Co oe BOTANICON SINICUM. 
Although the authorship of this work has always been 
ascribed to the legendary Emperor Suen Nuna [ B.C, in the 
28th century], there is internal evidence in it, at least in 
that which was current with the above title in the 5th century, 
that it had been compiled in the Han period [ B.C. 202- 
A.D.. 221], but presumably from earlier traditions on the 
subject. 
The Shen nung Pen ts‘ao king or Pen ts‘ao king (Herbal 
Classic), also simply termed Pen king, was originally a book 
treating of 3865 different drugs, in accordance with the 
number of days in the year, arranged in three classes 
according to their medical virtues. Li Sui-cuen in his 
Pen ts‘ao kang mu [Chap. IV] gives the Index of the original 
work, in which appear 252 names of vegetable drugs. These 
are nearly all spoken of and commented upon in the Pen 
ts‘uo kang mu, and all that is known regarding the drugs of 
the Pen ts‘ao king is from the quotations found in Li Sui- 
CHEN’s Materia Medica, from which it appears that the Pen 
‘s'ao king gives only particulars regarding the mode of 
preparing the officinal parts of the plants for medical use, their 
specific virtues and their therapeutic use, It is quite excep- 
tional to find in this ancient book uny descriptive details 
with respect to the plants from which the drugs are derived. 
The % BS py $k Ming i pie lu, called also simply Pre lu, 
is a supplement to the Shen nung Pen ts‘ao, adding to the 
original Materia Medica 865 more drugs, employed by 
eminent physicians in the Han and Wei periods. [The Wei 
dynasty reigned A.]). 221-264.] In the first part of the 
Botanicon sinieum [p. 421; 2 have said that this work, as is 
indeed stated by Lit Sat-cuey in his account of it, was 
compiled by Bg) 2 Ee T‘ao Hune-kina, who lived A.D. 452- 
536. But the frequent quotations from it in the Pen ts‘ao kang 
mu, together with Téa 
prove that the Pie Jy Was an independent treatise which 
Hune-kixg’s commentaries thereupon, — 
