Abstract
The term zhu-you (祝由) first appears in the Huang-di nei-jing (黃帝內經), and seems to refer to some kind of healing practice. The compilers of modern dictionaries believe that the practice either entails a healing spell or prayer, or gloss it as “zhu-shuo bing-you” (祝說病由). Traditional scholars, however, have held rather varied views as to the meaning of zhu-you. Some have interpreted zhu-you to be the name of a person or a deity. Others have suggested that it means to heal sickness through the act of zhu (祝), or have also translated it as zhu-shuo bing-you. Still others have taken it to mean explaining the cause of a sickness to the gods so that it may be healed, to be an incantation to transfer the illness to an object or another person, or to eliminate a malady at its root. More recently, linguists and philologists have suggested that the characters zhu and you of zhu-you may be synonymous, or that they together comprise an inseparable polysyllabic word.
Many scholars still interpret zhu-you as meaning zhu-shuo bing-you, but then offer many interpretations of the concrete meaning of this phrase. Zhu-shuo is translated alternately as to utter an incantation, to offer a prayer, or to explain (the cause of sickness). Furthermore, the identity of one who engages in zhu-shuo is variously thought to be the afflicted person, or a healer: a physician, shaman, invoker, medicine man, or professional exorcist. It is also disputed whether those to whom one directs the act of zhu-shuo are spirits or the afflicted persons. There is debate as to the precise relationship between zhu-shuo and the practice of “transformation of jing (精) and qi (氣)” (yi-jing bian-qi 移精變氣). Some hold that these represent two different healing practices. Others believe that they refer to the same practice; if a distinction must be made, then they are different stages or procedures of the same practice.
Keywords
zhu-you, Huang-di nei-jing, talisman and incantation, healing, shaman
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