The Formation of Recipes for Ailments in the Qin and Western Han: Based on Textual Research into “Recipes for Ailments” in the Qin Bamboo Slips of Peking University

Abstract

The publication of newly unearthed texts, such as “Recipes for Ailments” in the Qin bamboo slips of Peking University, has made the evolution of recipes for ailments clearer. First, in the Qin Dynasty, recipes for ailments often had no catalogs, and their contents were relatively heterogeneous. In the Western Han Dynasty, recipes for ailments were commonly categorized by the name of the ailment in the table of contents, and the format of the main text was in line with the table of contents. At the same time, the recipes for livestock, which were common in the Qin, disappeared in the early years of the Western Han. Additionally, incantation recipes were gradually marginalized after the middle of the Western Han Dynasty. In the Qin recipes for ailments, those related to incantations for removal (zhuyou 祝由) address a wide range of conditions, thereby blurring the boundaries between these recipes for ailments and other types of texts on calculations and arts (shushu 数术). Subsequently, in the Western Han Dynasty, the meaning of incantation recipes was narrowed to the way of dealing with human diseases, in contrast to medical treatments, with the boundary between recipes for ailments and other texts on calculations and arts becoming clearer. In conclusion, from the Qin to the transition between the Western and Eastern Han, recipes for ailments gradually took shape in terms of content, structure, and format, becoming more similar to the medical recipes of later ages.

Keywords

Qin bamboo slips of Peking University / recipes for ailments / incantations for removal

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