Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea: The Natural World and Material Culture of Twelfth-Century China

2 Metals and Stones

25 2 Metals and Stones (Zhi jinshi) The Basic Pharmacopeia [Bencao] includes a “Section on Jadelike Stones”[Yushi bu]1 devoted solely to medicinal products [yaowu]. These are not cures for illnesses. Although they are important, I do not note them here.2 This chapter also concentrates on those [minerals] necessary for making prescription medicines [fangyao]. Raw Gold [shengjin] comes out of the counties and settlements [zhoudong] in the southwest, where it is found in mountain valleys, the open countryside, and sandy soil.3 It does not come out of mines. 1 Several versions of The Basic Pharmacopeia (Bencao; sometimes translated into English as Materia Medica) were in circulation during the Southern Song. These are described in Hervouet, ed., A Sung Bibliography, 245. Most, if not all, of these versions include chapters on medicinal drugs made from inorganic matter, primarily mineral sources. These sections or chapters are usually titled “Section on Jadelike Stones.” 2 Tentative translation for sui zhong bu lu 雖重不錄. This line of the text is probably corrupt. 3 From the description below it is clear that Fan Chengda is referring to “raw gold” in the sense of “gold in its natural state”; that is, gold found in river and creek beds, as opposed to gold that is refined from ore found in mines. For additional information on raw gold, see the useful comments in Hu-Tan, 28–29, n. 1. Panning for gold was a common activity in southwest China dur- 26 Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea Settlement people make a living mainly by panning for it in sand. When one removes it from the earth with scooped hands,4 it naturally blends and joins into granules [ke]. The larger ones resemble wheat grains [maili]; the smaller ones resemble wheat bran flakes [fupian]. These can then be tempered to serve medicinal purposes. Only the color is a bit pale, that is all. If one desires to make it pure and first-rate, then it is refined repeatedly. To obtain fullness in color, one expends [loses] two or three parts out of ten [during the refining process]. After refining, it becomes cooked gold [shujin].5 Elixir stove [danzao]6 sites require raw gold, and so I have provided a note here on its origins. Supplementary text: Raw gold comes out of the sandy soil in the Creek Settlements [Xidong]7 and is required by elixir stove masters [danzao jia]. [Lumps] of it as large as chicken eggs are used to make mother of gold [jinmu].8 Cinnabar [dansha]9 is ranked by The Basic Pharmacopeia, with ing the Song dynasty. Zhou Qufei has much to say about this practice in LWDD, 7.269–70 (Netolitzky, 7.21). 4 Following the ZBZZCS ed., 5b, and reading pou 抔 (to scoop up with cupped hands). See the comments on this reading in Yan Pei, 23, n. 3. 5 “Cooked” in the sense that it has been refined and thus become “mature.” 6 Fan Chengda is referring to a special type of heating apparatus (zao) used by alchemists when preparing various elixirs (dan). Although zao usually indicates a stove or furnace, in some cases it denotes an oven or combustion chamber. See Needham et al., 5-4:11–16. For additional description of stoves and other laboratory instruments used by alchemists, see Fabrizio Pregadio, “Elixirs and Alchemy,” in Kohn, ed., Daoism Handbook, 188. 7 The term “Creek Settlements” appears several times in Treatises and usually refers to the various settlements of non-Chinese people who lived along the Left and Right Rivers in Yong County, although on one occasion in Treatises Fan Chengda mentions that such settlements also existed in Yi County (see the supplementary entry on Nandan in the “Treatise on the Man”). According to Jin Hong et al., eds., Guangxi tongzhi, 6.10a, there were twenty such settlements still in place in Yi County in 1287, occupied by Yao people. Fan Chengda mentions that Lao (or Mountain Lao) people also lived near these settlements (see the entry on the Lao in the “Treatise on the Man”). 8 Gold that has been refined in a cauldron and thereby transformed into true cinnabar (zhendan) is called “mother of gold.” Supplementary text from HSRC, 67.50a; FCDBJ, 91. 9 Several terms are used interchangeably in Chinese for cinnabar (that is, red Metal and Stones 27 Chen cinnabar [Chensha]10 regarded as the best and Yi cinnabar [Yisha]11 as second. Nowadays natives of Yishan12 remark that the [main] cinnabar...