---
title: "The classical texts"
url: "https://acuiq.com/wiki/theory/the-classical-texts"
updated: 2026-10-09
last_verified: 2026-10-09
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
section: "theory"
basis: "Classical"
audience: "Anyone"
published: "2026-10-09"
reading_minutes: 8
sources: 15
---

# The classical texts

_The books the acupuncture point system descends from, from the Mawangdui silk texts to the Zhenjiu dacheng of 1601: when each was written, by whom, and what it added._

The 361 channel points that AcuiQ catalogues, and that a WHO working group fixed in its standard nomenclature, were not set down in one book. [The channel system, counted](/wiki/nomenclature/the-channel-system) covers the modern standard. This page covers the texts it descends from: a run of works over some 1,700 years, most of which recorded more named points than the one before and tried to fix where they were. The table gives the counts the sources below report; the sections after it say what else each text added and what is known about who wrote it.

| Text | Date | Compiled by | Points recorded |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Mawangdui vessel texts | Buried 168 BCE | Unknown | None: eleven vessels, treated by moxibustion |
| _Huangdi Neijing_ (_Suwen_ and _Lingshu_) | Compiled over the last centuries BCE (see below) | Many authors | 160, on twelve channels |
| _Nanjing_ | First century CE | Unknown | Not a point list; pulse diagnosis and needling |
| _Zhenjiu jiayi jing_ | 256–260 CE | Huangfu Mi | 349 point names |
| _Tongren shuxue zhenjiu tujing_ and the bronze figures | Figures cast 1027 | Wang Weiyi | 354 |
| _Zhenjiu dacheng_ | 1601 | Yang Jizhou | A compendium of earlier texts |

## Before the needle: the Mawangdui texts

The oldest channel texts so far recovered describe vessels without points. Two silk manuscripts from tomb 3 at Mawangdui in Changsha, excavated in 1973 from a burial dated 168 BCE, are known as the Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm and the Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Yin and Yang Vessels. A [2017 study of the excavated texts](https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/8242136) by Huang Chang and colleagues at Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine sets out what they contain: each of the eleven vessels has a start, an end and a course, but no acupoints, and the treatment named is moxibustion, burning moxa made from mugwort on or near the skin, rather than needling. The same study counts twelve channels and 160 points in the later _Huangdi Neijing_, and notes that a bamboo text excavated at Zhangjiashan in 1983–84, the Book of the Vessels, collects the same material. Donald Harper’s [translation and study of the Mawangdui medical manuscripts](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/m6972qq7) (1998) renders them in English. Vivien Shaw and colleagues read them, in a [2022 paper](https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.24503) in The Anatomical Record, as descriptions of the physical body and the oldest surviving anatomical atlas, which predate and inform the later acupuncture texts. [Moxibustion](/wiki/techniques/moxibustion) covers the technique.

## Huangdi Neijing

The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon is named after a legendary ruler, and both sources below treat it as a compilation. China’s nomination of the text to UNESCO’s Memory of the World register, made by the National Library of China, describes it as the work of many physicians over centuries, its main part written in the Warring States period (475–221 BCE) and supplemented under the Qin and Han; elsewhere the same document dates the original compilation to the 2nd century BCE. It consists of two parts, the _Suwen_ (Plain Questions) and the _Lingshu_ (Miraculous Pivot), each of 81 chapters. The nomination assigns health preservation, physiology, pathology, diagnosis and treatment principles to the _Suwen_, and the channels, the location of points, needles and acupuncture and moxibustion technique to the _Lingshu_. It records that the text circulated in manuscript until it was printed in the 9th and 10th centuries, was edited by the Northern Song government’s Bureau for Revising Medical Works, set up in 1057, and that an edition printed in 1339, held by the National Library, is the earliest and best-preserved now extant.

Paul Unschuld’s study of the _Suwen_, as its [publisher describes it](https://ucpress.edu/books/huang-di-nei-jing-su-wen-2/hardcover), traces the text to the final centuries BCE, when numerous authors wrote short essays on health and illness grounded in the new theory of vessels, and follows it to the 11th century, when the text known today emerged. It also covers a body of climatological doctrine that the Tang editor Wang Bing added. Unschuld’s translation of the [_Lingshu_](https://www.ucpress.edu/flyer/books/huang-di-nei-jing-ling-shu/hardcover), subtitled the ancient classic on needle therapy, prints all 81 chapters with notes on how the text may have changed over time. The two dating accounts differ in emphasis, the Warring States in one and the last centuries BCE in the other, and agree that the received text is a compilation, edited long after it was written.

## Nanjing

The Classic of Difficult Issues takes up problems left open in the earlier writings. The publisher of [Unschuld’s translation](https://www.ucpress.edu/flyer/books/nan-jing/hardcover) dates its compilation to the first century CE, describes it as an unusually systematic account of health care built on yin-yang and Five Phases doctrine, and names its discussion of pulse diagnosis and needle treatment as the most important thing in it. [The four examinations](/wiki/theory/the-four-examinations) describes pulse diagnosis as the WHO terminologies now define it.

## Zhenjiu jiayi jing

The Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion was compiled by Huangfu Mi (215–282), a physician and historian of the Western Jin. A [2022 profile in Science and Technology Daily](https://digitalpaper.stdaily.com/http_www.kjrb.com/ywtk/html/2022-03/17/content_532188.htm) dates the compilation to 256–260 and describes a 12-volume work assembled from the _Huangdi Neijing_, the _Suwen_ and a _Zhen jing_ (Needle Classic). It counts 349 point names in it, 189 more than the _Huangdi Neijing_, and gives the book’s purpose as correcting the errors in point names and locations that had accumulated in the earlier books. The profile calls it the earliest systematic book on acupuncture and moxibustion. An English translation by Yang Shou-zhong and Charles Chace was [published in 1994](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/n224ahct).

## Wang Weiyi’s manual and the bronze figures

In the Northern Song, the imperial medical official Wang Weiyi compiled the Illustrated Manual of Acupoints on the Bronze Figure and had two life-size bronze figures cast to go with it. Lara Wendel of the German Museum of Medical History in Ingolstadt, writing in [Bayerisches Ärzteblatt in 2025](https://www.bayerisches-aerzteblatt.de/fileadmin/aerzteblatt/ausgaben/2025/09/einzelpdf/BAB_9_2025_401.pdf), dates the casting to 1027 and says Wang had studied texts that listed differing numbers of points before settling on 354. Each figure separated into front and back halves; the channels were cut as fine grooves and the points pierced as holes labelled with their names. The figures were used for teaching. Contemporary accounts, she writes, describe the holes being sealed with wax and the figure filled with water: a student who found a point with the needle drew water.

The [Chinese medicine museum at Hong Kong Baptist University](https://cmmuseum.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/zone1.html) gives the same year, a height of 170 cm and a weight of about 200 kg, and calls the figure the first national standard for channels and points. It counts 657 acupoints carved on the surface, each about 1.2 cm deep, against Wendel’s 354; neither source explains the difference. The manual itself was reissued under the Ming, and the [Wellcome Collection holds woodcuts from the 1443 edition](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/f6tsmyz9), among them a diagram of the proportional body measurements used to locate points, in which the _cun_ is set by the proportions of the patient’s own body. [Measuring in cun](/wiki/nomenclature/measuring-in-cun) covers that system.

## Zhenjiu dacheng

The Great Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxibustion was compiled by the Ming physician Yang Jizhou, whom the Wellcome Collection’s catalogue records as active 1573–1619, and completed in 1601. Its second book is a collection of odes on acupuncture, which Richard Bertschinger translated as [The Golden Needle (1991)](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/zfptjjgw). The compendium also became a base for Western teaching. The publisher of Manfred Porkert’s [Classical Acupuncture](https://redwingbooks.com/?p=1580) says the textbook’s core and structure are drawn from the _Zhenjiu dacheng_ of 1601.

## What the texts do not settle

The counts in the table are not counts of the same thing. The Science and Technology Daily figure for the _Zhenjiu jiayi jing_ counts point names, the Hong Kong museum counts acupoints carved on a figure, and the 354 and 657 given for the same bronze figure show how far two counts can diverge. The dates of the earliest texts are scholarly estimates that differ by source. Every text here reached modern readers through later editors and printers, so a reading of the _Huangdi Neijing_ is a reading of the Song government’s revision. The tradition was also interrupted: Frederick Kao, writing in WHO’s magazine [World Health in December 1979](https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/351993), records that Qing officials in 1822 ordered medical colleges to suspend the teaching of acupuncture. The modern standard of 361 points was agreed by a WHO working group in 1982, and AcuiQ writes them as codes rather than classical names; [Reading a point code](/wiki/nomenclature/point-codes) and [Point names in translation](/wiki/nomenclature/point-names-in-translation) cover both.

### Sources

1. Huang C, Liang J, Han L, Liu J, Yu M, Zhao B, Moxibustion in early Chinese medicine and its relation to the origin of meridians: a study on the unearthed literatures, Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2017 — https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/8242136
2. Harper DJ, Early Chinese medical literature: the Mawangdui medical manuscripts, Kegan Paul International 1998 (Wellcome Collection record) — https://wellcomecollection.org/works/m6972qq7
3. Shaw V, Diogo R, Winder IC, Hiding in plain sight – ancient Chinese anatomy, The Anatomical Record 2022 — https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.24503
4. National Library of China, Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon): nomination to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, ref. 2010-15 — https://media.unesco.org/sites/default/files/webform/mow001/china_huan_di_nei.pdf
5. Unschuld PU, Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: nature, knowledge, imagery in an ancient Chinese medical text, University of California Press 2003 (publisher's description) — https://ucpress.edu/books/huang-di-nei-jing-su-wen-2/hardcover
6. Unschuld PU (trans.), Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu: the ancient classic on needle therapy, University of California Press 2016 (publisher's description) — https://www.ucpress.edu/flyer/books/huang-di-nei-jing-ling-shu/hardcover
7. Unschuld PU (trans.), Nan Jing: the classic of difficult issues, University of California Press, 2nd edition 2016 (publisher's description) — https://www.ucpress.edu/flyer/books/nan-jing/hardcover
8. Bi Weizi, Huangfu Mi: ancestor of acupuncture, Science and Technology Daily, 17 March 2022 — https://digitalpaper.stdaily.com/http_www.kjrb.com/ywtk/html/2022-03/17/content_532188.htm
9. Huangfu Mi, The systematic classic of acupuncture and moxibustion, translated by Yang Shou-zhong and Charles Chace, Blue Poppy Press 1994 (Wellcome Collection record) — https://wellcomecollection.org/works/n224ahct
10. Wendel L, Medizingeschichte 3D: Akupunkturmodell, Bayerisches Ärzteblatt 9/2025, p. 401 — https://www.bayerisches-aerzteblatt.de/fileadmin/aerzteblatt/ausgaben/2025/09/einzelpdf/BAB_9_2025_401.pdf
11. Hong Kong Baptist University, Chinese Medicine Museum: Orientation zone, the Tiansheng bronze statue — https://cmmuseum.hkbu.edu.hk/eng/zone1.html
12. Wellcome Collection, Body measurements, front view: woodcut from Tong ren shu xue zhen jiu tu jing by Wang Weiyi, 1443 edition — https://wellcomecollection.org/works/f6tsmyz9
13. Yang Jizhou, The golden needle and other odes of traditional acupuncture: book two of Yang Jizhou's grand compendium (1601), translated by Richard Bertschinger, Churchill Livingstone 1991 (Wellcome Collection record) — https://wellcomecollection.org/works/zfptjjgw
14. Porkert M, Classical acupuncture: the standard textbook (publisher's description, Redwing Books) — https://redwingbooks.com/?p=1580
15. Kao FF, The talk of the town, World Health (WHO), December 1979 — https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/351993