Zhou, Cha, Jin, Duan; Yi, Yue, Kun, Lian, Zhi… What Do the Twenty-Seven Names Mark?

“Zhou, Cha, Jin, Duan, Yi, Yue, Kun, Lian, Zhi…” is one of the strings of terminology in the Mirror Classic of Bian Que most likely to make a reader give up.

But once their function is understood, there is no need to begin by memorizing the lexical meaning of every character.

In the “Twenty-Seven Hou,” the source explicitly divides them into three groups corresponding to Cun, Guan, and Chi. “Qiheng” later subdivides the three-Cun Qi Mouth into finer boundaries, for example:

One fen before Cun is called Zhou, two fen Cha, three fen Jin, four fen Duan… One fen behind Cun is Yi, two fen Yue, three fen Kun, four fen Lian, five fen Zhi.

Guan and Chi are expanded by the same method.

They are coordinate names before they are symptom names

This point is essential.

“Zhou” does not first equal a particular disease, nor does “Cha” first equal a particular pulse quality. They initially mark positions within the subdivisions of the Qi Mouth. Only after these positions are established does the text ask where pulse movement begins, where it reaches, and where it rises or fails to reach.

The Twenty-Seven Hou are therefore more like a set of spatial indices.

Why also use “front, middle, and rear”?

“Qiheng” further combines the three regions into patterns such as front-like-front, front-like-middle, front-like-rear, central-like-front, and so on, and pairs these with oscillation measures of three, six, and nine fen.

This means the Mirror Classic is not merely dividing the pulse into twenty-seven linear boxes. It is also describing how one pulse movement is distributed in height and along the front-rear axis.

The Twenty-Seven Hou are therefore intended to observe the spatial morphology of a wave-like movement.

The ancient meanings of the names can be studied gradually; their positional function comes first

Future philological work can certainly investigate the ancient meanings and origins of Zhou, Cha, Jin, Duan, and the other terms. But on a first structural reading of the work, the important point is to place them back into the architecture:

nine Hou of Cun + nine Hou of Guan + nine Hou of Chi = twenty-seven observational indices.

Only after recognizing them as indices can one understand fully coded phrases in the “Shennong Upper Classic” such as “Qian-Gui-Zhou, Zhi-An-Huangzhong; Sui-Pan-Gong, Xian-Kai-Zhi.”

The next article decodes the first of these phrases.