Jinghua Fu - The Yellow Emperors Classic of Medicine: Essential Questions

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fu, Jinghua, author.

Title: The Yellow Emperors Classic of medicine essential questions : translation of Huangdi neijing suwen / edited by Jinghua Fu ; translated by Mingshan Yang.

Other titles: Huangdi nei jing su wen yi zhu. English | Su wen. English

Description: New Jersey : World Scientific, 2019. | This translated book is based on the Chinese version annotated and edited by Jinghua Fu and his team, published by China Renmin University Press in 2010.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018031834 | ISBN 9789813273573 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: | MESH: Su wen. | Medicine, Chinese Traditional | China

Classification: LCC R601 | NLM WZ 294 | DDC 610.951--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018031834

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Originally published in Chinese by China Renmin University Press

Copyright China Renmin University Press 2010

English translation rights arranged with China Renmin University Press

Copyright 2019 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the publisher.

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This book is supported by the B&R Book Program.

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There are many human races in the world and different races may show different skin colors, yet there are no significant differences in physical and visceral functions. Since ancient times, people living in the eastern and western hemispheres have explored various medical herbs and methods for the treatment of human diseases. It is not hard to see that the object of the ancient medicinal service is no alien beings from outer space but human beings in the world, which is just the common basis of ancient eastern and western medicine.

It can be said that the ancient Greeks started western medicine with Hippocratic Corpus, while ancient Chinese people established the foundation of oriental medicine with Huang Di Nei Jing (The Yellow Emperors Classic of Medicine). As the medical giants of western and oriental medicine in ancient times, how could they obtain the scientific instruments for medical research as we do today? The great contributions they made for the human medicine all came from their extraordinary intelligence to observe the images of life and to summarize the experiences of preventing and treating diseases, so as to establish the respective medical systems, by which the medical masterpieces came out admirably.

Before Qin (221207 BCE) and Han (206 BCE220 CE) Dynasties, ancient Chinese medical books were simply written with a concise but comprehensive structure. Linguistically, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and western medicine are quite different from each other. Formal Equivalence by Eugene Nida is generally adopted to solve most problems in my translation accordingly. As for the selection of English words or terms in translation, etymology of the original Anglo-Saxon language was referred. The sentence pattern and word order should follow the style of Chinese classical literary works. This is the principle and technique employed in my translation.

Any explanation of a Chinese character means a cultural history in detail, the Titan of Chinese studies, Mr. Chen Yinque remarked. Could the academic notion be used for translation of The Yellow Emperors Classic of Medicine? The answer is positive. Nevertheless, it needs to be humbly suggested that the Yellow Emperor is too great to comprehend in its every detail. Thus, not every source of each character in the course is equally and accordingly traced. Hence, I conducted a linguistic research project on the main terms and characters according to the method of Textual Research of Integrating Chinese with Western Literature designed by myself. Nearly two hundred TCM words have been textual-researched and nearly two hundred articles have been written abiding by the model of One character requires one detailed document compiled. There are no fewer than thirty kinds of TCM English dictionaries (based on word phrase of TCM) but I often failed to select suitable English words from those dictionaries when translating The Yellow Emperors Classic of Medicine. Following the idea of Mr. Chen Yinque, I specifically compiled the Essential ChineseEnglish TCM Dictionary (based on single Chinese character), which was published by Fudan University Press in 2013. In fact, Essential ChineseEnglish TCM Dictionary was especially compiled for the translation of The Yellow Emperors Classic of Medicine Essential Questions, and readers may consequently categorize the Dictionary as a reference book for the translation of TCM classics. Whenever there is any difference between TCM terminologies in this book and the versions of other scholars, it can be discussed based on the Essential ChineseEnglish TCM Dictionary.

The translated text mainly refers to the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen Yi Zhu (Translation and Annotation of the Essential Questions in Yellow Emperors Inner Canon) published by China Renmin University Press in 2010, which is based on the Chinese version of Essential Questions in Yellow Emperors Inner Canon (Gu Congde version in Ming Dynasty) published by China Renmin University Press in 1963.

All in all, though I am a pediatrician of western medicine, I admire TCM so much that I could spare no effort in translating the book. I would like to express my deep appreciation to all those who are committed to translating and publishing the book.