Page 444 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

FANG]l 405

of the Golden Elixir; 1564; trans. Wile 1992 ,149-53), theJindan da zhitu ~ft
*- \§' lE! (Great Illustrated Directions on the Golden Elixir; 1570), and the Qi
polun -trJ!l[lltm (Seven Essays on Smashing [Erroneous Views]).
The whole collection is also available in reprints in the *Daozangjinghua
and the *Zangwai daoshu (vol. 5), both based on the 1915 edition.

Fabrizio PREGADIO
m Qing Xitai 1994, 2: 178- 79; Yang Ming 1995
* Lu Xixing; neidan

fangji

"methods and techniques"; method-based expertises

The term fangji originally was a bibliographic category that referred to medical
and man tic texts, and by extension the techniques that these texts contained.
In the Han, this term was contrasted with shushu !/&#J Carts of the numbers,"
or "algorithm-based techniques") that included astronomy, calendrics, and
divination, and primarily associated with *fangshi (masters of methods). By
later imperial times, "method-based expertises" lost this specific connotation
and became roughly synonymous with the more general category of fangshu
:1J#J Cmethods and arts") and came to describe individuals whose fame rested
on the mastery of such methods.
The earliest use of the term fangji to categorize books was in the Qiliie
-t~ (Seven Summaries), the imperial catalogue assembled by Liu Xin ;UW:
(46 BCB- 23 CB) where fangji was one of seven categories of texts. Liu Xin's
taxonomy formed the basis for the bibliography of the Hanshu (History of the
Former Han; j. 30). The texts listed in this Hanshu category were subdivided
into four sections: Medical Classics (yijing mt~~), Classic Recipes (jingfang ~~
:1J), Inner Chamber (fangzhong Jjj r:p , i.e., sexual cultivation methods; see
*fangzhong shu), and Spirit Transcendence (shenxian ;fill {W, i.e., immortality
techniques). The fir t two sections contain titles such as *Huangdi neijing (Inner
Scripture of the Yellow Emperor) and Shennong Huangdi shijin 1$ m w * 1t ~
(Dietary Proscriptions of the Divine Husbandman and the Yellow Emperor),
implying that such texts were concerned with medicine and diet. Texts listed
in the latter two sections appear to have been concerned with practices such
as altering the inner balance of Yin and Yang through sexual and alchemical
means, as well as ingesting "numinous mushrooms" (*zhi).