Contents
The Neijing tu laterally depicts a human body (resembling either meditator or fetus) as a microcosm of nature – an "inner landscape" (Schipper 1993:100-112) with mountains, rivers, paths, forests, and stars. Joseph Needham (1983:114) coins the term "microsomography" and describes the Neijing tu as "much more fanciful and poetical" than previous Daoist illustrations.
The textual descriptions include names of zangfu organs, two poems attributed to Lü Dongbin 呂洞賓 (born ca. 798 CE, one of the Eight Immortals), and quotations from the Huangting jing 黃庭經 "Yellow Court Scripture".
The Neijing image of a mountain with crags on the skull and spinal column elaborates upon the "body-as-mountain" metaphor, first recorded in 1227 CE (Despeux and Kohn 2003:185). The head shows Kunlun Mountains, upper dantian "cinnabar field", Laozi, Bodhidharma, and two circles for the eyes (labelled "sun" and "moon"). The flanking poem explains.
The white-headed old man's eyebrows hang down to earth;
The blue-eyed foreign monk's arms support heaven.
If you aspire to this mysticism;
You will acquire its secret. (tr. Wang 1992:145)
Chinese constellations figure prominently. The heart depicts Niulang 牛郎 "the cowherd" "Altair" holding the Beidou 北斗 "Northern Dipper" "Big Dipper". Together with his archetypal lover Zhinü 織女 "the weaver girl" "Vega" (see Qi Xi), they propel qi up to the tracheal Twelve-Storied Pagoda. The liver and gall bladder are a forest, the stomach is a granary, and the intestines caption reads "the iron ox ploughs the field where coins of gold are sown" (tr. Needham 1983:116) referring to the Elixir of life. At base of the spine are treadmill waterwheels (an early Chinese invention) being run by two children representing yin and yang.
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