Dàdòng yùjīng 大洞玉經
Jade Scripture of the Great Cavern
an abbreviated, body-god-focused recension of the Shàngqīng 上清 Dàdòng zhēnjīng 大洞真經 tradition, two juan, reconstructed and printed at Lónghǔshān 龍虎山 in the early Míng on the basis of an annotated Yuán manuscript recovered in 1365 by the Yuán official-turned-recluse Xióng Tàigǔ 熊太古 (zì Línchū 隣初), copied by the liànshī 煉師 Zhōu Lánxuě 周蘭雪, and printed under the imprint-colophon of Gōng Détóng 龔德同 (hào Qiūshuǐ 秋水) at age 89; preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0007 / CT 7), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A two-juan abbreviated recension of the Shàngqīng 上清 Dàdòng jīng 大洞經 focused on the Dàdòng yùjīng stratum of the thirty-nine-stanza liturgy together with annotations identifying the body-deities (shēnshén 身神) that populate each stanza. The work is a companion piece to [[KR5a0006|DZ 6 Shàngqīng dàdòng zhēnjīng]]: its thirty-nine stanzas correspond to those embedded under the heading “Dàdòng yùjīng” in the Jiǎng Zōngyīng edition, but the present recension is textually more complete for the Yùjīng stanzas proper while omitting several of the hymns (sòng 頌) and “sounds” (yīn 音) of the heavens that Jiǎng preserves (Robinet in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon 2:1046, §3.B.4.a). The opening (1a–7b) carries preparatory invocations and fú 符 talismans — among them the Chénlíng fú 宸靈符 (2b), traditionally linked to the Dàdòng zhēnjīng (cf. DZ 1313 Dòngzhēn gāoshàng yùdì dàdòng cíyī yùjiǎn wǔlǎo bǎojīng 16a, DZ 413 Shàngqīng pèi fúwén bǐquèjué 4a) but absent from Jiǎng’s recension. The long invocation at 4a–5b, conversely, is shared with Jiǎng (DZ 6, 1.9a–10b) and originates in DZ 1355 Shàngqīng tàishàng yùqīng yǐnshū mièmó shénhuì gāoxuán zhēnjīng 5a–6a. Juan 2 closes with a meta-stanza on the work as a whole (see Prefaces, below) and Gōng Détóng’s imprint-colophon. The distinctive doctrinal value of the present recension lies in its annotations, which name the body-deities — “the [hundred] names of the deities of the body, their residences, the palaces and regions they govern, the mountain-forest towers and terraces, the pond pavilions, all made explicit” (Gōng’s phrase) — in a form closer to the revealed Shàngqīng commentary than to the Jiǎng Zōngyīng stratum.
Prefaces
Imprint-colophon by Gōng Détóng 龔德同, hào Qiūshuǐ 秋水, written at age 89; early Míng (c. 1380–1410).
Translation (from the colophon at the end of juan 2):
The Dàdòng yùjīng has long been transmitted at the Hàn Altar (漢壇 — i.e., Lónghǔshān 龍虎山, the seat of the Celestial Masters). As a youth I had read and recited it but did not understand the meaning of the scripture; my elders said that most of it consists of the names of the hundred deities of the body, and that it cannot be grasped by reasoning from the characters alone. Later I obtained the Máoshān 茅山 main-sanctuary (宗壇) recension and the Zǐtóng 梓潼 Wénchāng recension [DZ 5] and compared them; each differs from the others in particulars — some of the differences owing to copying errors, others to phonetic variants — generally great resemblance with small differences, each recension gaining or losing something. But the sacred scripture one may not lightly alter by selection.
In the yǐsì year (1365), in the júyuè 菊月 (“chrysanthemum-month,” i.e. the ninth lunar month), there was an Auxiliary Instructor of the National University (國子助教), Tàigǔ 太古 [Xióng] Línchū 隣初, who had abandoned office to study the Way and had investigated to its depths the meaning of the Dàdòng jīng. He came from the Xūjiāng Mágū Shān 盱江麻姑山 to this mountain, bringing with him a hand-copied Dàdòng jīng text on which the meaning of the scripture had been annotated long ago by the Perfected Tàixuán [Zhào] 太玄趙眞人. Most of [the annotations] named the deities within the body, what each governs, what palace-ward it inhabits, what mountain-forest tower or terrace, what pond or pavilion — all clearly laid out. The general purport is: [taking] the Gate of Life and the Door of Death, the “preserving of the feminine and embracing of the masculine” as the central matter, [one] merges and fuses the hundred deities, keeping them ever present, each residing in its place and each regulating its affairs.
The same-mountain liànshī 煉師 Master Zhōu Lánxuě 蘭雪周先生 — who shares my zeal and, though in his eightieth year, has ears keen and eyes clear and a brush-hand still vigorous — copied out two fascicles [of the text] and showed them to me. At a single reading, the meaning stood out clearly; one may call it a rare encounter for my late years. It is a pity that I, insignificant and decrepit as I am, cannot undertake the full practice. Yet I cannot bring myself to set [the text] aside; I have accordingly had one copy made in the same format for constant perusal and for transmission to later students. On finishing the copy, I returned it to the wall; I still hope that [Zhōu] xiānshēng will recite and practise [the scripture] with refined singleness of purpose, daily renewing [himself] and returning from age to childhood, not wasting this encounter. I offer in presentation the following hymn:
The Dàdòng yùjīng, the quintessence of the Ultimate Way — True contemplation of the Emperor-One, preserving the feminine, embracing the masculine; The three sections and eight landscapes, a fusing whirlwind of pneumas. Auspicious vapours and celebratory clouds — the [demon-]doors blocked, the true gate open. The Grand Monad commands the gods; demons are destroyed, the fierce struck down; Holding the talismans and grasping the registers, the body’s knots dissolve into emptiness. The three passes open, the nine breaths surge and surge; The world sprouts forth the jade lán 蘭 blossom, the celestial root flourishes in abundance. Attaining the True Way of the One, enthroned in rank as an immortal — always preserved, luminously wandering in the língōng 琳宮 jasper-palaces. Some later day, on Pénglàng 蓬閬 [Mount Peng-lai], we shall meet and laugh together.
Reverently written by the Eighty-nine-year-old Elder Qiūshuǐ 秋水, Gōng Détóng.
Abstract
The Dàdòng yùjīng as now received was reconstructed from a Yuán manuscript with annotations attributed to the pseudonymous “Perfected Tàixuán Zhào” 太玄趙眞人 (Zhào Tàixuán zhēnrén), a figure not independently attested and most likely a devotional fiction of a Yuán-era Daoist editor. Gōng Détóng’s colophon explicitly situates the transmission chain: the annotated manuscript was brought from Xūjiāng Mágū Shān 盱江麻姑山 (Jiāngxī) to Lónghǔshān in 1365 by the Yuán 國子助教 Xióng Tàigǔ 熊太古 (zì Línchū 鄰初, sometimes written 隣初), an official who had renounced office to become a Daoist recluse; it was then re-copied by the octogenarian liànshī Zhōu Lánxuě 周蘭雪 (“Orchid-Snow”) at Lónghǔshān; and Gōng Détóng, at age 89, produced the present printed edition, which stands as the earliest witness to this body-deity-focused recension of the Dàdòng tradition.
Dating is bracketed by the 1365 recovery of the manuscript at Lónghǔshān (the earliest anchor point for the received recension) and the printing of the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng in 1445 (the terminus for its inclusion in the canon). Gōng Détóng’s colophon is early Míng, almost certainly written between c. 1380 and 1410, given that he was 89 and that the manuscript arrived at Lónghǔshān when he was already an adult reader of the scripture. The frontmatter thus gives notBefore 1365 / notAfter 1445, with dynasty 明初期. Isabelle Robinet’s comparative analysis of the Dàdòng jīng recensions (Robinet 1983, “Le Ta-tung chen-ching”) treats this recension as textually valuable for the Yùjīng stanzas but editorially derivative.
The catalog meta lists only Gōng Détóng as the kānjì (imprint-colophon) author; he is the only person linked in frontmatter. Xióng Tàigǔ / Línchū, Zhōu Lánxuě, and the pseudonymous Zhào Tàixuán are named in prose but not wikilinked. For Xióng Tàigǔ, see his entry in the Yuánshǐ 元史; he is not in CBDB under this name.
Translations and research
No complete translation exists. Standard scholarly entry: Isabelle Robinet, “Dadong yujing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.4.a, 1046. Robinet’s full analysis of the Dàdòng tradition is in “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. For the wider Shàngqīng context see also Robinet, La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme (2 vols., EFEO, 1984). No dedicated monograph on DZ 7 exists.
Other points of interest
Gōng Détóng’s colophon is one of the most candid early-Míng witnesses to the editorial state of the Dàdòng tradition: it records explicitly that three major recensions (the Lónghǔshān/Hàntán transmission, the Máoshān Zōngtán recension, and the Wénchāng recension of DZ 5) were independently circulating and textually divergent, and that no one authoritative textus receptus existed at the end of the Yuán. The colophon’s narrative of personal discovery — a renunciate official bringing the text from Mágū Shān, an octogenarian liànshī copying it, the eighty-nine-year-old Gōng Détóng printing it with a final hymn looking forward to meeting the copyist on Penglai — stands as a rare autobiographical vignette of Daoist textual transmission in the YuánMíng transition. The scribal chain is also a direct witness to the role of Lónghǔshān as a clearing-house for Shàngqīng materials in the decades before the canonical Dàozàng project.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0007
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.4.a, 1046 — DZ 7 entry (Isabelle Robinet).