Three hundred and sixty-five substances in three grades — the earliest materia medica.
The Shennong Bencao Jing classifies 365 drugs into three grades — superior, medium, inferior — by whether they can be taken long without harm. The number is not accidental: it matches the days of the year.
For a reader it is the most tractable text in the corpus: entries are short, formulaic, and each is a self-contained unit. Nothing is transcribed yet.
Chapters are listed in the order of the base text. Those already transcribed open into the three-layer reader.
Cite this page
Shennong Bencao Jing 神農本草經 (Han, attributed to the culture hero Shennong; a compiled text with no single author.). [Divine Farmer's Materia Medica]. In Classica Sinica Medica. Retrieved 28 October 2026, from https://classicstcm.com/classics/shennong-bencao-jing/
Shennong Bencao Jing 神農本草經. Divine Farmer's Materia Medica. Classica Sinica Medica, 2026, https://classicstcm.com/classics/shennong-bencao-jing/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.
《神農本草經》（Shénnóng Běncǎo Jīng）。成書年代：Han, attributed to the culture hero Shennong; a compiled text with no single author.。Classica Sinica Medica，2026 年 10 月 28 日 存取，https://classicstcm.com/classics/shennong-bencao-jing/。
For classical material the edition is what makes a citation checkable: cite the base text, not the web page alone.
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