An Inquiry Into The Medicine-Related Literature In Tang Dynasty

The emergence of Medicine and Literature is as old as human history. Classical Chinese Literture, taking language as its artistic means recorded the thoughts, emotions and social practices of ancient Chinese, and reflected vividly our ancestors' spiritual progress of getting to know mankind, nature, society, and themselves. Traditional Chinese Medicine, through certain Medical means could help human being prevent falling sick, aileviate pains,and cure themselves some diseases under the guidance of traditional Chinsee medical theory, which is good for human being to keep a healthy state, both in body and in mind, and thus constantly improving the living environment of mankind. It is in this specific practice that ancient Chinese get acquainted with nature and themselves.The two are all important components of traditional Chinese culture, and are all closely related to social life and human health.Medicine-related literature, as the name suggests, is the literatre relating to medicine, or the description of medical knowledge in literature.It is the fruit of combining medicine with literature, and is one of literary genres, so it belongs to the scopes of literature in general. The primary characteristicsof medicine-related literature are its broad range of concerns and large scope of contents. In contents,it has the feature of both medicine and literature. Its development is in accordance with the development of medicine and literature, and the developing stages and features of configuration of both medicine and literature are deeply reflected from beginning to end.Mr. Liu Yizheng has pointed out in his book of the History of Chinese Culture : 'In Tang dynasty, apart from poetry, prose, painting and calligraphy , people were also keen on music and medicine, vocational schools were founded according to the syetem in Tang dynasty to teach students for the royalty. For example, they set up music school to teach music, and medical school to teach medicine.' From this,we can see how medicine was thriving in Tang dynasty, and how well the peoole at that time had been medically educated. From the history of Chinese culture, we can find a lot of people then devoted themselves to literature and medicine at once. Quite a large number of ancient medical books in history were written by markable contribution to literature. There were many examples to name a few, Wang Bing, who compiled the medical book of suwen,was once Taipuling during period of Tang dynasty. Mengshen, was palace graduate during the reign of Queen WuZetian, Taizhou Minister of Defence, and then Tongzhou prefectural govenner etc..collected folk recipes,and the recipes from various doctors, and those originated by himself, and compiled the book shiliaobencao, which is the first monograph on diet therapy in China. Other books, among which BuYangFang and BiXiaoFang exerted great influence on Chinese medicine, were also authorized by Meng Shen. Poets such as Shen Quanqi.Liu Yuxi.Fan Chuo, and Gao Pian in Tang dynasty were also expertised. Such being the case, a large number of people, who were good at Literature andMedicine at the same time, undertook the medicine-related literary,and thus forming a highlight in the Chinese culture history.Although medicine-related literature made a great progress in Tang dynasty, it was not initiated from Tang dynasty. Keeping in pace with developing stages of medicine and literature, it also underwent a process of the initiative stage in pre-Qin and two Han' s, formative stage in Wei and Jin dynasties, Northern and Southern dynasties, Sui dynasty, developing and riping stage in Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. This dissertation mainly deals with the medicine-related literature in Tang dynasty, and briefs its developing conditions before Tang dynasty. The whole dissertation can be divided into six parts, which are as follows.Part one is an introduction, in which the intention of this paper, the definition of the studying object, receach methods, and the outline are presented. The basic materials adopted in this dissertation are based on historical records, classical books, anthology of ancient poems and proses, literature by istinguished scholars, biographies of celebrities, and ancient medical classics in Tang dynasty and before. Researchs on the medicine-related literature are mainly carried out in the prose of Tang dynasty, poetry of Tang dynasty, Ci of Tang ang Wu Dai dynasties, DunHuangftiartffen and notes and novels of Tang dynasty, attention has also been paid to the research fruits by scholars in modern history. Aiming at an in-depth analysis, the dissertation employs a research which is conducted from as various angles as development of medicine itself, the combination history of medicine and literature, the origination of the medicine-related literature in Tang dynasty, and thoughts and cultural reality reflected in the literature, etc. In order to gainan all-inclusive knowledge of the literature in Tang, and to find a suitable place for this kind of literature in the developing history of the ancient Chinese literature.The second part is the first chapter of main body of this paper, which is meant to make clear the origination of the medicine-related literature. Firstly, from the point of embryological priciples, as shared cultural heritage of mankind, medical treatments have emerged from the origination of human being. Meanwhile, orginal literature had a derect bearing on labour and life of primitives, once literature came into being, the human life became the literary object, and the same was for medicine;it entered into the literary perspectives.This may be regarded as the beginning of the medicine-related literature. At the same time, both medicine and literature originated from'Witchcraft' .Although this point of view is often under attacks from the majority of academic scholars, it still offers the grounds on which the inner link between medicine and literature can be pursued. It is reasonably assumed that in primitive society, most of human culture was under the control of Wizards and Witchs who might help to cure human people of some diseases. They might be the first to unite medicine with literature. Dating from the eagle of culture, the combination between medicine and leteratue has certain historal track. That men of letters and officials were expert in medicine created a large nember of people working both in medicine and in literature by profession, who were the mainstay of the medicine-related literary writng.The chapter falls into three sections:the first section mainly concerns relation between traditional Chinese medicine and ancient Chinese philosophy. The second section tells the links between ancient Chinese literature and philosophy.Thethird section copes with the relationship between ancient Chinese medicine and literature. In order to find rational theoretical foundation for the combination of medicine and literature. From the discussion of the first and the second section, we can see that ancient Chinese literature and traditional Chinese medicine all came under the deep influence of ancient Chinese philosophical thoughts, and they both had a direct bearing on ancient philosophy. Since they were all products of ancient philosophical influence, they must have shared some resemblances.The third part is the second chapter of main body, which mainly discusses briefly the general situations of the medicine-related literature before Tang dynasty. This part chronologically recalls the developing map of the medicine-related literature before Tang dynasty.The chapter covers such three stages: pre-Qin and two Han times, Wei-Jin dynasties, Northern and Southern dynasties, and Sui dynasty.The fourth part is the third chapter of main body, which is mainly about the medicine-related literature in Tang dynasty. This part is made up of four sections. The first section is the summarization of Tang dynasty' s medicine-related literature. The second section is about the medicine-related works in the prose of Tang dynasty. The third section is about the medicine-related works in the Ci of Tang and WuDai dynasties. The fourth section is about the medicine-related works in the DunHuangBianWen, notes and novels of Tang dynasty.The fifth part is the fourth chapter of main body, which is mainly about the medicine-related poetry in Tang dynasty. This part is divided into five sections. The first section is the outline of Tang dynasty' s medicine-related poetry. The second section is about the Yao-ming poetry of Tang dynasty. The thirdsection is about the medicine-related poetry which described drugtools, planting and culling medicinal herbs, and making and selling medicines. The fourth section mainly deals with the medicine-related poetry which were contained in traditional culture as the same source of medicine and food. The fifth section mainly discusses the medicine-related poetry which described medical treatments, recipes and health-keeping.The sixth part is the fifth chapter of main body, which mainly expounds the cultural sources of the medicine-related literary writing in Tang dynasty, and their influence in the late years. This part falls into three sections. The first section probes deeply into the main thoughts reflected in the medicine-related literature in Tang dynasty. The second section is about its cultural causes of the medicine-related literary writing in Tang dynasty. The third section enquires into its influences on the literary tradition in the late years.Conclusion:In Tang dynasty, the improvement of medicine, the flowering of literature, and the prosperity of culture created a large number of people who were expert in medicine and literature at once, and thus led to the great increase of the medicine-related literary writing, and exerted a strong influence on the coming ages. From the perspective of literature itself, the medicine-related literature in Tang dynasty is one of the developing stages of ancient medicine-related literature. And seeing from the cultural aspects, it is a crossing of medical culture and literary art, a peculiar part of our traditional culture. Through the study and research of the medicine-related literature in Tang dynasty, we will gain a more comprehensive and deeper knowledge of ancient society, classical literature, and traditional culture of our country. In the human civilizationhistory, the medicine-related literature should be an indelible cultural heritage, whose significance can not be over valued.