Introductory Remarks to the Grand Basis of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon

original: "Huangdi Neijing Taisu" (黃帝內經太素). The Taisu is a specific recension or "re-ordering" of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon compiled by Yang Shangshan in the 7th century.

Lanling Tang was a notable Qing Dynasty publishing house known for printing medical texts.

The Bibliography of the History of the Han Dynasty Han Zhi (漢志): The "Treatise on Literature" within the Book of Han, which serves as the earliest catalog of Chinese literature records that the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon consists of eighteen volumes. Huangfu Mi of the Jin Dynasty, in his preface to the A-B Canon Jia Yi Jing (甲乙經): The oldest extant classic on acupuncture, dated c. 259–282 CE, stated that there were currently nine volumes of the Needling Canon Because the Basic Questions (Suwen) also consists of nine volumes, there was no way to distinguish them; thus, this text took the name from its first chapter and was called the "Needling Canon in Nine Volumes." and nine volumes of the Basic Questions (Suwen). These twice-nine volumes—eighteen in total—constitute the Inner Canon. Zhang Ji of the Han Dynasty, in his preface to the Treatise on Cold Damage, cited the ancient Jin Dynasty scriptures; besides the Basic Questions, he referred to the other work simply as the "Nine Volumes" without using a different name, thereby preserving its original substance. Wang Shuhe’s Pulse Canon (Maijing) does the same.

Huangfu Mi further stated that the Basic Questions discusses the subtleties of disease in nine volumes, while the original text on the channels and vessels is profound in its meaning; therefore, within the book itself, it is still referred to as the "Nine Volumes." In the annotations by Yang Yang Shangshan (楊上善), the Tang Dynasty physician who compiled the Taisu version of the text in this current book, whenever he cites chapter titles or passages from the current version of the Spiritual Pivot Lingshu (靈樞): One of the two core texts of the Inner Canon, primarily focused on acupuncture and anatomy, he refers to them as the "Nine Volumes." Based on this, we can sufficiently conclude that the current Spiritual Pivot and Basic Questions are indeed the eighteen volumes of the Inner Canon mentioned in the Han Bibliography.

During the Tang Dynasty, Wang Bing annotated the Basic Questions. Because the seventh volume of Quan Yuanqi’s annotated version had long been lost The Bibliography of the History of the Sui Dynasty records the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon in only eight volumes., Wang Bing claimed to have discovered an old hidden volume in his private collection. From this, he compiled seven chapters of the "Great Treatises on the Heavenly Periods" These are complex chapters dealing with "Five Movements and Six Qi" (cosmological influences on health) which some scholars believe were later additions into the Basic Questions. Lin Yi and other scholars of the Song Dynasty, in their New Revisions (Xin Jiaozheng), suspected these chapters were actually fragments of the Great Treatise on Yin and Yang. Furthermore...