A Philological, Text Critical Reading of Sections of Chapter Five of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, Basic Questions

Abstract

The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic is the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) medical text at the center of professional, literature-based medical practice in China for the last two-thousand years. Since the Song dynasty, roughly one thousand years ago, a single government sanctioned version of the first of the two books of the Inner Classic, “Basic Questions”, has acted as the authoritative version until modern times, the vast majority of scholars referencing it exclusively. This authoritative Song version took as its master copy an eighth century version which had undergone extensive changes. A seventh century text, the Grand Basis, contains most of “Basic Questions” and that in a state that did not get altered during the eighth century. This suggests Grand Basis is a closer reflection of the original Han “Basic Questions” than that which has acted as the authoritative version for the last thousand years. This research makes a close, critical comparison of portions of chapter five of “Basic Questions”. The goal was to determine the existence and nature of differences between the Song version and Grand Basis. Though too small a sample to arrive at definitive conclusions several differences were revealed suggesting, tentatively, an attempt on the original Han authors’ part to make their intent clear, this lost or concealed in the Song version. Enough differences of a meaningful type were found to warrant further, more complete investigation.