Huangdi Neijing

Huangdi Neijing (Chinese: 黃帝內經), meaning the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, is an ancient Chinese medical text that has been very important for Chinese medicine for over two thousand years. It is made up of two main parts, each with eighty-one chapters. These chapters are written as conversations between the mythical Yellow Emperor and his six ministers.

The first part, called Suwen (素問), or Basic Questions, talks about the basic ideas of Chinese medicine and how doctors can find out what is wrong with someone. The second part, called Lingshu (靈樞), or Spiritual Pivot, explains a lot about acupuncture, a way of treating illness by putting thin needles into the body.

Together, these two parts are known as the Neijing or Huangdi Neijing. But often when people say Neijing, they mostly mean the Suwen, because it is more well-known. There are also two other older texts with similar names, Mingtang (明堂) and Taisu (太素), but only parts of them still exist today. This book was also liked by people who followed Taoism.

Overview

The earliest mention of the Huangdi Neijing was in the bibliographical chapter of the Hanshu (or Book of Han), completed in 111 CE. A scholar named Huangfu Mi (215–282 CE) was the first to say that the Huangdi Neijing was made of two different books: the Suwen and the Zhenjing.

The "Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic" (Huangdi Neijing) is a very important old book about Chinese medicine and also about Daoist ideas and ways of living. The book is written as a conversation between the Yellow Emperor and his helpers, like Qíbó.

The Neijing talks about how the body works differently from old ideas that sickness came from bad spirits. Instead, it says that health comes from balance, like the ideas of yin and yang, the wuxing, and qi. These ideas help us understand how nature and our bodies are connected.

Date of composition

Before discoveries in the 1970s at Mawangdui in Hunan, people thought the Huangdi Neijing was written between the Warring States period and the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). But the finds at Mawangdui changed this idea. Experts now believe the Huangdi Neijing was put together after the Mawangdui medical texts, which were sealed in a tomb in 168 BCE.

Scholars like Nathan Sivin think the Suwen and Lingshu parts were likely written around the first century BCE, much later than people used to think. The texts show they are a mix of different writings, some agreeing and some disagreeing with each other. Some parts might even be from as early as the third century BCE, based on similarities with older literature. The ideas about yin/yang and the five elements suggest the theories are not older than about 320 BCE.

Later scholars suggest the language and ideas in the Neijing Suwen were written between 400 BCE and 260 CE, with only a little of it coming from before the second century BCE. The text was changed and edited a lot over time. A fourteenth-century critic, Du Fu, thought the Suwen was written by many authors over many years and then collected by scholars in the Han dynasty.

Wang Bing version

In 762 CE, a man named Wang Bing finished updating a very old health book called the Suwen. He worked on it for twelve years! He gathered all the different versions and organized them into eighty-one chapters. Two of these chapters are missing, and we only know their names.

Wang Bing based his work on an older version from the sixth century. He fixed some things, added new ideas about health, wrote many notes to explain the text, and changed the way the book was put together.

We don’t know much about Wang Bing’s life, but he was an important person and lived to be older than eighty years old.

Authoritative version

The version of the book we use today, called Chong Guang Bu Zhu Huangdi Neijing Suwen, was created by scholars in the eleventh century. It started with a version made by Wang Bing in 762 CE. Important scholars like Lin Yi, Sun Qi, Gao Baoheng, and Sun Zhao helped improve this book.

You can see pictures of this book from the Ming dynasty in the links below.

English translations

There are several ways people have translated the Huangdi Neijing into English. Some focus on Daoist practices, like the work by Louis Komjathy, which translates only a small part of the text. Scholars such as Paul Unschuld and Hermann Tessenow have also worked on translating and studying the text.

Others have created versions for modern medicine study. For example, Zhu Ming’s translation organizes the text by topics and includes notes. Nelson Liansheng Wu and Andrew Qi Wu have also provided a full translation of the main text.

There are also translations that look at the history and meaning of the text, such as works by Ilza Veith and Paul Unschuld. These include parts of the text along with background information to help readers understand its importance.

Modern Chinese translations and references

There are several modern Chinese translations and references for the Huangdi Neijing. One is Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic: Plain Questions – Critically Compared, Annotated and Translated by Guo Aichun, published in 1999. It includes the Neijing Suwen text in simplified characters, along with annotations and a detailed index.

Another reference is Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic Dictionary, also edited by Guo Aichun in 1991. This book is a dictionary of Neijing terms in simplified Chinese.

There is also a version of Neijing Suwen from 1965, featuring annotations by Wang Bing and others. This version uses traditional characters and includes notes from an Imperial Editorial Office from the year 1053 CE.