靈寶無量度人上品妙經

Língbǎo wúliàng dùrén shàngpǐn miàojīng 靈寶無量度人上品妙經

Wondrous Scripture of the Upper Chapters on Limitless Salvation of the Numinous Treasure

anonymous Língbǎo 靈寶 revelation-scripture, one-juan Six-Dynasties core (c. 400) expanded into a sixty-one-juan ensemble in the Northern Sòng under Huīzōng 徽宗 (c. 1117–1120), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0001 / CT 1), 洞真部 本文類 — the opening text of the Daoist canon

About the work

Língbǎo wúliàng dùrén shàngpǐn miàojīng (“Scripture of Limitless Salvation”), conventionally Dùrén jīng 度人經, is the flagship scripture of the Língbǎo 靈寶 tradition and, by virtue of its placement at DZ 0001, the opening text of the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (1445) and of every subsequent canonical recension. The received text is in sixty-one juan. Juan 1 is the original one-chapter Dùrén jīng, a late-fourth/early-fifth-century Língbǎo revelation; juan 2–61 are a Northern-Sòng expansion, composed during the reign of Huīzōng 徽宗 (r. 1100–1126) within the Shénxiāo 神霄 school circle around Lín Língsù 林靈素 (1076–1120) and integrated with juan 1 at the time the ZhèngHé Wànshòu Dàozàng 政和萬壽道藏 was printed (c. 1112–1120). The scripture is framed throughout as the speech of Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊 (“Celestial Worthy of the Primordial Commencement”) preached in the heaven of the Great Brahmā (大梵天) for the salvation of gods, humans, and infernal beings; its central cosmological and ritual claim is that a single recitation of the scripture’s “Hidden Language of the Great Brahmā” (大梵隱語) effects the salvation of innumerable beings across the Thirty-Two Heavens.

Prefaces

No prefaces in the source. The scripture is framed throughout as the direct speech of Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊 (each juan opens “道言…”, “The Way says…”) and carries no author preface, postface, transmission colophon, or imperial 進表. The fronting KR5a0001_000.txt file contains only typesetting metadata; juan 1–61 each open directly into revelation speech.

Abstract

The textual history of the Dùrén jīng separates cleanly into two strata.

The original one-juan scripture is one of the earliest and most influential products of the Língbǎo 靈寶 revelations of the late Eastern Jìn. It is conventionally taken — following Lù Xiūjìng’s 陸修靜 (406–477) Língbǎo jīngmù 靈寶經目 (437, preserved in the Dūnhuáng manuscripts of Lù’s catalogue) and Tao Hongjing’s 陶弘景 (456–536) Zhēngào 真誥 — to have been composed by Gě Cháofǔ 葛巢甫 (fl. 402), grandnephew of Gě Hóng 葛洪, at Jùróng 句容 near MàoShān 茅山 within a generation of the Shàngqīng revelations (364–370); the conventional composition window is the Lóng’ān 隆安 reign period of Eastern Jìn (397–402). It is the first Daoist scripture to deploy large-scale Mahāyāna Buddhist apparatus — the cosmology of the Thirty-Two Heavens, transmigration through the Six Paths, the ideal of the universal salvation of all sentient beings (度一切人) — and to translate that apparatus into an autochthonously Daoist idiom through “Hidden Language” (隱語) sound-talismans intended to command infernal bureaucracies. The one-juan version is further attested by the separately-transmitted “Four Commentators” (四家註) recensions — Yán Dōng 嚴東 (Liù Cháo 六朝), Xuē Yōuqī 薛幽棲 (Táng), Lǐ Shàowēi 李少微 (Táng), Chéng Xuányīng 成玄英 (fl. 631–655) — and by the Northern-Sòng commentary of Chén Jǐngyuán 陳景元 (1024–1094), whose integrated “four commentaries” recension of 1067 is preserved as DZ 87 (Yuánshǐ wúliàng dùrén shàngpǐn miàojīng sìzhù 元始無量度人上品妙經四註).

The sixty-one-juan expansion (juan 2–61) is a Northern-Sòng creation. Its composition is securely locatable within the Shénxiāo 神霄 movement patronised by Huīzōng and led by Lín Língsù 林靈素 (1076–1120), whose doctrinal programme — above all the claim that Huīzōng himself was an incarnation of the Shénxiāo Eldest Son (長生大帝君) — required a scriptural architecture on a cosmological scale. The sixty additional juan elaborate the Dùrén jīng’s original salvational grammar into an enormous ritual cycle: parallel scriptures for each of the Thirty-Two Heavens, for each astrological “Bureau” (司), for each exorcistic function, with repeated invocations of Shénxiāo-style divine hierarchies (Yùqīng 玉清, Shàngqīng 上清, Tàiqīng 太清, and their ramifications). Internal references to Shénxiāo deities — e.g., the Nine Perfected of Shénxiāo (神霄九眞), the Jade Emperor of the Long-Life Heaven (長生大帝) — and the characteristic Sòng-era terminology mark the expansion unmistakably. Lagerwey’s entry in the Taoist Canon dates the expansion to “after 1112,” tying it to Lín’s court activity (to 1116) and to the printing of the ZhèngHé Wànshòu Dàozàng 政和萬壽道藏 at Fúzhōu 福州 c. 1117–1120; the text as now preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng descends from that Sòng canon through the Yuán Xuándū bǎozàng 玄都寶藏 (lost) and the Míng 正統 / 萬曆 canons.

The catalog date “ca. 400” refers only to juan 1; the received sixty-one-juan recension is a Sòng text and is dated here notBefore 1100 (Huīzōng’s accession) / notAfter 1125 (his abdication), with the most probable compilation window c. 1112–1120. The dynasty is given as 北宋 for the received text; the Six-Dynasties provenance of juan 1 is noted here rather than in the frontmatter to avoid misrepresenting the work as a Jìn-era composition. The text is not a commentary and carries no attributed author in the catalog meta; prose discussion above mentions the several editorial and commentarial figures who shaped its transmission but none of them authored the received sixty-one-juan compilation, whose Shénxiāo-school composers remain anonymous.

Translations and research

Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (University of California Press, 1997), 373–438, translates juan 1 — the original one-juan scripture — in full, with a substantial introduction to its dating, sources, and relation to the Língbǎo corpus; this remains the indispensable point of entry in English. Kristofer Schipper and Franciscus Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (University of Chicago Press, 2004), carries two separate entries: Schipper on the original one-juan scripture at 1:214–215 (§1.B.3.a, “The Canonical Lingbao Scriptures”), and Lagerwey on the sixty-one-juan Sòng expansion at 2:1081–1084 (§3.B.6, “Shenxiao Fa and Related Thunder Rites”), with related commentaries (DZ 87–89) and ritual compendia (notably DZ 219 Wúshàng xuányuán sāntiān yùtáng dàfǎ and the Dùrén jīng dàfǎ family) catalogued in the same volume. Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity, trans. Julian F. Pas and Norman J. Girardot (SUNY Press, 1993), treats the scripture’s meditation practices and their relation to Shàngqīng visualisation, esp. chs. 3 and 5; her “La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme” (2 vols., EFEO, 1984) situates it within the late-fourth-century revelations.

On the Sòng expansion: Judith Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries (Berkeley Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987), is the standard English-language prolegomenon to Shénxiāo and the Sòng Daoist scripturalism within which the sixty-juan expansion was produced. Matsumoto Kōichi 松本浩一, Sōdai no dōkyō to minkan shinkō 宋代の道教と民間信仰 (Kyūko Shoin, 2006), treats the Shénxiāo movement and the Huīzōng-era canonical project. Mark Meulenbeld, Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), chs. 1–2, treats the exorcistic-ritual tradition that grows directly out of the Dùrén jīng dàfǎ.

On the Língbǎo revelations more broadly: Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾, Shoki no dōkyō 初期の道教 (Sōbunsha 創文社, 1991), is the foundational critical study; his Dōkyō to sono kyōten 道教とその經典 (Sōbunsha, 1997) refines the dating arguments. Kamitsuka Yoshiko 神塚淑子, Rikuchō dōkyō shisō no kenkyū 六朝道教思想の研究 (Sōbunsha, 1999), treats the doctrinal content of the early Língbǎo corpus including the Dùrén jīng. Wáng Chéngwén 王承文, Dūnhuáng gǔ língbǎo jīng yǔ Jìn-Táng dàojiào 敦煌古靈寶經與晉唐道教 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2002), uses the Dūnhuáng Língbǎo manuscripts to reconstruct the earliest textual state. Stephen R. Bokenkamp, “Sources of the Ling-pao Scriptures,” in Michel Strickmann ed., Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R. A. Stein, vol. 2 (IBEO, 1983), 434–486, established the modern framework for Língbǎo dating.

Other points of interest

The Dùrén jīng is the first Daoist scripture to articulate a universalist soteriology — salvation of “all beings” (度一切人) — a move that positions the Língbǎo revelations as Daoism’s principal reply to the Buddhist bodhisattva ideal and that shaped Daoist eschatology and ritual for a millennium. The sixty-juan Sòng expansion, however ideologically remote from the original, became the scriptural basis of Sòng, Yuán, and Míng state ritual: emperors sponsored large-scale Dùrén jīng recitations as guódiàn 國奠 rites, and major commentaries on juan 1 continued to be produced through the Qīng (e.g., that of Xuē Jì 薛季 and of the Míng Shì Bówú 釋博無). The placement of the text at DZ 0001 is not accidental: every compiler of the canon from Lù Xiūjìng forward treated it as the “root scripture” (本文) from which the rest of the canon ramifies.

The catalog’s alternate-title entry “元始無量度人上品妙經” (Yuánshǐ wúliàng dùrén shàngpǐn miàojīng) reflects the variant opening character seen in the Dàozàng jíyào 道藏輯要 (JY001) and other Qīng editions, which substitute “Yuánshǐ” 元始 (naming the divine preacher) for “Língbǎo” 靈寶 (naming the tradition) — the two readings circulate throughout the transmission history with no stemmatic priority.

Links

• Wikidata Q10898149 — 度人經
• Kanseki Repository KR5a0001
• Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon (2004), DZ 1 entry.
• Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (1997), 373–438 for translation of juan 1.