Classical Yijing / 5 classics / Neijing

[Guest guest]

Chris, thanks for the clarification of the hand yang channels between

" ancient " and " classical " .

 

Just wondering if " classical " refers to documents from the " Yijing through

Wenbing " as you wrote,

or " Neijing through Wenbing " ?

 

I'm wondering if we can distinguish between " classical " from a Chinese

cultural standpoint

and " classical " in a more specific Chinese medical context.

 

1. The Yijing predates Confucius and was completed by King Wen in the last

generation of the Shang Dynasty (1766-1121 BC) (Hua Ching Ni- Book of

Changes 7th printing 2002)

 

2. I would think that Confucius (551-479 BCE) could be a starting point for

what we think of " classical " in the sense of the " Five Classics " ), the I

Jing as the beginning of All Chinese classics and the Nei Jing as the

beginning of Chinese medical classics (Early Han period).

 

Ancient seems to be more ambiguous yet.

 

Thanks, k.

 

 

 

On 3/10/07, < wrote:

>

> Fri, 9 Mar 2007 10:15:06 0500, " " <

> acukath <acukath%40gmail.com>>

> >> Wasn't the LI channel called the " nose channel " back in classical

> times? and the SI channel the " eye channel " and the SJ the " ear channel " ?

>

> " Classical times " , and " the ancients " (as used in a

> passage I cited in my last message) these terms are good to better

> qualify, narrow down to period, to really understand how the issues

> came about. In TCM texts, " Ancients " is used for everyone from

> MaWangDui-era manuscripts through to 18th and 19th Centuries authors.

> And " classical " refers documents from the YiJing through WenBing.

> Pretty much anything prior to the Republic and the PRC.

>

> What Kath refers to is clearly seen in the MaWangDui texts. E.g. the

> 2nd one (MSI.B.1, " Cauterization Canon of the 11 Yin and Yang

> Vessels " ) names the hand TaiYang as " shoulder vessel " , the hand

> ShaoYang as " ear vessel " , and hand YangMing as " tooth vessel " .

> There's a mixture in these texts also, as the 1st text (MSI.A.5,

> " Cauterization Canon of the 11 Vessels of the Foot and Forearm " ) uses

> Taiyang, Shaoyang and Yangming. Likewise the (very short) 3rd one

> (MSI.C, " Model of the Vessels " ). (These 3 are relatively small texts.

> The bulk of the MaWangDui mss deal with various " recipes " of herbs

> and spells, exercises and sexual practices.)

>

> MaWangDui probably isn't really Han, as they were fragments written

> across the lifetime of the guy buried there in 168 BCE, written

> (mostly copied) in the early years after the unification of the

> empire, but probably thoughts that were current going into the new era.

>

> Some of that use of alternative terms for the channels may appear in

> the Han compilations (neijing) too, as they were clearly chunking

> together and refinement of fragments like those from MaWangDui and

> other similar sites. The suwen as something resembling a consciously

> structured book probably dates from WangBing's massive

> reorganization, trying to make sense out of it all from a 9th Century

> perspective.

>

> So classical as Kath used it here is more like pre- and

> early-classical Han. And John's " ancients " were only Song-jin-yuan and

> later.

>

> This may seem just academic, but when the perspectives and the

> historical processes (dialogs) come more into view (even just a

> little, i.e. my degree of understanding), I find they come more to

> life, and actually can become more clinically useful, as one realizes

> they are not abstractions (TCM), but rather viewpoints based on

> various specific patterns of manifestation and ways of understanding them.

>

>

>

> --

>

>

> Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.8/716 - Release 3/9/2007

> 6:53 PM

>

>

>

 

 

 

--

'Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of

a problem.'

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 07:38:56 0800, " " <johnkokko wrote:

>> Just wondering if " classical " refers to

documents from the " Yijing through Wenbing " as

you wrote, or " Neijing through Wenbing " ? … I'm

wondering if we can distinguish between

" classical " from a Chinese cultural standpoint

and " classical " in a more specific Chinese medical context.

 

Hi John,

We can distinguish the two general cultural and

more specifically medical while keeping mindful

that the two are closely interrelated.

Distinguish, for instance, documents and their

lineages. (My sense is that it would be difficult

to find an example of a document / book which

does not base on, comment on, interpretively add

to, etc. some older document, writer, teacher,

school of thought, etc.) Those I've read/heard

who really seem to know something (e.g. across a

spectrum from Paul Unschuld to Jeffery Yuen),

appear to agree that deeply understanding the

medical tradition(s) goes hand-in-hand with

understanding the cultural background.

 

For instance, Donald Harper (in his

MaWangDui (MWD) book) constantly refers to prior

documents, going back a couple of hundred years,

in exploring how characters/terms in the MWD mss

were used, and then what they might be understood

to mean in the mss. The medical (or, prior to

Han/suwen medicine, " healing-art " ) terminology is

largely borrowed from more general (what we would

call today) philosophical, political and

religious writings. An obvious and significant

example, the terms " yin " and " yang " .

 

Another example, a millenium later: understanding

ZhuXi's philosophical concept of " li " /

" principle " is prerequisite to understanding what

the Song-jin-yuan Imperial Academy (which might

be a more general and accurate term for what we

call the " 4 great masters " they were all

members) contributed to acupuncture and herbal

medicine theory. That concept spawned the

elaborated functional and qualitative

categorization of both the channels/points, and

herbs and formulas that began in that period. I

would venture that it was the motivation that

crystallized the logic of CM

(etiology diagnosis treatment principles) that

survives in what we're taught today.

 

So, back in the pre-Han to Han era, the

literature from about the time of LaoZi and

Confucius (which is roughly the beginning of

real, book-like documents) is essential to

understanding the specific medical documents that

trace from the scattered fragments like MaWangDui

and coalesce into the neijing. That is, in

slightly different senses, both the alternatives

you mention can be taken as the legacy of classics of that era.

 

>>1. The Yijing predates Confucius and was

completed by King Wen in the last generation of

the Shang Dynasty (1766-1121 BC) (Hua Ching Ni-

Book of Changes 7th printing 2002)

 

A good point, as it borders on the essential

mythic nature of most of what we know of matters

prior to the late Zhou and early Han. (All we

have factually is bone, shell and

bronze inscriptions.) In fact, I scanned Ni's

YiJing version some months ago and found it an

illustrative example of mythic lore. Ni's

rendition is largely idiosyncratic, but more from

a clan than an individual perspective. For

instance, he claims his special knowledge stems

from his family being directly descended from

Prince Wen (and thereby directly from the HuangDi

himself). He depicts the Zhou reign (his

family's) as a splendid era of peace and

culture including what is known today as the

" Warring States " period. And so on. It's really

quite interesting to read, and how consistently

that attitude permeates the book.

 

>>2. I would think that Confucius (551-479 BCE)

could be a starting point for what we think of

" classical " in the sense of the " Five Classics " ),

the I Jing as the beginning of All Chinese

classics and the Nei Jing as the beginning of

Chinese medical classics (Early Han period).

 

Yes, well put.

 

>>Ancient seems to be more ambiguous yet.

 

Yes. I take it to mean matters having to do with

people who are no longer alive ancestors at any degree of temporal distance.

 

Curiously, I recall from my study of the history

of European music (BA, MA, some PhD study) that

the tendency to differentiate one's own time from

a previous time permeates Western history.

Specifically differentiating one's own time from

the immediately preceding cultural timeframe.

Starting in about the 12th or 13th Centuries,

every new generation or tradition of

composers/musicians cooked up terms like " Ars

antiqua " (the old guys) vs. " Ars nova " (our new

stuff). A couple of centuries later, in the

Italian Renaissance, it became " Ars nouva " vs

" Ars antigua " to refer to me and my buddies'

music, vs. that of our teachers. And so on, to

the beginning of the 20th Century's " modern

music " , followed by " contemporary music " , then

(post WWII) the " new music " movement. Le plus

change, le plus meme. (A French saying: " the more

things change, the more they're the same " )

 

 

 

 

--

 

 

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