Shennong Bencaojing
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| Author | Anonymous; attributed to the legendary Shennong |
|---|---|
| Language | Classical Chinese |
| Composed | Eastern Han dynasty, 1st–2nd century CE |
| Published | Original lost; reconstructed by Sun Xingyan and Sun Fengyi (preface dated 1799) |
| Volumes | Three juan and a preface (xulu) |
| Chapter | Upper grade, rice and grains: 麻賁 mafen, with the seed 麻子 mazi |
|---|---|
| Uses documented | Medicinal |
| Digital facsimile | Sun Xingyan recension on Wikisource |
|---|---|
| Modern translation | Brand and Zhao (2017), the mafen entry in English |
The Shennong bencao jing (神農本草經, Divine Farmer's Classic of Materia Medica; in Wade–Giles Shen-nung pen-ts'ao ching) is a Chinese materia medica compiled under the Eastern Han dynasty, in the 1st or 2nd century CE.[1][2] It sorts 365 drugs into three grades by their effects and their toxicity.[2] Brand and Zhao find the earliest references to cannabis in Chinese medicine in its entry mafen (麻賁). The entry covers mafen and the seed. It says that "excessive consumption causes one to see ghosts and run about frenetically" in their translation.[1]
The original text is lost. It is known through the editions of later centuries, which carried it in red ink beside commentary in black. Qing scholars made reconstructions from those editions.[3][4] Its statements about cannabis passed into the bencao that followed it and from them into the medicine described in Cannabis in traditional Chinese medicine.[1]
Origins and attribution
The title names Shennong, the "Divine Farmer" of Chinese tradition, who in the account repeated in Zhang Jiong's preface to the 1799 recension first tasted the hundred plants and so began medicine.[4] Touw put Shennong at about 2700 BCE, a legendary date, and the compilation at about 100 CE.[5]: 23 Modern scholarship places the text in the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE).[2] Brand and Zhao date it to the 1st to 2nd century CE.[1]
The editors of the Qing reconstruction met the question of authorship in their prefaces. Sun Xingyan wrote that some had doubted the classic because writing did not yet exist in Shennong's time. He cited Tao Hongjing, who wrote that knowledge of the drugs passed from memory to memory until Tongjun and Leigong set it down. Tao had also judged the book to be of one kind with the Suwen. Sun agreed with him. Shao Jinhan wrote in his preface that the bibliography of the Sui dynasty was the first to list a Shennong bencao jing in three juan.[4]
Transmission and reconstruction
Notes known as the Mingyi bielu (名醫別錄, Additional Records of Famous Physicians) were added to it as it was transmitted.[1] Around 500 CE Tao Hongjing (456–536) edited the Bencao jizhu (本草集注). He took the 365 drugs of the classic's three grades as its base, added another 365 from the drugs of the renowned physicians (Mingyi fupin) and brought the total to 730.[3] Tao wrote the text of the classic in red ink and the additions in black, so that the two could be told apart.[3][1] A manuscript fragment from Turfan, held in Berlin, keeps this division of red and black.[3]
After the Tang court issued the Xinxiu bencao in 659, Tao's edition fell out of use and was lost.[3] The later bencao kept the classic inside their own entries. In the Song Daguan bencao its sentences were printed as white characters on black, set apart from the black characters of the additions.[4]
Sun Xingyan and his nephew Sun Fengyi made a reconstruction, one of whose prefaces is dated 1799. They took the white-character text from the Daguan bencao and checked it against the quotations in the Taiping yulan and other early books. They treated place names of commanderies and counties as later additions. Beside each entry they printed the remarks of Wu Pu, who in the Hou Hanshu studied under the surgeon Hua Tuo.[4]
The text
The classic opens with a section on principles (序錄, xulu). It sets the number of drugs at 365, one for each degree of the heavens and each day of the year. Upper-grade drugs nourish life, middle-grade drugs nourish the constitution and lower-grade drugs treat illness.[6] The same section sets out how drugs combine, as ruler, minister, assistant and envoy. It also names seven relations between drugs.[6]
Each entry gives a drug's flavour and nature, the disorders it governs and its other names. Some entries add the kind of place where it grows.[2] Within each grade the drugs are grouped as jades and stones, herbs, trees, animals, fruits, grains and vegetables.[7]
Cannabis in the text
The mafen entry
Cannabis stands in the upper grade, among the rice and grains, beside sesame (胡麻, huma).[7] Its entry is headed mafen (麻賁). Brand and Zhao translate it:
Flavor: acrid; balanced. Governs the five taxations and seven damages, benefits the five viscera, and descends blood and cold qi; excessive consumption causes one to see ghosts and run about frenetically. Prolonged consumption frees the spirit light and lightens the body. Another name is mabo.
The Chinese of the Sun Xingyan text reads 多食，令人見鬼狂走 for the passage on excess.[7] Its other name, mabo (麻勃), means "cannabis spike".[1]
The seed
The same entry continues with the seed, mazi (麻子). It is sweet and balanced, supplements the centre and boosts qi, makes the body plump and strong and keeps it from ageing. It grows in river valleys.[7]
Additions in the later layers
The Mingyi bielu calls mafen toxic and gives it to break accumulations, relieve impediment and disperse pus. It places mafen on the rising spike of the flower and has it gathered on the seventh day of the seventh month, with the seed gathered in the ninth.[1] Tao Hongjing described mafen as cannabis without fruit, against the older dictionary Erya, which took it for the fruit. His comment began centuries of disagreement over which parts of the plant mafen, mabo and the later mahua (麻花, "cannabis flower") named.[1] Sun Xingyan, setting the Erya and other glosses against him, judged Tao wrong to hold that the male plant bears no fruit and the Tang materia medica right to read mafen as the fruit.[7]
The remarks of Wu Pu that Sun printed under the entry name the seed kernel, give mafen the further names malan (麻藍), qingyu and qingge, call mabo the flower and say that the leaves are poisonous enough to kill.[7]
Reception and historiography
Western writers on cannabis have used the mafen entry as evidence that its effects on the mind were known in early China. Touw, quoting an earlier English translation, held that the entry "provides evidence that the Chinese knew its psychotropic properties from the earliest times", if an idea could be taken to predate its writing down by several centuries.[5]: 23 Drawing on Schultes (1973), Touw listed absent-mindedness, rheumatic pains, constipation, disorders of the female reproductive tract, malaria and beriberi among the classic's recommendations for hemp.[5]: 31
Brand and Zhao report that many authors read "see ghosts and run about frenetically" as a sign that mafen acted through cannabinoids such as Δ9-THC. They suggest that the Mingyi bielu use for "relieving impediment", a class of painful conditions, may also relate to cannabinoids.[1]
Legacy
The bencao of the 2nd to the 12th century kept mafen as the heading of the cannabis entry and placed the seed under it. Later works gave the seed more space. The Bencao gangmu of Li Shizhen, from the late 16th century, split mabo and mafen into separate entries.[1] Zhao, Guo and Brand count the Shennong bencao jing first among five works that shaped the genre, with Tao Hongjing's edition, the Xinxiu bencao, the Song Zhenglei bencao and the Bencao gangmu.[2] The seed remains in clinical use as huomaren, a laxative. The Maziren wan that Zhang Zhongjing recorded is still prescribed.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Brand, E. Joseph; Zhao, Zhongzhen (2017). "Cannabis in Chinese medicine: are some traditional indications referenced in ancient literature related to cannabinoids?". Frontiers in Pharmacology. 8 108. doi:10.3389/fphar.2017.00108.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Zhao, Zhongzhen; Guo, Ping; Brand, Eric (2018). "A concise classification of bencao (materia medica)". Chinese Medicine. 13 18. doi:10.1186/s13020-018-0176-y. PMC 5894148.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Mayanagi, Makoto (2005). "The three juan edition of Bencao jizhu and excavated sources". In Lo, Vivienne; Cullen, Christopher (eds.). Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts. Translated by Umekawa Sumiyo. London: RoutledgeCurzon. pp. 306–321. doi:10.4324/9780203482247.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 孫星衍 (Sun Xingyan); 孫馮翼 (Sun Fengyi) (eds.). "邵序、張序、孫序" [Prefaces by Shao Jinhan, Zhang Jiong and Sun Xingyan]. 神農本草經 [Divine Farmer's Materia Medica] (in 中文). Retrieved 29 October 2026 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Touw, Mia (1981). "The Religious and Medicinal Uses of Cannabis in China, India and Tibet". Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. 13 (1): 23–34. doi:10.1080/02791072.1981.10471447. PMID 7024492.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 孫星衍 (Sun Xingyan); 孫馮翼 (Sun Fengyi) (eds.). "序錄". 神農本草經 [Divine Farmer's Materia Medica] (in 中文). Retrieved 29 October 2026 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 孫星衍 (Sun Xingyan); 孫馮翼 (Sun Fengyi) (eds.). "麻賁". 神農本草經 [Divine Farmer's Materia Medica] (in 中文). Retrieved 3 October 2026 – via Wikisource.