Huangdi Neijing - Date of Composition

Date of Composition

The work is generally dated by scholars to be created between the late Warring States period (475-221 BC) and the early Han period (206 BCE–220 CE).

In pages 89-90 of the book Celestial Lancets (first published in 1980), authored by scholars Joseph Needham (1900-1995) and Lu Gwei-Djen (1904-1991), it states that the consensus of scholarly opinion is that the Suwen belongs to the second century BCE. They further state that evidence shows that the Suwen is earlier than the first of the pharmaceutical natural histories, the 神農本草經 Shennong Bencao Jing (Divine Husbandman's Classic of the Materia Medica). So suggestive are parallels with third and fourth century BCE literature that doubt arises as to whether the Suwen be better ascribed to the third century BCE, implying that certain portions of the Suwen may be of that date. The dominant role the theories of yin and yang and the five elements play in the physiology and pathology means that these medical theories are not older than about 320 BCE.

Historian of science Nathan Sivin (University of Pennsylvania) is of the opinion (1998) that the Suwen and Lingshu probably date to the 1st century BCE. Sivin (1998) is also of the opinion that "no available translation is reliable."

The German scholar Unschuld states several twentieth century scholars are of the opinion that the language and ideas of the Neijing Suwen were composed between 400 BCE and 260 CE, and the work has seen major changes since.

Lü Fu (呂複), a fourteenth-century literary critic, was of the opinion that the Suwen was compiled by several authors over a long period. It contents were then brought together by Confucian scholars in the Han Dynasty era.

Scholars of excavated medical texts, Donald Harper, Vivienne Lo and Li Jianmin, agree that the systematic medical theory in the Neijing varies shows significant variance from texts found in the Mawangdui tomb (which was closed in 186 BCE). Because of this, they consider the Neijing to have been compiled after the Mawangdui texts.