ABSTRACT
For over 1,000 years there was confusion over the identity of the Danfang jianyuan by Dugu Tao with an earlier text bearing a somewhat similar title, the
Danfang jingyuan The first and fourth characters of the two titles are identical. In both the second characters fang are homophones. In the case of the former it means ‘prescription’, ‘recipe’ or ‘method’, while in the latter it means ‘room’ or ‘laboratory’. The third character jian normally means ‘to observe’ and is presented in two variant forms, one of which can also serve as a synonym for the third character jing in the second title, meaning ‘mirror’. The original book bearing the title Danfang jingyuan was probably lost some time during the Song period. Chinese bibliographers since the time of Zheng Qiao in the middle of the eleventh century added to the confusion by interchanging the two homophones and synonyms in the two titles and came to regard the two as one and the same book, with Dugu Tao as author.70 Even Li Shizhen wrongly used the character meaning ‘room’ for fang when he quoted from Dugu Tao.
