Huà shū 化書
Book of Transformations
by 譚峭 (Tán Qiào, zì Jǐngshēng 景升, styled Zǐxiāo zhēnrén 紫霄真人, fl. mid-10th century, Five Dynasties / Southern Táng)
About the work
A Five-Dynasties Daoist philosophical treatise in six juan (six piān), one of the most original and influential works of the late-Táng-to-Sòng zǐ-school tradition. Each of the six piān is named for a stage of cosmic and social huà 化 (transformation): Dào huà 道化 (Transformation of the Way), Shù huà 術化 (Transformation through Technique), Dé huà 德化 (Transformation through Virtue), Rén huà 仁化 (Transformation through Humaneness), Shí huà 食化 (Transformation through Food), and Jiǎn huà 儉化 (Transformation through Frugality). Each piān is composed of short, aphoristic micro-essays in densely-figured language, drawing primarily on LǎoZhuāng but reaching into critique of social inequality, the violence of state extraction, and the metaphysics of perception and illusion. Catalogued by the Sìkù under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division.
The book is famous for its contested authorship. The transmitted SKQS recension is titled Qíqiū zǐ 齊邱子 and ascribes it to Sòng Qíqiū 宋齊邱 (or Qíqiū 齊丘, d. 959), the Southern Táng grand councillor. The Sìkù editors decisively reject this ascription on the basis of Chén Jǐngyuán’s 陳景元 (Bìxūzǐ 碧虛子) Sòng-period postface, which preserves the tradition (going back to Chén Tuán 陳摶) that the real author was Tán Qiào and that Sòng Qíqiū had simply seized the manuscript and prefaced it under his own name. The text is now standardly printed under Tán Qiào’s name as Huà shū (or Tánzǐ huà shū 譚子化書).
Tiyao
We respectfully submit that Huà shū in six juan, the old text titled Qíqiū zǐ 齊邱子 with the inscription “composed by Sòng Qíqiū 宋齊邱 of the Southern Táng.” Zhāng Lěi 張耒 of the Sòng wrote a postface to it saying that Qíqiū was a “champion among dogs and rats” and not worth speaking of; Cháo Gōngwǔ 晁公武 likewise registered it under Qíqiū’s name. But examining the postface of Chén Jǐngyuán 陳景元 (Bìxūzǐ 碧虛子) of the Sòng, this records the tradition handed down by Chén Tuán 陳摶: “Tán Qiào zì Jǐngshēng 景升 wrote the Huà shū on the Zhōngnán mountains; passing through Sānmáo on his way and reaching Jiànkāng 建康 [Nánjīng], he met Qíqiū, who had a Daoist’s bone-structure, and so transmitted it to him saying: ‘This book’s transformation is endless transformation; would that you compose a preface and let it flow on to posterity.’ Then with cane and straw-sandals he departed; Qíqiū thereupon seized it as his own and prefaced it” — so this book is by Qiào, and the Qíqiū zǐ attribution is mistaken.
The book has six piān: Dào huà 道化, Shù huà 術化, Dé huà 德化, Rén huà 仁化, Shí huà 食化, Jiǎn huà 儉化. The doctrine is for the most part rooted in the HuángLǎo Dàodé tradition; the brushwork is also concise, vigorous, profound, and substantial.
Lù Yǒurén 陸友仁 of the Yuán in his Yànběi zázhì 硯北雜志 says that “Tán Jǐngshēng’s writings the world has never seen; in another book it is said that his discussion of shūdào 書道 (the way of writing) ranked Zhōng [Yáo] and Wáng [Xīzhī] and after them only one further man.” Examining our text, the entry on shūdào in fact appears in the Rén huà piān, and yet Yǒurén had not seen it — the Yuán-period transmission must already have been rare.
Qiào was the son of Zhū 洙, guózǐ sīyè 國子司業 of the Táng. He took as teacher a Daoist of the Sōngshān 嵩山 and obtained the techniques of bìgǔ yǎngqì 辟穀養氣 (avoiding grain, nurturing the qì); see Shěn Fén’s 沈汾 Xù xiānzhuàn 續仙傳. The accounts of supernatural marvels are not worth probing in depth. The Daoist tradition further calls Qiào Zǐxiāo zhēnrén 紫霄真人; the Wǔdài shǐ · Mǐn shìjiā 五代史閩世家 records that Wáng Chǎng 王昶 was fond of wū 巫 (shamanic) practices and styled the Daoist Tán Zǐxiāo Zhèngyī xiānshēng 正一先生 — events of the same period as Qiào, though it is not certain whether the two are one person. The men outside the rules of the world (fāngwài 方外) move with no fixed traces, and there is no way to verify.
Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].
General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀 (note: 均 in the original is a typographical slip for 昀), Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Abstract
Tán Qiào 譚峭 (zì Jǐngshēng 景升; later styled Zǐxiāo zhēnrén 紫霄真人), an early-tenth-century Daoist recluse of Quánzhōu 泉州 in Fújiàn (some sources prefer a Zhōngnán mountain residence in Shǎnxī during composition), was the son of Tán Zhū 譚洙, a guózǐ sīyè of the late Táng. He renounced exam-track office and pursued bìgǔ yǎngqì 辟穀養氣 alchemy under a Sōngshān master; subsequent Daoist hagiography (Shěn Fén’s Xù xiānzhuàn 續仙傳, etc.) reports him as a wonder-working immortal, with the conventional cluster of supernatural anecdotes the Sìkù editors decline to interpret.
The Huà shū is the most original zǐ-school treatise to have come out of the Five Dynasties. Its central conceit — huà 化, the unceasing transformation of all phenomena, including the categories used to perceive them — is developed across six piān of densely-figured short essays. The Dào huà and Shù huà chapters establish a LǎoZhuāng metaphysics of perceptual relativism and the illusory nature of fixed identity (the famous opening “the Dào of the Empty (xū dào 虛道) transforms 氣 into spirit, transforms spirit into form, transforms form into things …” reads as a deliberate inversion of the Lǎozǐ 42 cosmological sequence). The Dé and Rén chapters apply the principle to political authority and moral hierarchy. The Shí huà and Jiǎn huà chapters — the work’s most striking move — apply it to the political economy of food and consumption, mounting a sharp critique of state extraction and elite over-consumption in language anticipating later Sòng jīngshì 經世 (statecraft) writing. The combination of metaphysical phenomenalism and concrete socio-economic critique is one of the reasons the text was read carefully both by Sòng Daoists and by such Confucian writers as Zhāng Lěi.
Authorship. The text’s transmitted SKQS title is Qíqiū zǐ 齊邱子 and the SKQS recension carries Sòng Qíqiū’s own preface. Sòng Qíqiū 宋齊邱 (or 齊丘; d. 959) was a powerful and ultimately disgraced Southern Táng councillor. Already in the Sòng, however, Chén Jǐngyuán’s 陳景元 postface preserved the alternative tradition (attributed to Chén Tuán 陳摶) that Tán Qiào had composed the work in the Zhōngnánshān and presented it to Qíqiū during a journey through Jiànkāng, only for Qíqiū to suppress the original attribution and append his own preface. Both Cháo Gōngwǔ and Zhāng Lěi continued to catalogue it under Qíqiū’s name (the latter denouncing the supposed author with characteristic vehemence as “a champion among dogs and rats”); the Sìkù editors, following Chén Jǐngyuán, decide for Tán Qiào’s authorship. Modern scholarship (notably Schipper, Wáng Míng) has overwhelmingly endorsed the Sìkù judgment, while continuing to treat Sòng Qíqiū’s role in the early transmission as bibliographically significant. The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore 920, notAfter 960) reflects Tán Qiào’s known floruit and the secure terminus ante quem of Sòng Qíqiū’s death (959/960).
The work is recorded in the Chóngwén zǒngmù, Jùnzhāi dúshū zhì, Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí, Sòng shǐ · Yìwén zhì, Wénxiàn tōngkǎo; in the Dàozàng it survives in three parallel recensions (KR5d0067 = DZ 1044 Huà shū; KR5h0047 = DZ 1478 Tánzǐ huà shū; and the Jíyào synopsis at JY153). A separate Daoist-magic Zǐtóng dìjūn huà shū 梓潼帝君化書 (KR5a0171 = DZ 0170) is unrelated despite the shared title.
Translations and research
The Huà shū has received careful Daoist-studies attention in modern scholarship:
- Wáng Míng 王明, Dào-jiā hé Dào-jiào sī-xiǎng yán-jiū 道家和道教思想研究 (Zhōnghuá Shū-jú, 1984), includes a major essay on the Huà shū.
- Zhāng Yǒng-fēng 張永奉 (Zhāng Yǒng-quán 張永全) and others, Tán-zǐ Huà shū jiào-zhù 譚子化書校註 (modern critical edition).
- Kristofer Schipper and Franciscus Verellen (eds.), The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang, 3 vols. (University of Chicago Press, 2004), entries on Huà shū (DZ 1044) and Tán-zǐ huà shū (DZ 1478) — the standard Western reference.
- Ding Yuanming 丁原明, “Huashu yu wan-Tang Wudai Daojiao zhexue” 化書與晚唐五代道教哲學, in various Daoist-studies journals.
- Donald Holzman, “Ts’ao Chih and the Immortals,” in Asia Major (and various studies on early-medieval Daoist literature) for the broader background.
- A partial English translation and study by Stephen Eskildsen and others has appeared in Daoist-studies anthologies.
Other points of interest
The Shí huà and Jiǎn huà chapters are remarkable for the directness of their socio-economic critique: the famous passage on the dàzéi 大賊 (“great brigands” — i.e. the rulers themselves) who extract grain from the cultivators and call themselves benefactors anticipates much later SòngYuán dissident writing. The text’s status as one of the principal Five-Dynasties Daoist contributions to zǐ-school philosophy made it a natural point of reference for SòngYuán syncretists; its incorporation in the Dàozàng under three separate titles testifies to its centrality in the developing Daoist canon.