Tàiyuán jīng 太元經
The Classic of the Great Yuán by an anonymous Jìn-period author (闕名)
About the work
A small jíyì compilation of an anonymous Jìn-period work titled Tàiyuán jīng 太元經 — to be carefully distinguished from Yáng Xiōng’s 揚雄 (53 BCE – 18 CE) famous Western Hàn Tàixuán jīng 太玄經 (the editor of the jíyì explicitly contrasts the two and identifies several passages where the Tàiyuán author silently borrows from and emends Yáng’s text). Reconstructed from quotations in 《馬總意林》, 《太平御覽》 and from 《說文解字》-citation glosses on the 《易》. Not in the Sìkù quánshū; sourced from CHANT (CH2a1541).
Abstract
The Kanripo title-list (CHANT) places the Tàiyuán jīng under Jìn 晉, author 闕名 (anonymous). The text is in the broad HànWèi wěi 緯 (apocryphal) tradition — short aphoristic moral and cosmological observations in four-character verse, with citations to imperial astronomy, ethical principles, and biànhuà cosmology. Several passages are explicitly identified by the jíyì editor as silent borrowings from Yáng Xiōng’s Tàixuán — particularly the Tángshàng jiǔ 唐上九 fragment (“the bright pearl shoots at the flying flesh, taking it but not returning”), where the Tàiyuán author has altered Yáng’s rhyme-words. The substitution of yuán 元 for xuán 玄 in the title is interpreted by the editor as a Sòng-era avoidance of the Sòng founder’s father’s zhèngmíng 正名 (the personal name of Zhào Xuánlǎng 趙玄朗, posthumously honoured as Shèngzǔ 聖祖), suggesting that whatever the original title was, the Tàiyuán jīng received its current name in the Sòng. The actual date of composition cannot be securely fixed; the Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 places a Tàiyuán jīng under the Jìn period, and that is the placement adopted here. The received recension is a 19th-century jíyì.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. For Yáng Xiōng’s Tàixuán, the standard English-language treatment is Michael Nylan, The Canon of Supreme Mystery by Yang Hsiung (SUNY, 1993); the Tàiyuán under examination here is a separate (and clearly post-Hàn) work that imitates the Tàixuán.
Other points of interest
The jíyì editor’s running case-notes on the Tàiyuán jīng are themselves of considerable philological interest: they preserve the kind of detailed cross-checking against Yáng Xiōng, Shuōwén jiězì, and the Yì commentary tradition that characterises high Qing-era textual scholarship. The note on the corruption of yín gān 寅甘 → yín qí 夤其 is exemplary.
Links
- Suí shū jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志.
- Yáng Xiōng, Tàixuán jīng 太玄經 (Sòng-era Sìkù printings of which read Tàiyuán jīng under the same taboo).