Tàiqīng jì 太清記
Records of Grand Purity by 闕名
About the work
A zhìguài / Daoist hagiographic collection of unknown authorship, surviving only in scattered fragments. The title Tàiqīng 太清 (“Grand Purity”) refers to the Daoist celestial realm associated with the highest of the Three Pure Ones (Sānqīng 三清), and the work’s content is predominantly Daoist-hagiographic — recording immortals’ ascensions, Daoist alchemical successes, and the marvellous birds and beasts associated with sacred mountains and recluse-practitioners’ households.
Tiyao
Abstract
The work is not registered under this exact title in the Suí shū jīngjí zhì and is absent from both Táng catalogs as a free-standing entry; it is most often cited in the Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽 and Tàipíng guǎngjì 太平廣記 (both 977–984) as “《太清記》.” The absence from the pre-Sòng catalogs combined with relatively rich presence in the Tàipíng compilations suggests either a relatively obscure late-Liù-Cháo work that came to wider notice in the SuíTáng or — more probably — a work of Daoist provenance that circulated within the Daoist-canonical tradition rather than the secular catalog tradition.
The dating bracket adopted here (400–600) reflects this uncertainty. The content of the preserved fragments — including the famous Xǔ Zhēnjūn bázhái shàngshēng 許真君拔宅上升 (the Daoist saint Xǔ Xùn 許遜 ascending to immortality with his entire household) — places the work no earlier than the Xǔ Xùn cult-formation horizon (Liù Cháo) and probably no later than the 6th century, before its Sòng léishū citation. The work is conventionally placed in the southern dynasties.
Surviving fragments include hagiographic vignettes structured by topical sub-headings: 《翔鶴》 (soaring cranes — paired pure-white cranes at Lányán 蘭巖, the locus of immortal visitation in Róngyáng 榮陽), 《髮如鴨》 (hair-like-duck-feathers — Tàixuán Nǚ 太玄女 with the duck-down-like hair from practising Master Yùzǐ’s alchemical art), 《拔宅》 (the bázhái 拔宅 “pulling up the household” — the celebrated Xǔ Zhēnjūn ascension), 《玉樓》 (jade-tower), and others. The work’s structure — topical sub-headings each followed by a short narrative — is similar to that of the Xúnshì Língguǐ zhì KR3l0165 and is one of the early examples of the tìcí 體次 (“topical-cluster”) organisation of zhìguài material.
Lǔ Xùn’s Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 collects the surviving fragments. The work is discussed by Wáng Guóliáng and Lǐ Jiànguó as one of the more obscure but textually informative fragments of the southern-dynasties Daoist zhìguài corpus.
Translations and research
- Lǔ Xùn 魯迅. Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沉 (1909–11; publ. 1938).
- Wáng Guó-liáng 王國良. Wèi-Jìn nán-běi-cháo zhì-guài xiǎoshuō yán-jiū 魏晉南北朝志怪小說研究.
- Lǐ Jiàn-guó 李劍國. Táng-qián zhì-guài xiǎoshuō shǐ 唐前志怪小說史 (rev. 2005).
- Campany, Robert Ford. To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong’s Traditions of Divine Transmendents (UCP, 2002). Comparative discussion of Daoist hagiographic zhì-guài.
- No major monograph specific to the Tàiqīng jì located.
Other points of interest
The Xǔ Zhēnjūn bázhái fragment in the Tàiqīng jì is one of the earliest surviving narrative attestations of the Xǔ Xùn (許遜, 239–374) ascension-legend, which becomes the foundational legend of the Jīngmíng 淨明 Daoist sect and the locus classicus of the bázhái shàngshēng topos (“pulling up the household to ascend”) — the idiom for the wholesale transcendence of family and dwelling, a topos with major subsequent life in Daoist hagiography and YuánMíng zájù drama.
Links
- Lǔ Xùn, Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén.
- Campany 2002.