Journal of Chinese Medicine • Number 111 • June 2016


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


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Ling shu seem to have proceeded. Yet the appearance is deceiving. Huang Di is – with one exception, when confronted by Lei Gong, the Duke of Thunder – not a sage but an ignoramus in the field of medicine who wishes to be instructed. This instruction is marked repeatedly by the respect expressed by the dialog partners of Huang Di. They sometimes describe themselves as 細子 xi zi, or “mite,” or 小子 xiao zi, “little boy,” and in one instance, in chapter 73, Qi Bo refers to Huang Di as 聖王 sheng wang, “wise king.” In sharp contrast, one also finds various reprimands, inquiries and refusals by the knowledgeable ones that put this Huang Di into a light far removed from that of an awesome thearch. A vivid example can be found in chapter 80 of the Ling


shu. Here, Huang Di describes how he becomes dizzy every time he climbs a tall building. He is so dizzy that he can move forward only when on all fours. How to imagine a thearch who needs to crawl on all fours to cope with his dizziness? How to imagine a thearch asking a question of a teacher, who then answers by saying there really are things that shouldn’t be told to everyone? Only once, when the thearch appeals to his interlocutor’s conscience, does the latter acquiesce to answering the question (see chapter 64). In chapter 47, Huang Di asks a question to which Qi Bo, the knowledgeable one, responds with a long, meandering discourse until Huang Di loses patience and tells Qi Bo that was not what he asked. The knowledgeable Shao Shi responds to an especially naïve question with surprise and reproach in chapter 79: “What? You, a thearch, do not know the answer?” To be sure, Huang Di does not shy away from frank remarks either, as when a reaction to a statement by Qi Bo is placed on his lips: “All sick people already know what you are saying.”9 Perhaps these oddities alone sufficiently demonstrate


the authors’ attitude of questioning authority. The Ling shu, like the Su wen, is devoted not only to the supremacy of natural laws, but the rule of law as such. It is a bid at liberation from arbitrariness – not only that of the deities, demons and ancestors, whose motivations must ultimately remain beyond the grasp of mortals, but all arbitrariness, meaning that of earthly rulers as well. Laws – fa – and nothing but, are the standards humans must conform to.


3. The New Terminology 3.1 fa 法 We know nothing about the authors of the texts that found their way into the Su wen and Ling shu. Our knowledge is similarly deficient regarding the authors of the texts collected during European antiquity into the Corpus Hippocraticum. We do not know what resistance the authors in China faced in trying to spread their ideas. The concept of natural phenomena obeying laws was new and certainly disturbing to the majority of people for whom the existence of deities, spirits, demons and ancestors seemed perfectly obvious.


A new ideology requires language and certain terms that


express its new values. Toward this end, the founders of the secular world view in ancient China proceeded in the manner that was, and remains, the most effective. Instead of inventing new terms that were new and unfamiliar to the wider public, they turned to familiar terms and gave them new meaning. The word fa 法 is probably the best example. Originally it referred to the “example” and “model” of the sages of early history, whom all people were expected to emulate for their own benefit and that of society. During the Warring States period (5th-3rd century BCE), increasingly large states emerged that required bureaucracies to remain governable. That was when the term fa also took on the meaning of social and criminal law. The fa achieved the status of a legal power and therefore it was no longer a matter of individual discretion whether to follow them. It became a duty. Whoever defied them had to expect punishment. In the view of the Legalists, strict obedience of the fa was the only guarantee of good conduct among people. Appealing to the kindness of people, which the Confucians considered effective, seemed inadequate to the Legalists. But in the new, secular view of the world, the meaning of fa was extended yet again. Nature, too, has its laws, which people would be well- advised to follow. Doing so may not always be pleasant, but is always accompanied by the certainty that fidelity to the law will be rewarded with well-being. Belief in deities, spirits, demons and ancestors rests on an uncertainty that seems to be constantly confirmed by the arbitrariness of the numinous powers. At least victims would tend to see matters this way. But the new secular view of the world suggested that it was in people’s own hands whether to give themselves a long and healthy life or illness and an early death. The groundwork was thereby laid for a completely new form of healing arts. We call this new kind of healing “medicine.”10


Medicine is a healing art, but not every kind


of healing art is medicine. The development of medicine in this stricter sense took place in ancient Greece and soon afterward in China, after intellectuals had removed health and sickness from the religious view of the world. They regarded the laws of nature as the sole standard that decided over the well- or ill-being of each individual. The medicine in this sense that appears to us in China


for the first time in the Su wen and Ling shu constituted this new art of healing. It rested on premises that, within a relatively brief time span, appeared plausible to some intellectuals in both ancient Greece and China: first, natural laws exist and have effects independently of time, space and individuals – be they numinous beings or humans. Second, these laws can be recognized and put into words. Third, knowledge of these laws suffices to interpret all material and non-material phenomena and processes, including health and illness. No one should assume that this new medicine, as it was


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