rodo pfister

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e-mail: [email protected] *
Research Institute for the History of Afroeurasian Life Sciences (RIHAELS), Basel, Switzerland *

research focuses on technical texts
from ancient, medieval, and late imperial China,
dealing with
- sexual body techniques
- individual psychophysical techniques
(like meditation, visualisation, mirror techniques, etc.)
- physiological alchemy (nei dan)
- medical treatment
- plant signatures
- bubonic plague in imperial China
- history of diseases

academic disciplines:
- sinology, Chinese studies
- manuscript studies
- historical anthropology of the body, consciousness and healing in early and medieval China
- history of science, technology and medicine
- bioarchaeology
- archaeology, material culture studies
- historical linguistics

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0251-5414

肉豆蔻道士

groups
• https://hcommons.org/members/rodo/

• Indo-Eurasian Research:
(obsolete: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/ )
new: https://groups.io/g/Indo-Eurasian-Research

• Medieval Medicine (former MEDMED-L) -- a forum for communication among scholars studying medicine in the medieval period:
[email protected]
https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/research/research-groups/medieval-medicine-list-medmed
"MEDMED serves as an international forum for scholars interested in aspects of medicine, health, and disease in the premodern period. Just like diseases themselves and the medicines used to treat them, MEDMED knows no geographic or linguistic boundaries." --> Afroeurasian topics

• Asian Linguistics - Linguistique en Asie Orientale:
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/asian-linguistics/ (obsolete)

• Emotionsproject:
http://groups.google.com/group/emotionsproject/ (obsolete)

memberships

• Euro-Asian Network for the Study of Everyday Technologies (EANSET)
http://www.asienundeuropa.uzh.ch/events/conferences/bodywork.html

• European Association for the Study of Chinese Manuscripts (EASCM)
http://www.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/eascm/

• International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine (IASTAM)
http://www.iastam.org/conferences_VII.htm

• International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (ISHEASTM)
http://isheastm.ihns.ac.cn/

• Schweizerische Asiengesellschaft (SAG)
http://www.sagw.ch/asiengesellschaft

• China-Basel Association
http://www.china-basel.ch/

selected research experiences:

• Research on "The Concept of the Body in Excavated Medical Manuscripts" in the program "Comprehensive Study of Medical Manuscripts on Bamboo and Silk", Senior Research Fellow, Southwest University in Chongqing, Institute of Chinese Linguistics and Literature, June 2016-May 2018

• "Mummies Found on the Territory of the People’s Republic of China: General Overview and Bibliography"
Preliminary Report for the Institute for Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, 2014

• Swiss National Science Foundation Project
"Psychophysical Techniques in Ancient and Medieval China"
2008-2011, University of Basel, Switzerland

• International Research Conferences 'Villa Vigoni':
"Rekonstruktion von Emotionswissen in Ming-Qing China" - "Ricostruzione della rappresentazione delle emozioni nella Cina imperiale (XV-XIX sec.)", Villa Vigoni, Menaggio (Como), Italy, 20-23 luglio 2009; 24-27 maggio 2010; 26-28 maggio 2011.

*
Address: Basel, Switzerland

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Papers by rodo pfister

THUMIGER Chiara ed 2024 Comparative Guts. Exploring the Inside of the Body through Time and Space

by rodo pfister, Chiara Thumiger, Claire Bubb, Louise Amalie Schultz Bjerre, Thomas Cousins, Jason Birch, Victor Golubev, Marta Hanson, Christoph Geiger, and Monique Kornell

The images and texts in this catalogue testify to a wonderful cooperative effort: Comparative Gut... more The images and texts in this catalogue testify to a wonderful cooperative effort: Comparative Guts, the coming together of over thirty anthropologists, artists and historians to explore the human body and establish a dialogue between representations, perceptions, audiences and communicative styles. The focus is on one particular body part: the innards of the lower torso,what English-speakers sometimes call the “guts”. The images and texts collected here speak about the way human beings have desired and attempted to learn about this region of the body, and to describe and represent it visually. The project’s work resulted in a digital exhibition (www.comparative-guts.net) whose sections, like the chapters of this book, aim to overcome regional boundaries and cultural structures to make as much space as possible for variety and interconnections, juxtaposing mainstream works and well-known stories with cultural expressions that are peculiar, specific, far apart, eccentric and even obscure.
Comparison and the “comparative disciplines”, of course, never allow for straightforward, monolithic projects, and cannot be methodologically innocent in their goal to “make equal”, comparare, different things. Comparison is never safe from applying a measure that is disadvantageous to some participants, flattening incommensurable differences, or oversimplifying complex networks of ideas and influences. These and other pitfalls led Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her 2003 _Death of a Discipline_, to speak of a demise of comparativism as an approach to the human world which divides it into neatly catalogued cultures, generally in translation, within a globalised whole. Instead, she proposed that the field be reshaped into one in which peripheries, local languages, and hybridisation between cultures assume the foreground.
This criticism is not to be ignored, and these pitfalls must be a major concern for a project such as ours. Comparative Guts, with its focus on “image” and “body”, attempted to address some of these issues in various ways: by questioning definitions of knowledge and who should be its repositories; disrupting the very concept of “image” as stably given and immediately and objectively evident to (primarily visual) perception; undermining the slicing of cultures into discrete regions and eras; and questioning the mapping of the animal body into recognisable, universal “parts”. --------------------
THUMIGER Chiara (ed.) 2024: Comparative Guts: Exploring the Inside of the Body through Time and Space. Kiel: Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. https://doi.org/10.38071/2024-00345-3

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PFISTER Rodo 2024 The Body Maps of Master Yan Luo

THUMIGER Chiara (ed.) 2024: Comparative Guts: Exploring the Inside of the Body through Time and Space. , 2024

Introduction: Songs of the Bodily Husk (Ti ke ge 體殼歌) is a composite text attributed to a spuriou... more Introduction: Songs of the Bodily Husk (Ti ke ge 體殼歌) is a composite text attributed to a spurious 10th century CE figure, Master Yan Luo 煙蘿子 of the Yan 燕 family. He is said to come from the Wangwu region (in today's northern Henan), known as the author of lost texts on Daoist breathing and meditation techniques, as well as being the creator of the extant body maps under discussion. The work was printed in 1445/1446 CE in the Daoist Canon, fasc. 125, no. 263, juan 18: 1a-10b. In a later version the illustrations are redrawn, and appear with the title Songs of the Bodily Husk of Master Yan Luo (Yan Luo zi Ti ke ge 煙蘿子體殼歌) in Daoist Texts Outside the Canon, vol. 9: 373-378. The source unites twenty-five sections: a rhymed preamble (§1), two poems (§ §2-3), six body maps (§ §4-9), the Treatise on the Inner Realm by Superintendent Zhu (Zhu ti dian nei jing lun 朱提點內境論), which includes critical comments on the body maps (§10), a meditation manual and instruction called Master Yan Luo's Guideline on Inner Observation (Yan Luo zi nei guan jing 煙蘿子內觀經) (§11). Short elucidations treat topics of physiological alchemy (nei dan 內丹), the head and brain (§ §12-14, 20-24), or give summary treatises on the five storehouses (§ §15-19). Talisman illustrations conclude the text (§25). --
[Catalogue entry] [PFISTER Rodo] The Body Maps of Master Yan Luo, in: THUMIGER Chiara (ed.) 2024: Comparative Guts: Exploring the Inside of the Body through Time and Space. Kiel: Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, pp. 60-65. https://doi.org/10.38071/2024-00345-3

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Chapter 22. The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China – underlying emic theories and basic methods of a non-reproductive sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners

Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine, 2022

PFISTER Rodo (2022) Chapter 22. The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China – underlyi... more PFISTER Rodo (2022) Chapter 22. The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China – underlying emic theories and basic methods of a non-reproductive sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners, in: LO Vivienne, STANLEY-BAKER Michael, YANG Dolly (eds.) (2022) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine. London: Routledge, pp. 337-355. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203740262-26
https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203740262-26#!

The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China are treated heuristically to form a sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners that is discussed in (1) textual sources dating from approximately 200 BCE to 1000 CE. These texts were transmitted and reformulated throughout this period as part of the wider sexual knowledge culture of imperial China (Wells and Yao Ping 2015; Yao Ping 2018). Minimal referential series of short extracts taken from such primary sources will be presented in a historical order to illustrate some fairly consistent basic ideas, concepts, theories and practical advice documented therein. This concise review discusses (2) general aspects of the sexual scenario of early and medieval China in which gender-specifc roles during the sexual encounter must be emphasised. As 'essence' is considered to be the most precious generative fuid in the human body, men are advised to (3) deal with male essence as a scarce good, and thus learn to avoid emission and ejaculation during a sexual encounter. In stark contrast to this male preoccupation with containment, women are thought to be a superior source of nourishment. (4) Repeated female ejaculation provides the 'female essence' that can be absorbed by the man. (5) Performing a sexual encounter means mutual stimulation to this end during foreplay and onset phase, followed by a series of penetrative 'advances' with 'intermissions', and culminating in a 'grand finale'.

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Feng Shenyu stele (505 CE) • Feng Shenyu deng erbainian ren zaoxiang bei 馮神育等二百廿人造像碑 (Casual Notes for Friends 2)

Rodo Pfister. (2021, July 5). Feng Shenyu stele (505 CE) • Feng Shenyu deng erbainian ren zaoxian... more Rodo Pfister. (2021, July 5). Feng Shenyu stele (505 CE) • Feng Shenyu deng erbainian ren zaoxiang bei 馮神育等二百廿人造像碑 (Casual Notes for Friends 2) (Version 0). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5070447

Contents:
Overview, 1
Feng Shenyu stele text transcript, 1
Studies, 2
Schwartz Cut, detail of front side, November 30, 1987, 8
Rubbings, 10
CBETA Feng Shenyu Stele Text Transcript, 15

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Üble Kerne unter der Haut. Neu erschlossene medizinische Quellen zur Beulenpest im frühmittelalterlichen China [Evil Kernels Under the Skin. New Sources to Bubonic Plague in Early Medieval China] (Author's version)

Üble Kerne unter der Haut. Neu erschlossene medizinische Quellen zur Beulenpest im frühmittelalte... more Üble Kerne unter der Haut. Neu erschlossene medizinische Quellen zur Beulenpest im frühmittelalterlichen China [Evil Kernels Under the Skin. New Sources to Bubonic Plague in Early Medieval China], in: LWL-MUSEUM FÜR ARCHÄOLOGIE, WESTFÄLISCHES LANDESMUSEUM, HERNE; LEENEN Stefan, BERNER Alexander, MAUS Sandra, MÖLDERS Doreen (ed.) 2019 Pest! Eine Spurensuche. Darmstadt: wbg Theiss, pp. 64-73. [ISBN 978-3-8062-3996-6]

Catalogue of the special exhibition "Pest! Eine Spurensuche" (Plague! Tracking Evidences) from 20 September 2019 to 10 May 2020, LWL-Museum für Archäologie in Herne (Germany) https://pest-ausstellung.lwl.org/de/

Lead: "Manche klein wie ein Hanfsamen, andere groß wie ein Taubenei – die Beschreibungen der »Üble-Kerne-Schwellung« in chinesischen heilkundlichen Quellen des Frühmittelalters waren bislang nicht Bestandteil der Pestgeschichte Chinas. Für die Beulenpest im China des 6. und 7. Jahrhunderts u.Z. gab es scheinbar nur zwei Belegstellen. Der vorliegende Beitrag erschließt nun weitere frühe Textbeispiele."

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On the Partonymy of Female Genitals in Chinese Manuscripts on Sexual Body Techniques

(Conference paper) On the Partonymy of Female Genitals in Chinese Manuscripts on Sexual Body Tech... more (Conference paper) On the Partonymy of Female Genitals in Chinese Manuscripts on Sexual Body Techniques.
28p. Addendum to 2016’ (Shanghai 上海) Chutu Yixue Wenxian Yanjiu Guoji Yantaohui Lunwenji 出土醫學文獻研究國際研討會論文集 (Collected Papers of 2016 (Shanghai) International Conference for Medical Manuscripts Unearthed in China). Shanghai: Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. (254+28+1+8p.)

Abstract:
Research on body-part terminology is common in historical linguistics. The special terms for the parts of the female genitals form a special subset that is often less well documented. Chinese manuscripts on sexual body techniques, called ‘arts of the bedchamber’ (fáng zhōng shù 房中術), thus provide a unique perspective on the matter.
This paper compares mainly the partonymic sets found in the Early Han Mawangdui M3 manuscript Discussion of the Utmost Way Under the Sky (Tian xia zhi dao tan天下至道談), and on the labelled diagram of the vulva in Recipes for Nurturing Life (*Yang sheng fang 養生方) with the quotations of early medieval Chinese source texts included in Tamba no Yasuyori’s 丹波康賴 Core Prescriptions of Medicine, roll 28 ‘Inside the Chamber’ (Ishinpō 醫心方, bōnai 房內) of 984 CE.
The word meaning of the partonyms and the identification of the body part is often controversial, and will be re-analysed in detail. The new reconstruction of Old Chinese by Baxter and Sagart (2014) is used to discuss possible regional and substrate language influences seen in the partonymic sets. This diachronic study allows to detect cognitive metaphors, and patterns, and to focus on divergences between the partonymic sets.
Keywords: partonymy of female genitals; partonymic sets; ancient and medieval manuscripts; Mawangdui medical manuscripts; Ishinpō.
doi: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3381.5926

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On the Meditative Use of the Body Maps Found in the Composite Text ‘Songs of the Bodily Husk’ (Ti ke ge)

Curare - Journal of Medical Anthropology, 2016

Curare - Journal of Medical Anthropology 39(2016)1: 56–74 Abstract The medieval Chinese body m... more Curare - Journal of Medical Anthropology 39(2016)1: 56–74

Abstract The medieval Chinese body maps found in the composite text Songs of the Bodily Husk (late tenth century (?)/printed 1445) are analysed as visual source materials and their transmission is followed through several manuscript and print texts. These body maps outline the internal structures of a male torso. Their carefully labelled, impressive details lead up to an overall precise topographical body description. The meditative use of such maps in visualisation exercises is documented for the period of the 11th to 14th century CE. Alteration of the illustrations’ meaning, context and content is discussed.
Keywords Body maps – visualisation – Daoism – transmission of visual sources – Medieval China

• Part of Curare 39 (2016) 1 The Human Body in Asian Texts and Images
Guest Editor: Katharina Sabernig
• Order here: http://www.vwb-verlag.com/Katalog/m806.html
• Full issue: http://agem.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Curare_39_1_S_001-005.pdf

$issue in UNScHULD 1986: 411, 417). This second view is depicted on Master Yan Luo’s body maps (Figs. 3 and 4), where seven lobes in leaf-forms are shown in black underneath the lung white. The lobes—literally called “leaves” in Chinese—are also drawn like foliage. mous physician SuN Simiao (581-682) add obes in (ve #) The fa- s in his comprehensive work Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand in Gold for Every Emergency t hat “the seven lobes have six young boys and three jade maidens to protect them” (Ch. 11.1: 204a). The female Daoist Master Hu Yin asserts in Diagrams on Supplementing and Draining of the Five Store- houses and Six Hoards according to the Inner Scen- eries of the Yellow Court, with preface (of 8 “The liver is the palace of ‘wood;’ it sits at 48 CE): the left below and somewhat near the heart, and has at the left three lobes, and at the right four lobes.” (10a-b; of the encyclopaedia vary with each print run. If the medical section is included the illustration serves as a kind of allegorical frontispiece thereof (Fig. 9, A-C). It is carved in each print run a bit differently, e.g. the edition of 1340 has it titled as Map of Mas- ter Yan Luo (Yan Luo zi tu \3--[=l), whereas this title is missing in the editions of 1478 and 1496.$

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Mummies Found on the Territory of the People’s Republic of China: General Overview and Bibliography

Preliminary Report for the Institute for Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, 2014 (Unp... more