Gāoshàng Yùhuáng běnxíng jīng suǐ 高上玉皇本行經髓
Essence of the “Gāoshàng Yùhuáng běnxíng jīng”
an abbreviated Yuán-dynasty (1344) recension of [[KR5a0010|DZ 10 Gāoshàng Yùhuáng běnxíng jíjīng]], transmitted to the twenty-fourth-generation Qīngwēi 清微 patriarch Liú Chǔyuán 劉處源 by an immortal at the “Immortal-Realm Post-station” 仙界鋪 in Huàzhōu 化州 (Guǎngdōng) on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month of the fourth year of Zhìzhèng 至正 (1344), with an appended transmission-narrative Chuánjīng yuánliú 傳經源流; preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0012 / CT 12), 洞真部 本文類 — transmitted in the source together with the companion one-folio texts [[KR5a0013|Xīnyìn jīng 心印經]] and [[KR5a0014|Tāixī jīng 胎息經]] under the bundled heading 三經同卷
About the work
A short, single-juan jīngsuǐ 經髓 (“essence-of-the-scripture”) recension of the Jade Emperor běnxíng scripture. The text presents, in greatly abbreviated form, the revelation-scene of DZ 10 — Yuánshǐ tiānzūn’s preaching in the Qīngwēi heaven, the Jade Emperor’s radiance-emission across the ten directions, the breaking of the Tiěwéi 鐵圍 iron-hells and the salvation of the sān’è dào 三惡道 (“three evil paths”) — and follows with a substantially compressed version of the thirty-merit list and a closing hymn by the Jade-Void-Supreme Emperor (玉虛上帝). It ends not with a closing-Juan mark but with an appended Chuánjīng yuánliú 傳經源流 — “Origin of the Transmission of the Scripture,” a first-person narrative in Liú Chǔyuán’s voice that recounts how the text came into his hands (see Prefaces below). The source-file structure bundles this text with the one-folio Xīnyìn jīng and Tāixī jīng under the running-head 三經同卷 (“three scriptures in one juan”), but each is given a separate DZ number and is catalogued in the Kanripo corpus under its own ID.
Prefaces
Appended transmission-narrative “Chuánjīng yuánliú” 傳經源流 in the voice of Liú Chǔyuán, dated Zhìzhèng 4 (1344).
Translated summary:
[I,] Liú Chǔyuán 劉處源 — twenty-fourth-generation legitimate descendant of the Nányuè 南嶽 Ancestor-Goddess of Compassionate Life, the Pure-Perfected Primordial-Lord of the Purple Void (i.e., Wèi Huácún 魏華存, Zǐxū yuánjūn 紫虛元君); heir of the Ānchéng Yùyuán 安成玉源 immortal-lineage; Envoy of the Shàngqīng Three-Caverns Five-Thunder-Registers Qīngwēi Míngyuán (清微明元使) — in the seventh month of the fourth year of Yuán Zhìzhèng 至正 (1344), roaming from Guǎngxī Liǔzhōu 柳州 southward along the Hǎiběi 海北 route, arrived on the fifteenth of the eighth lunar month at a post-station in Shíchéng xiàn 石城縣 of the Huàzhōu 化州 circuit. The station was deserted; at midnight, with clear wind and bright moon, unable to sleep, I walked out to watch the moon and came unawares upon an old man seated cross-legged upon a stone beside the road — thick-browed, white-haired. Approaching, I asked how far it was to Huàzhōu. He replied: “Half a day. Be cautious, for the Yáo 徭 [minority-people] bandits are abroad, slaughtering and looting the district.”
He then asked my birth-year; on being told, he looked into his palm and said: “In your fate there shall be pestilential malaria, bandit-attack, blade-and-spear, and drowning — but, because of your merit in helping others, although you may meet these misfortunes, they will not cost you your life. Recite the Běnxíng jīng suǐ with utmost sincerity, and no difficulty shall touch your great span.” I replied: “I have been in the Dào thirty years and have not yet encountered this Jīngsuǐ; I recite the main Běnxíng jīng, fearing I may not obtain the scripture-treasure and thereby miss the means of deliverance.” The old man said: “Fortunately I carry this scripture with me — I know its verses by heart already; let me transmit the text itself to you.” From his bosom he drew a yellow-silk bag and took out the scripture; he gave it to me with the words: “Recite it single-mindedly and transmit it widely in the world — the merit of recitation is limitless. I am a Daoist of Píling 毗陵; remember my words.” He spoke, rose, and after three paces beside the road ascended on a cloud and departed.
I bowed twice to the ground; bewildered, I looked for him and could not see him. Lingering on the stone until dawn I saw there the traces of his sitting and the footprints of his ascent. On the sixteenth at noon I arrived at the city of Shílóng xiàn 石龍縣 under Huàzhōu and lodged at the house of Chén Zōngwǔ 陳宗武 below Lóngmǔ shān 龍母山. There the acting sub-prefect of Liánzhōu 廉州, Huáng Yīlóng 黃一龍 (zì Yúncóng 雲從), of Wǔchuān 吳川 — then acting for the Shílóng xiàn incumbent — received me in council. I asked the name of the post-station where I had lodged; he said: “It is called Xiānjièpù 仙界鋪” — “Immortal-Realm Post-station” — “because an immortal of old sat on the stone by the road, leaving the sitting- and ascending-footprints as testimony to the human world. This immortal sometimes conceals himself, sometimes descends, and is rarely met by mortals.” At these words I understood in my heart: could this be the immortal descended again to transmit this scripture?
On the twenty-fifth I fell severely ill with pestilential fever; day after day the sound of Yáo bandits’ raiding was unceasing …
The narrative continues, confirming the old man’s prophetic words through subsequent events, and closes with Liú’s formal transmission of the text for wider circulation.
Abstract
The Jīngsuǐ is formally a Yuán-dynasty shéngjìng 聖降 (“sacred descent”-type) Daoist scripture — a text revealed through an immortal encounter rather than composed as such — whose real function is as an abbreviated devotional companion to the longer DZ 10. Kristofer Schipper, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1098 (§3.B.7), notes Liú Chǔyuán as a “Qīngwēi master of the twenty-fourth generation after the founding goddess Qīngzhēn zǐxū yuánjūn 青真紫虛元君 (Wèi Huácún 魏華存),” dated by the 1344 transmission-narrative.
The text is a substantive witness for the Yuán-era Qīngwēi lineage’s self-understanding: Liú Chǔyuán’s full titling identifies the Nányuè-Shàngqīng-Qīngwēi-Thunder complex as a single continuous inheritance (南嶽總仙 / 紫虛清眞元君 / 清微明元使), and the scripture’s transmission scene replays, in literal narrative detail, the foundational revelation-mode of the Shàngqīng tradition — the solitary encounter with an unseen Perfected, the gift of a scripture from a silk bag, the ascent on a cloud. The dating is secure: notBefore 1344 (the transmission date) / notAfter 1445 (the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng printing). Dynasty 元.
The catalog meta lists Liú Chǔyuán as chuán 傳 (transmitter); he is the sole figure wikilinked in the frontmatter. Chén Zōngwǔ 陳宗武, Huáng Yīlóng 黃一龍 (zì Yúncóng), and the anonymous Píling Daoist of the post-station are named in the prose transmission-narrative but are not in the catalog meta.
Translations and research
No translation exists. Schipper’s notice in The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1098 is the sole scholarly treatment. For Liú Chǔyuán and the fourteenth-century Qīngwēi-Nányuè lineage: Schipper 2:1096–1102, §3.B.7 (“The Qingwei School”), and Liáng Shǔjià 梁恕嘉, Qīngwēi pài yánjiū 清微派研究 (Zōngjiào wénhuà chūbǎnshè, 2003).
Other points of interest
The transmission-narrative’s topography — the post-station Xiānjièpù 仙界鋪 in Shíchéng xiàn of Huàzhōu, with its immortal sitting-stone — belongs to the Yuán-era popular cult-landscape of Guǎngdōng and is a rare textual witness to the mid-fourteenth-century GuǎngxīGuǎngdōng frontier as a zone of Daoist pilgrimage and revelation. The Yáo bandit crisis of the 1340s referenced in Liú Chǔyuán’s narrative is historically well-documented; the transmission is thus datable against the local military history of the late Yuán.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0012
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.7, 1098 — DZ 12 entry (Kristofer Schipper).