Yi Zhibiao on how to decipher the text
The Fŭxíngjué Zàngfŭ Yòngyào Făyào (輔行訣臟腑用藥法要 Secret Tips for Helpful Action: the Key to Using Medicinals on the Zāngfŭ Organs)—Fuxingjue from here—is thought to have been found in the Dūnhuáng caves in 1904, surreptitiously removed by Wáng Yuánlù, a Daoist monk, and later placed into the hands of a medical doctor named Zhāng Wònán, who passed it on to his grandson, Zhang Dachang (1926-95). During the Cultural Revolution, the Fuxingjue scrolls were reportedly destroyed but, luckily, after many years of memorisation, study and practice, Zhang Dachang passed its teachings on to many disciples, and there are now at least 22 hand-written manuscripts of the Fuxingjue in existence.
This history reads like a movie script. I wish to impress upon the reader the sheer unlikeliness that this text survived and came to our awareness. That it was locked in a cave for 1000 years or more, and found only because of a cigarette’s smoke, sold to a doctor because of a wind storm, saved by memorisation from the destructive forces of the Cultural Revolution and saved from misappropriation in the West. I sometimes feel or imagine the presence of a spirit guardian of the Fuxingjue who is working hard to get the book into the hands of those who will keep it alive and do Rosetta stone of the Fuxingjue Yi Zhibiao on how to decipher the text it justice. In this way, I feel I am a small part of the story.
It is clear from the writings of his disciples that Zhang Dachang devoted his life to the study and practice of the Fuxingjue. They
speculated that there must have been a text that influenced and pre-dated Zhäng Zhòngjîng’s Shäng Hán Zá Bìng Lùn. Huángfû Mì, a contemporary of Zhang Zhongjing, wrote that Zhang Zhongjing was influenced by a book called Classical Methods to Make Decoctions, though that book is no longer in existence.
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