Shàngqīng dàdòng zhēnjīng 上清大洞真經
True Scripture of the Great Cavern of Shàngqīng
the central scripture of the Shàngqīng 上清 (Máoshān 茅山) tradition, six juan, with preface by Zhū Zìyīng 朱自英 (974–1029, twenty-third Máoshān patriarch, dated 1024), edited by Jiǎng Zōngyīng 蔣宗瑛 (d. 1281, thirty-eighth Máoshān patriarch), imprint colophon by Jiǎng’s disciple Chéng Gōngduān 程公端 (dated 1272), and further colophon by the forty-third Celestial Master Zhāng Yǔchū 張宇初 (1361–1410); preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0006 / CT 6), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
The Dàdòng zhēnjīng is the supreme scripture of the Shàngqīng revelations — the revelations received by the Daoist visionary Yáng Xī 楊羲 (330–after 370) between 364 and 370, together with the brothers Xǔ Mì 許謐 (305–376) and Xǔ Huì 許翽 (341–after 370), at Jùróng 句容 near Máoshān 茅山. It is a liturgy of thirty-nine stanzas describing the celestial peregrinations of the body-gods (shēnshén 身神), their heavenly residences, and their intercessory efficacy on behalf of the adept and his ancestors; recitation of each stanza is to be accompanied by the cúnxiǎng 存想 (“visualising”) of the corresponding deities within the practitioner’s body, a discipline that establishes the fundamental Shàngqīng homology between the landscape of the heavens and the interior of the human body. In Robinet’s judgment (in Schipper & Verellen eds., Taoist Canon 2:1044–1045, §3.B.4.a), “the present edition of the Dàdòng zhēnjīng is the closest of all the extant versions to the Shàngqīng original”; the thirty-nine-stanza division corresponds to the traditional Shàngqīng recension, distinguishing this edition from the simplified thirty-eight-stanza recension of the Wénchāng-cult adaptation (DZ 5).
Structurally, juan 1 is devoted to the meditation-rituals that accompany recitation — incantations for entering the chamber, tooth-clappings, visualisations of purple pneumas and the jade-lad and jade-maiden attendants, drawn from other core Shàngqīng texts (DZ 1332 Tàixiāo lángshū 3.5b–6a, DZ 1355 Gāoxuán zhēnjīng 5b–6a, DZ 1314 Dàyǒu miàojīng 41b–42b, DZ 1330 Tàidān yǐnshū dòngzhēn xuánjīng). Juan 2–6 carry the thirty-nine stanzas of the Dàdòng jīng proper, each with concluding fú 符 (“talisman”) and a brief visualising prescription. The text closes with the Huífēng hùnhé dìyī bìjué 廻風混合帝一秘訣 (“Secret Formula of the Whirlwind and of the Fusion with the One Ancestor,” 6.16a–18a), a probably apocryphal but pre-Táng Shàngqīng addition (cf. its quotation in DZ 421 Dēngzhēn yǐnjué via DZ 104 Yùjué yīnyì 12a).
Prefaces
Preface by Zhū Zìyīng 朱自英, twenty-third Máoshān patriarch (974–1029), dated 1024 (per Schipper & Verellen 2:1045 and DZ 304 Máoshān zhì).
Zhū Zìyīng’s preface, under his hào Guānmiào xiānshēng 觀妙先生, frames the scripture as the central revelation of the Shàngqīng lineage and locates its transmission on Máoshān — “transmitted at the principal sanctuary of the Shàngqīng tradition on Máoshān ‘for more than a thousand years’” (Chéng Gōngduān’s phrase echoing Zhū). The preface proper is substantially composed of excerpts from two earlier Shàngqīng scriptures: DZ 1313 Dòngzhēn gāoshàng yùdì dàdòng cíyī yùjiǎn wǔlǎo bǎojīng 洞眞高上玉帝大洞慈一玉檢五老寳經 (folios 11a and 7b) and DZ 1314 Dòngzhēn tàishàng sùlíng dòngyuán dàyǒu miàojīng 洞眞太上素靈洞元大有妙經 (3a–b) — the glosses in the present edition are accordingly likely to be Zhū’s own, tying our recension to the “Zhū Zìyīng version” (Sāndòng fǎshī Guānmiào xiānshēng běn 三洞法師觀妙先生本) cited by Chén Jǐngyuán 陳景元 in his philological study DZ 104 Shàngqīng dàdòng zhēnjīng yùjué yīnyì 上清大洞真經玉訣音義.
Colophon by Chéng Gōngduān 程公端, disciple of Jiǎng Zōngyīng, dated 1272.
Chéng’s imprint colophon records the circumstances of the Jiǎng Zōngyīng edition: that the text had been handed down within the Máoshān sanctuary “for more than a thousand years” and is now being re-engraved for general circulation under Jiǎng’s editorial authority. This is the Sòng edition whose blocks the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng recension preserves.
Colophon by Zhāng Yǔchū 張宇初, forty-third Celestial Master (1361–1410).
Zhāng’s colophon records the re-printing of Jiǎng’s edition by a Fujian Daoist named Xióng Chángyī 熊昌益; it is this later Fujian reprint that is the immediate ancestor of the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng text.
The head of juan 1 further bears the single-line attribution 茅山上清三十八代宗師蔣宗瑛校勘 (“collated by Jiǎng Zōngyīng, thirty-eighth-generation master of the Máoshān Shàngqīng [lineage]”).
Abstract
The core materials of the Dàdòng zhēnjīng go back to the Shàngqīng revelations of 364–370 and constitute the foundational liturgical scripture of the Máoshān tradition. The received text, however, is a layered recension: its deepest stratum is the thirty-nine original stanzas (juan 2–6); its second stratum is a set of accompanying visualisation-rubrics largely drawn from DZ 1355 Gāoxuán zhēnjīng and related Shàngqīng scriptures; its third stratum — likely added by Jiǎng Zōngyīng in the Sòng — consists of the visualisation-prescriptions preceding the “Dàdòng yùjīng” sub-stanzas (e.g., 2.2a), the stanzas addressed to the kings of the Yùqīng 玉清 heaven, and the esoteric/exoteric name-pairs of the heavens and earths. The Zhū Zìyīng preface (1024) is a further stratum, and the Chéng Gōngduān (1272) and Zhāng Yǔchū (c. 1400) colophons constitute the fifth and sixth editorial layers. The received recension is thus a composite scripture spanning c. 1024–1410, even though its doctrinal content is substantially a Shàngqīng survival from the fourth century.
The catalog date “1272 (刊記)” records the oldest of the two dated imprint-colophons — Chéng Gōngduān’s. The frontmatter here brackets the composition-and-redaction arc of the received recension at notBefore 1024 (Zhū Zìyīng’s preface) / notAfter 1410 (Zhāng Yǔchū’s death). The Shàngqīng stanzas themselves are Six-Dynasties material in origin but are preserved here in their late-Sòng editorial state; accordingly the dynasty is given compositely as 北宋—明 to span the preserved stratigraphy. Isabelle Robinet’s classic comparative study — “Le Ta-tung chen-ching: son authenticité et sa place dans les textes du Shang-ch’ing ching,” in Michel Strickmann ed., Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R. A. Stein, vol. 2 (IBEO, 1983), 394–433 — remains the definitive stratigraphic analysis.
On persons: all four persons in the catalog meta are wikilinked above. Zhū Zìyīng (974–1029) matches Robinet’s DZ 6 entry dating and the catalog. Jiǎng Zōngyīng corresponds to CBDB c_personid 111732 (fl. 1260–1281). Zhāng Yǔchū corresponds to CBDB c_personid 34443 (d. 1410). Chéng Gōngduān is a Daoist disciple of Jiǎng and has no CBDB record.
Translations and research
No complete translation into any Western language exists, owing to the scripture’s extreme density of esoteric nomenclature. The standard scholarly entry is Isabelle Robinet, “Shangqing dadong zhenjing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2, §3.B.4.a, 1044–1045. Robinet’s monographic study La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme (2 vols., EFEO, 1984), and her Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity (SUNY Press, 1993), treat the scripture extensively. The philological companion DZ 104 Shàngqīng dàdòng zhēnjīng yùjué yīnyì by Chén Jǐngyuán 陳景元 (1024–1094) is the indispensable medieval-Chinese apparatus, comparing readings across multiple recensions. For the Wénchāng-cult and Yǔqīng dàdòng adaptations see Schipper & Verellen Vol. 2 §3.B.11 (Kleeman on DZ 5, Baldrian-Hussein on DZ 103 Wénchāng dàdòng xiānjīng zhù of 1310).
On the wider Shàngqīng corpus to which this scripture belongs: Edward H. Schafer, Mirages on the Sea of Time: The Taoist Poetry of Ts’ao T’ang (University of California Press, 1985); Paul W. Kroll, Dharma Bell and Dhāraṇī Pillar: Li Po’s Buddhist Inscriptions and his papers on Táng-dynasty Daoist poetry; Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾, Shoki no dōkyō 初期の道教 (Sōbunsha, 1991), give the broader context. On Jiǎng Zōngyīng’s editorial output and the thirty-eighth-patriarch Máoshān scriptorium see DZ 304 Máoshān zhì 茅山志 by Liú Dàbīn 劉大彬 (completed 1328).
Other points of interest
The Dàdòng zhēnjīng is the scripture-form most intensely associated with Shàngqīng’s definitional contribution to Daoism: the recasting of the adept’s own body as a cosmic theatre in which the deities of the heavens reside and may be addressed through visualisation-recitation. The scripture’s survival through the Sòng editorial efforts of Zhū Zìyīng and Jiǎng Zōngyīng — both patriarchs of the Máoshān lineage — is direct evidence for the continuity of a textual tradition from the Six Dynasties through the Sòng into the Míng canon. The companion philological work DZ 104 by Chén Jǐngyuán compares the present recension with the “Máoshān version” (茅山本) and the “Zhū Zìyīng / Guānmiàoxiānshēng version” (觀妙先生本), identifying our text with the latter — a rare case, within the Daozang, of an explicit Sòng-era critical-textual discussion of the text’s stratification.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0006
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.4.a, 1044–1045 — DZ 6 entry (Isabelle Robinet).
- Isabelle Robinet, “Le Ta-tung chen-ching,” in Tantric and Taoist Studies II (IBEO, 1983), 394–433.