ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on extraordinary medical initiatives during the Sui dynasty (581–618 CE) when therapeutic exercise, known as daoyin 導引 (guiding and pulling), became the main component of state medicine. Four groups of people – aristocrats, Daoists, Buddhists and physicians – were conversant with daoyin exercises and played an important role in bringing daoyin to the Sui court. Ultimately, however, it was the vision of the second Sui emperor that led both to the employment of a disproportionately large number of daoyin specialists to the Sui court and to the compilation of Zhubing yuanhou lun (Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Medical Disorders), a state-sponsored medical text containing daoyin instructions for the treatment of specific diseases. The newly standardised form of the exercises not only enhanced the perception of their validity and raised their status as a curative treatment but was also essential to their transmission to a more formal setting.
