The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[rikforto]

For example, in the Zhenglei Bencao (1108 CE) the text from the original 365-recipe Shennong Bencao was clearly distinguished by color (white on black instead of black on white) from the much more voluminous commentaries and additions.  The modern "reconstruction" consisted basically in extracting the parts of those texts that are marked off as "Shennong Bencao" and fixing the errors, omissions, and interpolations that had creeped into them.

This should strike you as strange, I think. Qing scholars, for all their foibles, were not idiots, and a multi-generational reconstruction effort arguing about how best to recreate the text would not be necessary if they basically just had to transcribe some red letters they all had in their books.

Indeed, if you read the source I linked, it had a very interesting detail:

[Miu had a couple of friends sharing the interests in Chinese materia medica. The most distinguished among them is Lu Fu, a leading medical figure in Hangzhou. Lu spent over a decade separating and salvaging quotations derived from the original Classic scattered across multiple sources and constructing them into a single book. Although the quality of this edition is not highly regarded, he is remembered as the first medical scholar who attempted to restore the original texts of the Classic in late Imperial China.]

It would seem that someone trying to bring all the red text into a coherent original using a network of people collecting relevant editions did not arrive at a well-regarded critical edition. That doesn't imply they just had to copy some red text and be done with it, but rather that there were substantial gaps in the transmission.

Confirming this is, admittedly, a bit of a bear and I still have some questions about the exact state of the corpus in 1420. But this machine translated description of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. from the Ming era gets at the flavor of what my search found:

'Bencao Chengya Banjie' is a ten-volume work on Ming-dynasty Lu Zhiyi's compilation of Chinese materia medica. Lu Zhiyi, a notable scholar and physician, aimed to restore and elaborate on the 'Shennong Benjing' (神农本经), which lists 365 medicinal substances, corresponding to the number of days in a year. According to Lu, these 365 entries were not to be altered or reduced. However, one-third of the substances listed in the 'Shennong Benjing' were no longer available, so Lu selected 222 entries from the original text and added 143 more from subsequent compilations, ranging from Tao Hongjing's 'Bielu' (别录) to Li Shizhen's 'Bencao Gangmu' (本草纲目), to maintain the total of 365 substances.

A quick search of that text did not reveal a single mention of a chicken (the word "rooster" contains "chicken", and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. just straight up calls the relevant entry "chicken"). You're welcome to make a more thorough canvas of the text, but at the very least, it demonstrates the Ming understanding of the SBJ was quite different during the Ming era. Relatedly, if you can find Lu Fu's compilation, I would like to see that as well, but it's poorly regarded enough that I had trouble digging up a copy I could access.

The English language claims that reconstructions relied on red text seem to be true to a point, but based on much older texts that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. That source is also of interest because it shows the transmission of the differentiated red text breaking down in the Tang era, though not entirely. There is no era where these rubrications were a universal priority, and that's unsurprising given that red ink is much more expensive than black, which was already quite expensive. It does seem to me that the red text convention was still around in 1420, but it seems like it had either degraded substantially through transmission or changed use (e.g., only marked out the titles of sections with no respect for ancient sources). I am inclined to trust that our Ming sources didn't just fail to copy some red ink, and that our Qing sources didn't undertake delicate comparisons because everyone essentially had versions of the SBJ just lying around and could read them off themselves. 

We can check the received text of the Zhenglei Bencao, in this case its own You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and see if our Ming scholars were as incompetent as implied by the availability of this text

丹雄鸡　味甘微温微寒无毒主　女人崩中漏下　赤白沃　补虚　温中　止血久伤乏疮通神　杀毒　辟不祥　头　主杀鬼　东门上者尤良白雄鸡肉味酸㣲温主下气疗狂邪安五藏伤中消渴乌雄鸡肉㣲温主补中止痛　胆㣲寒主疗目不明肌疮心主五邪血主踒折骨痛及痿痹肪　主　耳聋　肠　主　遗溺小便数不禁　肝及左翅毛主起隂冠血主乳难　肘胵裹黄皮㣲寒主　泄利小便利遗溺除热止烦尿白微寒主　消渴　伤寒寒热破石淋及转筋利小便止遗溺灭瘢㾗黒雌鸡主风寒湿痹五缓六急安胎　血无毒主中恶腹痛及踒折骨痛乳难翮羽　主下血闲　黄雌鸡味酸甘平主伤中消渇小便数不禁肠澼泄利补益五藏续絶伤疗劳益气肋骨主小儿羸瘦食不生肌鸡子　主除热火疮　癎痉　可作虎魄神物臣禹锡等谨按药对云鸡子平卵白㣲寒　　　　疗目热赤痛除心下伏热止烦满咳逆小儿下泄妇人産难胞衣不出□渍之一宿疗黄疸破大烦热　卵中白皮主久咳结气得麻黄紫菀和服之立也鸡白肥脂生朝鲜平泽

丹雄雞　味甘微溫。　　　主治女子崩中漏下，赤白沃，補虛，溫中，止血　　　　通神，殺毒，闢不祥。頭，主殺鬼。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　肪，主治耳聾。腸，主治遺溺。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　肶胵裹黃皮，　主治洩利。　　　　　　　　屎白，　主治消渴，傷寒寒熱。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　翮羽，主下血閉。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　雞子，　除熱火瘡，癇痓，可作虎魄神物。　　　　　　　　　　　雞白　蠹，肥豬。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　生　　平澤

You will once again have to copy this to a text document with word wrap turned off and deal with the competing script standards, but the effect is once again quite striking if you do. (Also, if you check the underlying document, it was not text in red, but rather larger text---but this is no great matter, that style is well-documented.) I would say a few interpolations had crept in, yes. The straightforward conclusion I draw from this comparision is that attribution to Shennong was important, but the text itself was quite buried.

It is a testament to Sun Shinyan's scholarship that the Turfan findings were mostly confirmatory, but from what I can tell the version of the SBJ you're relying on was not accessible in a single compilation that was in circulation during the Ming Era, and interest in it doesn't pick up until after the VMS anyway. For your purposes, it seems like this text was lost.

Moving Northeast from China puts you more in my wheelhouse:

In Korea, the Shennong Bencao was mandatory textbook for all medical students.  In those countries the text was still printed in Chinese characters, but read either in some pseudo-Chinese, or in words of the local language, or somewhere in between the two methods.

I was able to trace the claim that it was adopted in Silla to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I cannot find the underlying source. (The citation appears to be entirely translated and I cannot recover what the original was supposed to be.) I pretty quickly found in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that there is a lively debate which materia medica was adopted by Silla, but it wasn't the SBJ either way. Taken with the fact that the Tang government was involved in the Silla state at that point and officially backing other materia medica, I think the English source is in error, though whether or not it originates it I cannot say. At any rate, Silla falls in 985 and there are pretty radical shifts on the peninsula. I cannot find any Korean language sources suggesting it was still a prime text in the Goryeo period, and a cursory look makes me think You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I see Japanese fragments (to be clear, they are Chinese language, but from fragments in Japan) used in the 1800s to reconstruct the texts, but this appears to be the same kind of multi-source critical work that Sun was doing. The picture I have is that this tradition was largely buried in Korea and Japan by the second millennium.

Can you show evidence that these transparent passages of the SBJ were still circulating and reliable enough to have made it into the VMS in line with the text you are using?