General Remarks on the Grand Basis of the Inner Canon

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The version in our collection is a facsimile original: "yingxie"—a hand-traced reproduction intended to preserve every brushstroke of the original.; it is undoubtedly a manuscript scroll from the Tang Dynasty 618–907 CE. Regarding the thirteen sheets of fragmented scrolls, we have carefully supplemented the text using the Divine Pivot Lingshu: one of the two foundational texts of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, focusing on acupuncture and meridians and the Basic Questions Suwen: the other half of the Inner Canon, focusing on the theoretical and philosophical foundations of medicine. Within this book, the chapters in Volumes 5, 6, 10, 22, and 30—including the "Union of Yin and Yang" and other sections—are all detailed in the collation notes of the supplemented chapters.

Since this book is a facsimile of the official imperial collection held at Ninna-ji Temple, we also refer to Mr. Yang’s Record of Seeking Books in Japan original: "Riben Fangshu Zhi"—Yang Shoujing's famous bibliographic record of rare Chinese books he discovered while stationed in Japan.. According to that record, the Nishikinokōji family A Japanese noble family of hereditary physicians. also possessed a manuscript.

When I was the director of the Wuchang Medical School, Governor Ke Xunxiang Ke Fengyi (1850–1933), a prominent scholar-official of the late Qing Dynasty. once showed me a copy of the Grand Basis original: "Taisu".. It was an ordinary manuscript with smaller calligraphy. Although the volume numbers and sequence were the same as this edition, it lacked the fragmented scrolls. Furthermore, in that copy, whenever there was a gap or missing text—regardless of the number of characters lost—the transcriber merely left a single blank space. It did not preserve the true appearance of the original in the way this facsimile does. The Governor once told me that he had personally proofread that book for many years, but it later came into the possession of Yuan...