Dámó xǐsuǐ yìjīn jīng 達摩洗髓易筋經
Bodhidharma’s Marrow-Washing and Sinew-Transforming Classic edited by 項揚惠 Xiàng Yánghuì, 吳德華 Wú Déhuá, 張鑑若 Zhāng Jiànruò, and 曹江 Cáo Jiāng — early-Republican (民國) practitioner-editors transmitting the Shàolín-tradition Yìjīn jīng 易筋經 / Xǐsuǐ jīng 洗髓經 corpus.
About the work
A one-juan modern-reprint compilation of the Bodhidharma cycle: the Yìjīn jīng 易筋經 (“Classic of Transforming the Sinews”) and the Xǐsuǐ jīng 洗髓經 (“Classic of Washing the Marrow”), the foundational gōngfū texts of the Shàolín internal-martial-arts tradition. The texts are pseudepigraphically attributed to 菩提達摩 Pútídámó (fl. late 5th – early 6th c.), the first Patriarch of Chinese Chán Buddhism and the legendary founder of Shàolín Buddhism — but in their received form date to the late Míng / early Qīng. The present edition is the Republican-period transmission through the practitioner-lineage of 靜一空悟 Jìngyī Kōngwù dàshī (the “Great Master Quiet-One Empty-Awakening”, a Qīng Buddhist instructor), as reconstructed in the 1930s from the Zēngyǎn yìjīn xǐsuǐ nèigōng túshuō 增演易筋洗髓內功圖說 of 周守儒 Zhōu Shǒurú (the immediate teacher of the current edition’s transmitters).
Prefaces
The transmitted yuánxù 原敘 (original prefaces) are two:
Original Preface 1 — Zhāng Yáo’s preface: 張瑤 Zhāng Yáo (hào Yìyún 藝耘) narrates his own life-history as a practitioner: “Just past my capping (age 20), I suffered loss of blood, my body was emaciated and my qì faint, medicine could not help. In the spring of Guāngxù yǐwèi (1895), I studied philological commentary under Master Zhōu Shǒurú. The Master had received from Jìngyī Kōngwù dàshī the figures for sitting, lying, and side-postures, and transmitted them to me; in a few months I was cured.” Zhāng went on, with relapses, to practise the technique for over 30 years and to outlive his teacher Zhōu (who had compiled the figures into the 18-juan, 10-volume Zēngyǎn yìjīn xǐsuǐ nèigōng túshuō and personally written out three copies for storage). After Zhōu’s death in 1916 only two copies of the original survived; by the time of Zhāng’s later visit only one remained. Zhāng, fearing the loss of the tradition, arranged with his younger cousin 鑑涵 Jiànhán to have the surviving copy lithographed (shíyìn 石印) “for wide circulation”. The preface is dated gēngnián qiūjǐyuè 庚年歲秋九月 — gēngwǔ = 1930 — corresponding to the Republican-era publication date.
Original Preface 2 — Zhōu Shǒurú’s preface: a much earlier first-person preface by Zhōu Shǒurú narrating his own constitutional weakness from childhood and his eventual recourse to Bodhidharma’s techniques under the guidance of Jìngyī Kōngwù dàshī.
Abstract
The Yìjīn jīng / Xǐsuǐ jīng corpus is one of the most influential bodies of Chinese self-cultivation literature. Their attribution to Bodhidharma is pseudepigraphic — the texts are now reliably dated to the late Míng (the earliest Yìjīn jīng recensions are Tiānqǐ / Chóngzhēn era, c. 1620s) — but the attribution to Shàolín and through Shàolín to Bodhidharma was rapidly accepted and remained the canonical attribution throughout the Qīng and into the Republic.
The present edition is not the late-Míng text itself but the Republican-period popular recension (c. 1930) transmitted through the Zhōu Shǒurú lineage as edited by Xiàng Yánghuì, Wú Déhuá, Zhāng Jiànruò and Cáo Jiāng. The work integrates: (i) the 12-posture Yìjīn jīng sinew-strengthening sequence; (ii) the Xǐsuǐ jīng internal-cleansing sequence; (iii) Zhōu Shǒurú’s Zēngyǎn (expanded explication) materials integrating the sequences with Daoist-Buddhist inner-cultivation theory.
The date bracket 1900–1930 reflects the modern editorial layer; the substrate tradition is late-Míng / early-Qīng.
The catalog meta records “整理” (= edited / collated) as the function of the four named modern-editor collaborators — correctly identifying them as 20th-century transmitters rather than original authors.
Translations and research
- Meir Shahar, The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008) — the standard English-language study of the Yì-jīn jīng tradition and its pseudepigraphic attribution.
- Stanley E. Henning, “The Chinese Martial Arts in Historical Perspective”, Military Affairs 45.4 (1981), 173–178.
- Catherine Despeux, La moelle du phénix rouge (Paris, 1988), ch. on the Xǐ-suǐ jīng tradition.
- Liu Yang and Liu, The Way of the Shaolin: An Illustrated History (London: Pavilion, 2007).
- Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo, Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals: A Historical Survey (Berkeley: Blue Snake Books, 2005).
Other points of interest
The present 1930 lithograph edition is one of the principal sources of the modern global circulation of the Yìjīn jīng: Chinese-language reprints and translations from this Republican-era recension form the textual basis of contemporary Yìjīn jīng practice in Tāijíquán and Qìgōng worldwide.
Links
- Pre-Republican parent text: Yìjīn jīng 易筋經 (Míng-Qīng recensions; not in the WYG Sìkù).
- Kanseki DB
- 達摩洗髓易筋經