Daoyin Methods in the Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Diseases诸病源候论导引法

Also known as

Daoyin Methods of Master Chao's Origins of Diseases, Daoyin Methods in the Formulas for Nourishing Life

Author / transmission

Chao Yuanfang and others (Sui)

Period

Sui · Compiled by imperial order in the sixth year of the Daye era of the Sui (610) by Chao Yuanfang and others, in fifty fascicles; the appended 'life-nourishing prescriptions and daoyin methods' number over two hundred entries in total. This entry concerns specifically its daoyin portion, included here as an appended item.

Canon division

Medical text (outside the Daoist Canon)

Collected in

Outside the canon (a work of medical literature).

Category

Medicine and Nourishing Life

Fascicles

Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Diseases, 50 juan (Daoyin methods scattered through the various symptom entries)

Synopsis

The Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Diseases is the first systematic Chinese treatise on the causes and mechanisms of disease, compiled by imperial order by Chao Yuanfang and others of the Sui; divided into sixty-seven categories comprising over 1,700 symptom-entries, it discusses diseases without prescribing formulas. Its distinguishing feature is that, appended to most of its disease entries, are 'life-nourishing prescriptions and daoyin methods' — more than two hundred entries in all — prescribing specific bodily movements, breathing, and visualization to treat the condition in question, so that wind disorders, taxation fatigue, lower-back pain, wasting-and-thirsting disease, beriberi, and eye ailments each have their own specific daoyin exercise. Many of these entries are explicitly marked as drawn from now-lost Daoist life-nourishing texts such as the Yangsheng fang and the Yangsheng fang daoyinfa, making the work the single greatest repository for reconstructing lost Six Dynasties daoyin literature; its exercises can largely be cross-referenced with the Great Clarity Scripture of Daoyin and Nourishing Life and the Records of Nourishing Nature and Extending Life. This text demonstrates that, by the officially compiled medicine of the Sui and Tang, daoyin techniques originating in Daoist occult arts had been formally incorporated into the therapeutic system — an institutionalized marker of the tradition of 'exercise in place of medicine.' For the study of how Daoist life-nourishing techniques entered mainstream medicine, and for the history of ancient body-technique more broadly, this text is indispensable, and is therefore appended here among the Daoist life-nourishing literature.

Key Ideas

• The first Chinese treatise on the causes and mechanisms of disease
• Discusses diseases without formulas, but with over two hundred appended daoyin entries
• The single greatest repository for reconstructing lost Six Dynasties daoyin literature
• Daoyin formally incorporated into officially compiled medicine
• An institutionalized marker of the tradition of exercise in place of medicine

Structure

Fifty fascicles in sixty-seven categories, comprising over 1,700 symptom-entries, with daoyin methods appended after individual entries.

Editions

• The Song-print textual lineage
• Critical edition published by the People's Medical Publishing House
• Ding Guangdi, Zhubing yuanhou lun yangsheng fang daoyinfa yanjiu

Commentaries

• Ding Guangdi, Zhubing yuanhou lun jiaozhu

Translations

• Extensively translated and discussed in Livia Kohn, Chinese Healing Exercises (2008)

Full Text & Online Resources

• Wikisource: Zhubing yuanhou lun
• CTEXT: Zhubing yuanhou lun

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