Gāoshàng Yùhuáng běnxíng jíjīng (èr) 高上玉皇本行集經(二)
Collected Scripture of the Original Conduct of the Supreme Jade Emperor, Part 2 (attributed-to-Zhāng-Liáng Commentary with Spurious Transmission-Documents and Efficacy-Tale Appendix)
pseudepigraphically attributed to the deified early-Hàn statesman Zhāng Liáng 張良 (d. 187 BCE) in his celestial office as Tiānshū shàngxiàng 天樞上相 (“Supreme Minister of the Celestial Pivot”), three juan with spurious celestial-bureaucratic pro-and-epi-matter and a seven-anecdote efficacy-tale appendix (Sòngjīng gǎnyìng 誦經感應), forming the commentary component of the Jade-Emperor Yùhuáng 玉皇 complex; preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0011 / CT 11), 洞真部 本文類; paired in the Daozang directly after DZ 10 the běnwén 本文 scripture
About the work
A three-juan commentary on [[KR5a0010|DZ 10 Gāoshàng Yùhuáng běnxíng jíjīng]] formally attributed to Zhāng Liáng 張良 — the Western-Hàn strategist of Liú Bāng 劉邦 who died 187 BCE — in his posthumous deified office as Tiānshū shàngxiàng 天樞上相, “Supreme Minister of the Celestial Pivot [= Polaris / Dǒuxīng 斗星].” The attribution is transparently spurious, and the text is of late Sòng or Yuán provenance, but the commentarial fiction is carried through with scrupulous consistency: each juan opens with a line-heading attribution 天樞上相(臣)張良校正 (“collated by the Supreme Minister of the Celestial Pivot, [your servant] Zhāng Liáng”), and Zhāng’s interlinear comments — prefaced by “(臣)良曰” (“your servant Liáng says”) or “(臣)謹言” — expound each passage of the parent scripture in the register of a Hàn court-memorial addressed upward to the Jade Emperor.
The běnwén portion of the commentary exactly reproduces DZ 10 and is interleaved with Zhāng Liáng’s memorial-style explications. The text is preceded by a group of spurious celestial-bureaucratic documents (the Sāntiān ménxià jiàojīng zhàowén 三天門下校經詔文, “Edict from the Chancellery of the Three Heavens for the Collation of the Scripture”), purportedly transmitted by two otherwise-unknown “saints” Lín Shàohuá 林少華 (receiving) and Cāng Rújiā 蒼汝嘉 (delivering), appointing Zhāng to the collation task. Following the three juan is an appendix, Sòngjīng gǎnyìng 誦經感應 (“Efficacy-Tales of Scripture Recitation”), in four folios, comprising seven miraculous-response anecdotes set in the Súi (581–618) and Táng (618–907) — anecdotes drawn (anonymously) from the wider lìngyàn 靈驗 (“numinous-efficacy”) literature.
Prefaces
Pseudo-imperial edict from the Chancellery of the Three Heavens (三天門下校經詔文), undated, attributed to the Three Pure Ones (三清), with delivery-receipt from the “saints” Lín Shàohuá 林少華 and Cāng Rújiā 蒼汝嘉 and reply-memorial by Zhāng Liáng.
Translated summary of the opening document:
The Way that is silent and constant is hard to deliberate upon; the cosmic expanse that is recondite and numinous cannot be exhausted in form or description. All our words of praise serve only to illumine the gateway of guidance; and, indeed, differences in what one generation hears and another hears from the immortal streams produce, across transmission, divergent readings — still more so when a scripture has passed through ages, and the recitation of its words and the writing of its characters are not unimpeachably true. Where shall we draw the line between confusions of yú 魚 and lǔ 魯, of niǎo 鳥 and yān 焉 for mǎ 馬? Without expert attestation, how shall we escape distortion? We therefore issue our command to a literary minister, so that he may minutely investigate this sacred text. The Supreme Minister of the Celestial Pivot, Zhāng Liáng, has long been devoted to Confucian learning and now presides over the Pivot-Ward; already commanded to open the tán 壇 altar and transform the people of the southern region, already bestowing scripture to save men in the lower world, he is fit to discharge the task of discrimination and to redouble the labour of collation. He shall supplement the world’s recitation, manifest the depths of the heavenly writ, cause every error to be fully emended, and complete the matter.
Alas, the Way is transmitted by the mind, and wondrous awakening lies truly beyond speech — but its meaning arises through speech; the cultivation of progress must itself be found within scripture. Let him [Zhāng] double his reverence of discriminating thought, so that the charge of editing shall leave no shame, and narrate also the paths of our seeking, manifesting the steps of the entrance — that the zhēntú 真徒 may seek the mystery by this and the good people find the Way, returning from vulgarity to the pristine.
When the collation is complete, it shall be presented upward; meanwhile, by our command it shall be promulgated.
On [the day, month, year] — Received by Lín Shàohuá — Delivered by Cāng Rújiā —
[Sealed by:] The Grand Chancellor of the Three Heavens.
Zhāng Liáng’s reply-memorial (天樞上相辤表并所降請辤之意) follows, also translated in full in the scripture, in which he demurs ritually at the charge and then undertakes it. Three further documents — a formal transmission-order, an acknowledgment by Zhāng, and the formal 完工 completion-declaration — are similarly given. All are fictional apparatus in the SòngYuán “heavenly bureaucracy” mode.
Abstract
This text is pseudepigraphic: its attribution to Zhāng Liáng in his posthumous celestial office has no basis in the historical transmission of Daoist scripture. Zhāng Liáng (d. 187 BCE) was the Western-Hàn strategist of the Gāozǔ 高祖 court whose historical-biographical tradition is recorded in Shǐjì 史記 55 and Hànshū 漢書 40; his deification as a celestial minister belongs to the later Daoist pantheon-organising imagination and is visible by the Tang in connection with the Tiānshū 天樞 (Polaris) cult but is fully deployed here only in the service of authorising a commentary on a scripture that itself was not in circulation before the thirteenth century. The text’s own dating is entirely dependent on the parent scripture DZ 10, which is a late-Southern-Sòng or early-Yuán Qīngwēi-school 清微 production first documented in 1240 at Hángzhōu. Kristofer Schipper, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1097, §3.B.7, remarks that “the text yields no clues as to the date of its compilation” and that the spurious delivering-saints Lín Shàohuá and Cāng Rújiā are “unknown.” The frontmatter here brackets the composition notBefore 1240 (the earliest documented circulation of the parent scripture) / notAfter 1445 (the printing of the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng), with dynasty given as 南宋—明初.
Schipper notes further that it is “difficult to say whether [the text’s] placement [in the Daozang] is the result of an oversight by the compilers or whether this commentary was equally considered to be a běnwén” — i.e., whether the Ming editors treated the Zhāng Liáng commentary as part of the “fundamental scripture” proper. The Dàozàng jíyào 道藏輯要 handles the question decisively by collating DZ 10 and DZ 11 together under a single JY088 entry.
The appendix Sòngjīng gǎnyìng carries seven miraculous-response anecdotes, all set in Súi and Táng; their sources are not given. Comparable gǎnyìng appendices are standard in late-Sòng and Yuán Qīngwēi-school scripture-editions and function as marketing material for recitation.
On persons: the catalog meta attributes the text to Zhāng Liáng; frontmatter accordingly carries the wikilink "[[張良]] (attributed 校正, as 天樞上相)". Lín Shàohuá and Cāng Rújiā appear only in the pseudo-imperial apparatus of the text and are Daoist celestial-office fictions; they are mentioned in prose but not wikilinked.
Translations and research
No complete translation exists. Standard scholarly entry: Kristofer Schipper, “Gaoshang yuhuang benxing jijing” [sic — paired entry], in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2, §3.B.7, 1097–1098. For the wider Qīngwēi-school scriptural apparatus and the place of the Yùhuáng commentary within it, see Schipper 2:1096–1097 (school introduction), and for the deification of historical figures in Qīngwēi, 2:1098.
For Zhāng Liáng’s historical biography: Mark Edward Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (Belknap Press, 2007), and his earlier work on Hàn political culture. For the Daoist deification of Zhāng Liáng: Liú Yǒngmíng 劉永明, Wèi-Jìn Nán-Běi-cháo Dàojiào shǐ 魏晉南北朝道教史 (Rénmín chūbǎnshè, 2006), 267–278 (on the Tiānshū cult and its Zhāng Liáng identification).
Other points of interest
The text is a compact specimen of the SòngYuán Daoist “celestial bureaucracy” literary mode: a scripture is authorised by a fictive imperial-style edict issued by the Three Pure Ones (三清), received by a named but historically-empty saint, delivered to a deified historical figure in his celestial office, executed with humble-memorial formalities, and concluded with a completion-declaration — all of these standard genres of the actual Sòng imperial bureaucracy transferred to the heavenly court. Pairs of such documents in the Yùhuáng complex are among the earliest and most fully elaborated Daoist applications of this convention, which later saturates the Qīngwēi, Dōngchū 洞初, and Zhèngyī ritual-archive literature of the Yuán and Míng.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0011
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.7, 1097–1098 — DZ 11 entry (Kristofer Schipper).