Preface to the Inner Canon

...ged in conversation, our hearts were in perfect agreement, like the two halves of a matching tally original: 合契 (heqi). A reference to ancient contracts made by splitting a piece of wood; when the halves were rejoined, they proved a perfect match.. Last year, while he was serving as an official in Wuchang, he oversaw the editing and woodblock carving of the Sui dynasty scholar Master Yang’s edition of the Inner Canon: Grand Basis original: 隋楊氏内經太素 (Sui Yangshi Neijing Taisu). This is a 7th-century commentary by Yang Shangshan. It was lost in China for centuries until a manuscript was rediscovered in a Japanese temple in the late 19th century and brought back to China by Yang Shoujing.. This autumn, the printing was completed, and he came to me to ask for a preface.

Moved by the occasion, I sighed and said: "Today, those who pursue the 'New Learning' This refers to the influx of Western science and modernized education in late 19th-century East Asia. all share a common tendency: they no longer treat ancient scholarship as the foundation. Medicine is but one example of this trend. Medical practitioners trace their origins back to the teachings passed down from the Yellow Emperor The legendary ancestor of the Chinese people and the purported author of the foundational texts of Chinese medicine.. While the Inner Canon was recorded in the 'Treatise on Literature' of the History of the Han Dynasty original: 漢志 (Han Zhi). Specifically the Hanshu Yiwenzhi, the earliest comprehensive bibliography of Chinese literature (1st century CE), which lists the Huangdi Neijing., and although the versions we study today are not necessarily identical to that original ancient text, if one examines its historical trajectory..."