Huangdi Neijing

The work comprises two texts—each of eighty-one chapters or treatises in a question-and-answer format between the mythical Yellow Emperor and six of his equally legendary ministers.

Two other texts also carried the prefix Huangdi Neijing in their titles: the Mingtang (明堂; Hall of Light) and the Taisu (太素; Grand Basis), both of which have survived only partially.

The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic (Huangdi Neijing, 黃帝內經) is the most important ancient text in Chinese medicine as well as a major book of Daoist theory and lifestyle.

The text is structured as a dialogue between the Yellow Emperor and one of his ministers or physicians, most commonly Qíbó (岐伯), but also Shàoyú (少俞).

The principles of yin and yang, the five elements, the environmental factors of wind, damp, hot and cold and so on that are part of the macrocosm equally apply to the human microcosm.

Before archeological discoveries at Mawangdui, Hunan, in the 1970s, the work had been dated to between the Warring States period to as late as the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE).

Jianmin Li, Vivienne Lo and Donald Harper agree that the systematic medical theory in the Neijing shows significant variance from Mawangdui Silk Texts, which were sealed in a royal tomb in 168 BCE.

A note in the preface left by the later editors of the Chong Guang Bu Zhu Huangdi Neijing Suwen (version compiled by 1053 editorial committee) which was based on an entry in Tang Ren Wu Zhi (Record on Tang [Dynasty] Personalities) states that he was an official with the rank of tai pu ling and died after a long life of more than eighty years.

[12] The "authoritative version" used today, Chong Guang Bu Zhu Huangdi Neijing Suwen 重廣補註黃帝內經素問 (Huangdi Neijing Suwen: Again Broadly Corrected [and] Annotated), is the product of the eleventh-century Imperial Editorial Office (beginning in 1053 CE) and was based considerably on Wang Bing's 762 CE version.

For images of the Chong Guang Bu Zhu Huangdi Neijing Suwen printed in the Ming dynasty, (1368–1644 CE) see the external links section below.