Chinese Healing Exercises: The Tradition of Daoyin

Chapter One Early Medical Manuscripts

30 Chinese Healing Exercises In the Han dynasty, this region was part of the ancient southern kingdom of Chu 楚, where feudal lords still ruled over their own small enclaves in semi-independence . The tombs at Mawangdui accordingly belonged to members of a local feudal family—the Marquis of Dai, his wife, and his son. All three tombs consisted of a vertical pit about 17 meters (55 ft.) deep, with a wooden burial chamber at the bottom. The burial chamber had a central area to hold three internested coffins plus four surrounding storage areas for burial goods (Harper 1998, 14). Undisturbed, the three tombs contained a veritable treasure Fig. 1: Map of China Early Medical Manuscripts 31 trove, which included not only foodstuffs, garments, and miniature servants and companions, but also the famous Mawangdui banner from tomb 1. A T-shaped, rectangular piece of colorfully illustrated silk, it covered the inner coffin and showed the move of the tomb’s inhabitant toward the celestial realm, presided over by the Sun and the Moon together with various deities (Loewe 1979, 10). This tomb held the body of the local ruler’s wife, the Marchioness of Dai, a lady of about fifty years of age. Although her tomb was excavated first, she was in fact the last of the three to die—in 168 b.c.e. Tomb 2 was the last resting place of the marquis himself , a man by the name of Li Cang 利蒼, who served as chancellor of the Chu kingdom in Changsha. He was installed as marquis in 193 and died in 186, his tomb thereforebeingtheoldest.Tomb3housedtheson,ayoungermanofaboutthirtywho, like his mother, was buried in 168. It is not clear which of the marquis’s children he was. Some think he was the oldest, Li Xi 利豨, who succeeded him as lord; others thinkhewasayoungersonwhopursuedamilitarycareer,aspossiblyindicatedbythe various weapons and other military insignia found in the tomb (Harper 1998, 14). His tomb contained the manuscripts in a rectangular lacquer box with a roof-shaped lid, 60 centimeters long, 30 centimeters wide, and 20 centimeters high (2 ft. by 1 ft. by 8 in.), found in a storage area east of the coffin. Most manuscripts appeared on silk sheets, but some were also written on slips of bamboo or flat sticks of wood. In general, bamboo and wood were less expensive and easier to work with, since scribes could erase any errors with a sharp carving knife. Silk was more precious and demanded higher skill, as technicians had to blot out any mistakes they made. On the other hand, silk was much easier to handle, fold, and store. Also, it preserved the contents better, because wood or bamboo slips would over time come out of their fastenings and be mixed up (Harper 1998, 18).1 The total number of manuscripts found at Mawangdui is thirty, covering forty-five separate texts (Harper 1998, 17). This means that some pieces of silk or bundles of bamboo slips contained more than one text. This grouping in some cases gives an indication of how certain techniques or ideas were possibly related. Many of the texts are nonmedical, and discuss various aspects of traditional Chinese thought. The best-known among them are two versions of Laozi’s Daode jing 道德經 (Book of the Dao and Its Virtue), which closely resemble the standard, transmitted version we are familiar with and thus establish the presence of this classic in the early second century b.c.e. (trl. Henricks 1989). The texts are written in both Han clerical and traditional seal script, the latter—according to tradi1 . A classic example of mixed-up bamboo tablets found in tombs is the so-called Bamboo Laozi, an early version of the Daode jing discovered in combination with various other works at Guodian, also in Hunan. For a study and translation, see Allan and Williams 2000, Henricks 2000. 32 Chinese Healing Exercises tional historiography—being the dominant form of Chinese writing before the script reform under the first emperor of Qin in 214. Using the scripts as a basis, Donald Harper dates some of the manuscripts to the third century b.c.e. and others a bit later (Harper 1982, 2:15; 1998, 4). Recent research, as for example the study on the development of Chinese writing by Imre Galambos (2006), suggests, however, that all kinds of different scripts were still being used well into the Han dynasty, so we cannot be certain of...