Do you have an interest in Chinese language?

Thanks,
Michael

There are two key concepts I’d like to comment on from your latest response; perhaps we’ll have to write some more articles for Eric’s site to generate a fruitful conversation outside of just ours, though I really appreciate your willingness to discuss this on line.

The first is that there is no possible way that Chinese Medicine originated from Daoist medicine! This is a common misunderstanding, but needs to be understood. What we think of as “Daoism” is all from the dynasties after the Han. Sure, the original texts that inspired Daoism originated during the Waring States time (in the midst of the 100 schools), and they were most likely inspired by oral transmissions from earlier times. But this does not mean that there was anything like what we think of as “Daoism” or especially “Daoist Medicine” at these earlier times. We can assume that a deep understanding comes from the ancient ones; the fundamental blueprints have been passed down from so very long ago. I’m referring to the Zhouyi, the Book of Songs, the Book of Rites and other very ancient transmissions either in writing or through oral transmission. But, the five elements and the theories of the Yin and Yang are clearly developed later. They may have originated from ancient wisdom, but they way we understand them and use them, and the way they are used in our medicine is due to the synthesis that occured at a very important time period.

The second point I’d like to make is that Yi Yin’s name was applied to the Tangye Jing as the “Patriarch” and by no means implies that this text can be traced back to him. I think that the most important thing to understand about our medicine is that a great synthesis occured during the Han Dynasty. If you carefully examine the history of consciousness and thought, the development of theories through time and when specific changes occured, you would see that China’s history has some very significant progressions.

For instance,the time of the shift from the Shang to the Zhou produced the origin of the Zhouyi…some say it is a record of the divinations of King Wu as he was watching for the signs to tell him when it was time to overthrow the Shang, to “cross the great water” literally onto the Shang territory. See Hexagram 55 and John (I think?) Marshall’s book on the “Tian Ming”.

Another time of great change is during the Waring States period…we have to at least try to understand the Laozi and the Zhuangzi within this context, despite our desire to see these texts as metaphysical manifestations of divine beings from pre-historic times.

Finally, the transition from the Warring States period to the Qin Dynasty and then quickly into the Han are so incredibly significant for us to understand. Here we will find how the very contradictory and confusing theories and ideas that were developed and passed around from the time of Laozi until the Qin were put through a great synthesis during the Han Dynasty, first in the Western Han and then in the Eastern Han. This great sythesis is the true origin of classical Chinese medicine as we know it. It has nothing to do with Daoist medicine, but Pre-Daoist concepts are certainly at the core of many of these fundamental beliefs. Daoism did not exist at this time, but for a multitude of philosophical schools of thought which later the “Daoists” claimed were their forefathers. You can say the same about Confucianism, for if you really look at Hanfeizi, for example, or Xunzi (who were much closer to this great transition), it is difficult to say that they are of the same school of thought as Confucius, even though they base all of their ideas off of his words.

The Tangye Jing is a Han dynasty text, just like the Neijing and the Shennong Bencao Jing and the Shanghan Lun are. Their concepts come from thousands of years of processing and distillation, from the very ancient oral transmissions, through very difficult and turmultuous times, to a time when language and thought were organized and synthesized. You cannot say that over 2500 years the “oral transmission” was passed through directly until someone wrote it down.

We need to consider the reality of history, though I’m certainly a believer in the mystery teachings of the ancient ones. The sixty four hexagrams, for instance, do come from so very long ago; the “Songs” do as well. These carry such deep wisdom. I’ve also seen an analysis of the astrological progressions described in the Neijing as only possibly being understood from the time of 2-3000 bc (though this is speculative information), which implies that the wisdom of astrological progressions could come from this ancient time. I believe it does. But I’ve very carefully traced specific theories and concepts from the Neijing and from Chinese medicine in general and found that, with the exception of astrological references and mappings of time (including the theories of the Yijing), all of the concepts cannot really be traced past the Waring States period, and they weren’t really synthesized in to a coherent usable organization until the Han Dynasty.

Thus the Tangye Jing and the Shennong Bencao Jing are really only around the corner from each other, the first being written during the Western Han and the second being written during the Eastern Han. The Neijing also can be traced to sometime during this period (ranging from just before the Han dynasty to just prior to the Shanghan Lun in the Eastern Han). Yes, the concepts have been in the works prior to their codification, but to understand our medicine as it is presented to us in the classical texts, we need to understand the historical context of the Han dynasty.

Sorry for the lengthy comment again…..
Michael

e

Just wanted to clarify for the record that I am not opposed to analyzing the classics, and I encourage comparing and contrasting of classics and other Chinese medicine works from different periods.

I don’t think we can really say these classics are close together in time. First off, CCM developed from Daoist medicine, and was mostly passed down through oral tradition. Otherwise we would not have any knowldedge of Shen Nong or Yi Yin. It wasn’t until the Han dynasty that everything was recorded in writing.

No one can say for sure when Shen Nong lived, or if he even did, but it his work dates back to around 2700BC. Yi Yin (1648-1549 BC) we know was the prime minister to emperor Tang in the Shang dynasty. Zhang Zhong Jing lived during the the Han dynasty from about 150-219 AD, and so his work did come after Shen Nong, Yi Yin, and Yellow Emperor.

I don’t think we can say that these dates are all close together or from the Han, but they were all recorded in writing at that time. Much happened between 2700 BC and 200 AD that is not known, so we can not assume they all thought alike because they were from the same time period. Zhang Zhong Jing lived closer to the modern day on a timeline compared to when Shen Nong lived. Shen Nong lived over a thousand years before Yi Yin. We can hardly say they lived at about the same time in history. 1000 years is a big difference in time.

Having said that, I hope that Eric goes on that archaeological dig to unearth a full copy of the Tang Ye Jing before I turn in my thesis! I find this info to be important to the medicine, and I think if we had a copy of this work much more would be clear about how herbs work in relation to the five phase movements.