Lùdì xiān jīng 陸地仙經
The Scripture of the Earthly Immortal prefaced and annotated by 馬齊 Mǎqí (1652–1739), the early-Qīng Manchu Grand Secretary; attributed in the preface frame to an immortal master named Zhāng Bǎi 張百字.
About the work
A single-juǎn longevity / yǎngshēng 養生 manual structured as a 100-character (twenty-line, five-syllable-per-line) verse-text with extensive prose annotations. The verse covers a daily regimen for yǎngshēng practice: temperate diet (“淡食能多補” — bland-eating can amply supplement); facial massage (“搓塗自助顏” — rub-and-anoint to help the face); eye exercises (“運睛除眼翳” — circulate the eye-pupils to clear cataract); breathing, sleep, and circulation exercises. The annotation amplifies each verse with concrete practice instructions (e.g. for the diet verse: “早飯淡而早，午飯厚而飽，晚飯須要少，若能常如此，無病直到老” — eat the morning meal early and bland, the noon meal full and satisfying, the evening meal sparingly; do this consistently and you will reach old age without disease). The work is a popular-genre Qīng yǎngshēng manual, framed by Mǎqí’s family-tradition narrative of long life — the preface claims four generations of Mǎqí’s family have produced fifteen members living past 100, four past 90, six past 80, and nine past 70.
Prefaces
The hxwd _000.txt preserves Mǎqí’s preface, signed with his full official titulary: cì jìnshì dì jiā tàibǎo jiān tàizǐ tàifù bǎohé diàn dàxuéshì jiān hùbù shàngshū zǒnglǐ shìwù èrděng bó jiā wǔ jí Mǎqí xù bìng zhù shí Yōngzhèng sì nián suì cì bǐngwǔ xià liùyuè wàngrì yǔ hòu zhēn shū yú Huáiyīntáng zhī Shíhúxuān 賜進士第加太保兼太子太傅保和殿大學士兼戶部尚書總理事務二等伯加五級馬齊序並注時雍正四年歲次丙午夏六月望日雨後珍書於槐蔭堂之石笏軒 — the full mid-summer day of Yōngzhèng 4 (1726). Mǎqí narrates the work’s transmission as a family lineage: his ancestor was serving as magistrate of Qìngyángxiàn 慶陽縣 when he fell ill from mountain-vapour-induced disease (山嵐氣); on the road he met an immortal master named Zhāng Bǎizǐ 張百字, who chuckled-and-chanted the verse, prescribed a pill that purged the ancestor’s diseased fluids, and disappeared after writing the Lùdì xiān jīng into the ancestor’s hand. The narrative is a conventional Daoist xiānshū 仙書 (immortal-scripture) transmission-frame.
Abstract
Mǎqí 馬齊 (1652–1739), Manchu of the Fùcá 富察 clan, was one of the most powerful early-Qīng Han-and-Manchu high officials — Grand Secretary of the Bǎohé Hall under three emperors (Kāngxī, Yōngzhèng, and the early Qiánlóng), Minister of Revenue, and Grand Mentor to the Crown Prince. The work bears his official titulary as preface-signer and annotator; the underlying verse-text he ascribes to the immortal Zhāng Bǎizǐ. The 1726 dating from the preface is secure. The work circulated through the Qīng as a popular yǎngshēng manual and was repeatedly reprinted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is preserved in the Hǎiwài huíliú zhōngyī gǔjí cóngshū through Japanese collections.
Translations and research
No substantial European-language translation of the Lù-dì xiān jīng located. For Qīng yǎng-shēng literature and Manchu official involvement in its production see Catherine Despeux and Frédéric Obringer, eds., La maladie dans la Chine médiévale: la toux (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), and Despeux, “Yangsheng Methods and Manuals”, in Innovation in Chinese Medicine (Cambridge, 2001).
Links
- Mǎqí 馬齊 (zh.wikipedia)
- Person note 馬齊.