Journal of Chinese Medicine • Number 111 • June 2016


Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu: The Ancient Classic on Needle Therapy


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Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu: The Ancient Classic on Needle Therapy


Abstract This article comprises the Introduction excerpted from the new English language translation of the Huang Di nei jing su wen by Paul Unschuld.


Opening remarks, by Z’ev Rosenberg The publication of an English language version of the Huang Di nei jing ling shu is a major event for the Chinese medicine community. We have chosen to share the introduction to this work in the Journal of Chinese Medicine due to its long history of publishing and reviewing the finest translators, authors and clinicians in the Asian medical field. In his definitive translation of the Ling shu, Paul Unschuld achieves an academic, standard rendition that is suitable for both research and clinical reference. His version, unlike previous translations, does not conflate core concepts of Chinese medicine with biomedical terminology. The release of the Ling shu, just five years after Unschuld’s translation of the Huang Di nei jing su wen, is concurrent with an updated version of the Nan jing, which has been redesigned to compliment the two sections of the Nei jing corpus (both due in Summer 2016). Thus the seminal Han dynasty works that provide the textual foundation of the medicine are now available in complete, coherent and consistent translations. These works explain the profound system of systematic correspondence that is the core of this medicine (yin-yang, five phase, and channel [‘conduit’] theory). Specifically, the Ling shu contains essential information on diagnostics, jing-luo channel and network vessel mapping, treatment and specific conditions, all based on the relationship of the human entity to the natural world; it represents a truly holistic approach to medicine. With the theoretical foundations of Chinese medicine now fully available for study, research and clinical application, our profession can move forward secure in the knowledge that channels, acupuncture points and pulse diagnostics are not fanciful creations, but part and parcel of a rational medical system that provides a true and complimentary approach to modern biomedicine.


Editor’s note: The following text has been reprinted in its original form without JCM house-style editorial changes.


1. A New World View, A New Healing The Ling shu 霛樞, also known as Ling shu jing 霛樞經, is the classic text on Chinese needle therapy. Much of the version known today probably dates back to individual, shorter texts that began to be written between the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE during the two Han dynasties of ancient China. The authors of these texts are unknown, as is the individual who, at some point in that time, collected the individual texts into one great work. Many questions surrounding the origins of the Ling shu remain unanswered to this day.1


A bibliography by


Liu Xin 劉歆 (died 23 CE) from the early years of the 1st century mentions a text titled Zhen jing 針經, “The Needle Classic,” consisting of nine chapters. Liu Xin supposedly based his work on an older catalog with


the title Bie lu 別錄, compiled by his father Liu Xiang 劉向 (died 6 BCE). The extent to which the content of the Ling shu available today is identical to this Zhen jing can no longer be ascertained with certainty. It is likewise unknown who ultimately gave the work the title Ling shu, or “The Numinous Pivot,” which bears no relation to the content of this text, marked as it is by explicitly secular reasoning. Perhaps it was the


physician and Su wen 素問 commentator Wang Bing 王冰, who used the title Ling shu for the first time in the 8th century CE.2


All we know for sure is that


the content of the Zhen jing cited by Huangfu Mi 皇 甫謐 (215-282) in his medical classic Jia yi jing 甲乙 經 is also present in its entirety in today’s Ling shu.


The commentary that Huangfu Mi assigned to the text in the foreword of the Jia yi jing is remarkable: “Today there is a Zhen jing in 9 juan and a Su wen in 9 juan. 9 plus 9 equal 18 juan. It is partly lost. The tracts it contains reach back to distant times. However, the text consists mainly of allegations and has only limited practical value.” None of the authors whose texts constitute the Ling


shu were thinking of magic or numinous powers. Indeed, for the time the Ling shu was a revolutionary work in the true sense of the word.3


its sister-works the Su wen and Nan jing 難經,4


Together with it


By: Paul U. Unschuld


Keywords: Ling Shu, Huang Di, Nei Jing, Yellow Thearch's Inner Classic, Chinese medicine.


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