Yuánshǐ wǔlǎo chìshū yùpiān zhēnwén tiānshū jīng 元始五老赤書玉篇真文天書經
Celestial-Script Scripture of the True Writs in Vermilion-Writing on Jade Tablets, [Bestowed] by the Five Ancients of the Primordial Beginning
one of the foundational scriptures of the early Língbǎo 靈寶 corpus (gǔ Língbǎo jīng 古靈寶經), composed c. 395–402 CE within the ancestral-Lingbao revelations ascribed to Gě Cháofǔ 葛巢甫, three juan (originally two) containing the Wǔpiān zhēnwén 五篇真文 (“True Writs in Five Sections”), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0022 / CT 22), 洞真部 本文類 — alternate titles Wǔpiān zhēnwén 五篇真文 and Dòngxuán chìshū jīng 洞玄赤書經; corresponds to number 1 of Lù Xiūjìng’s 陸修靜 (406–477) Língbǎo jīngmù 靈寶經目
About the work
A three-juan scripture transmitting the Wǔpiān zhēnwén 五篇真文 — the “True Writs in Five Sections” — the foundational talismanic text of the Língbǎo 靈寶 tradition, which the scripture itself claims to have existed in the cosmic vacuity prior even to the Primordial Beginning, spontaneously launching the cosmogony and ever since sustaining the cosmic order. The Zhēnwén are named “Red Writings” (Chìshū 赤書) because they were, per the scripture’s mythology (1.1b), refined in the fire of the Southern Heaven within the Dòngyáng zhī guǎn 洞陽之舘; the scripture preserves them in a stylised seal-script zhuànwén 篆文 that the text calls “celestial script,” (tiānshū 天書) and which it presents at 1.7b–30a in five-directional correspondences. For each of the Five Directions there is a quantity of characters, divided into four groups, inscribed in the various celestial palaces and understood to have a fourfold function: registering the names of successful adepts on the lists of immortality, guaranteeing the correctness of the cosmic processes, dominating the demons, and controlling the water-deities to prevent floods.
The scripture presents, in sequence, the Five Ancients (Wǔlǎo 五老) who preside over the five directions: 東方安寶華林青靈始老 (Qīnglíng Shǐlǎo — East), 南方梵寶昌陽丹靈真老 (Dānlíng Zhēnlǎo — South), 中央玉寶元靈元老 (Yuánlíng Yuánlǎo — Centre), 西方七寶金門皓靈皇老 (Hàolíng Huánglǎo — West), 北方洞陰朔單鬱絕五靈玄老 (Xuánlíng Xuánlǎo — North). Each presides over one of the five True-Writ sections; each bestows talismans-of-the-direction (fāngfú 方符) — material continuous with the earlier Tàishàng língbǎo wǔfú xù 太上靈寶五符序 (DZ 388) from which some of the talismans are drawn verbatim (see Bokenkamp, “Sources,” 454–456; Hans-Hermann Schmidt in Schipper & Verellen 2004, 1:216). The description of the Five Ancients at 1.31a–35a likewise corresponds closely to DZ 388 1.11b–14b, and a series of demon-banning and cosmic-catastrophe-evading talismans repeats DZ 388 3.12a–14a.
The scripture further fixes the calendar of Daoist fasting: the liù zhāi 六齋 (six months of fasting) and the shí zhāi rì 十齋日 (ten fast-days per month) of the Daoist ritual year, justifying them (2.17b–3.7b) by the periodic heavenly-court assembly of the gods who dispatch emissaries to earth to audit human offenses and merits — a scriptural framing that became definitive for the entire subsequent Daoist ritual-calendar tradition.
Prefaces
The scripture’s original preface, quoted in the first half of the seventh century by [[KR5a1132|DZ 1132 Shàngqīng dàolèi shìxiàng 上清道類事相]] 3.6b and by [[KR5a1129|DZ 1129 Dàojiào yìshū 道教義樞]] 10.3b, is no longer extant in the received text (Schmidt, in Schipper & Verellen 2004, 1:216). The present Daozang recension thus preserves the scripture itself but has lost the original editorial envelope — a small but significant textual loss, inasmuch as the preface would have carried the most direct evidence for the scripture’s self-understanding of its origin and transmission.
No prefaces in the source as currently received. The text opens directly with the enumeration of the Five Ancients and their True-Writ titles.
Abstract
DZ 22 is one of the most consequential scriptures of early Daoism. It belongs to the first wave of Língbǎo revelations — the gǔ Língbǎo jīng 古靈寶經 corpus that Lù Xiūjìng’s 陸修靜 Língbǎo jīngmù 靈寶經目 (437, preserved in Dūnhuáng manuscripts) attributes to Gě Cháofǔ 葛巢甫 (fl. 402), working at Jùróng 句容 near MàoShān 茅山 within a generation of the Shàngqīng revelations (364–370). The standard dating, following Stephen Bokenkamp and Ōfuchi Ninji, is c. 395–402 CE — the Lóng’ān 隆安 reign-period of the Eastern Jìn. DZ 22 corresponds to number 1 of the Lù Xiūjìng Língbǎo catalogue, making it the scripturally-senior text of the entire Língbǎo corpus.
The scripture is complemented by [[KR5a0352|DZ 352 Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo chìshū yùjué miàojīng 太上洞玄靈寶赤書玉訣妙經]] — itself c. 400, originally two juan — which provides the practical-use instructions for the Zhēnwén revealed in DZ 22; and by [[KR5a0388|DZ 388 Tàishàng língbǎo wǔfú xù]], with which it shares substantial material in both directions of textual dependence. DZ 22 is also the source-text of the Língbǎo chìshū yùpiān zhēnwén 靈寶赤書玉篇真文 re-embedded in juan 2 of the late-Sòng Jade-Emperor scripture [[KR5a0010|DZ 10 Gāoshàng Yùhuáng běnxíng jíjīng]], securing the continuity of the Wǔpiān zhēnwén into the mature Daoist canon of popular worship.
The catalog meta gives no attributed author for the scripture itself — its anonymity is consistent with the Língbǎo editorial fiction of a pre-cosmic autogenesis of the Zhēnwén — and persons is left empty in frontmatter. Gě Cháofǔ, the conventional redactor, is discussed in prose.
The frontmatter brackets the composition at notBefore 395 / notAfter 402, corresponding to the Lóng’ān-reign-period dating accepted in the standard literature; dynasty 東晉.
Translations and research
No complete translation exists, but substantial portions are translated and discussed in Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (University of California Press, 1997), which treats the Língbǎo gǔjīng corpus at length, and in his foundational article “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, esp. 454–456 on DZ 22. The standard scholarly entry is Hans-Hermann Schmidt, “Yuanshi wulao chishu yupian zhenwen tianshu jing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (University of Chicago Press, 2004), Vol. 1, §1.B.3, 215–216.
On the Wǔpiān zhēnwén specifically: Kobayashi Masayoshi 小林正美, “Reihō sekisho gohen shinbun no kenkyū” 靈寳赤書五篇真文の研究, in Shisō to bunka no kenkyū (Sōbunsha, 1992), and his Rikuchō Dōkyōshi kenkyū 六朝道教史研究 (Sōbunsha, 1990), supply the foundational Japanese textual and historical analysis. Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾, Shoki no dōkyō 初期の道教 (Sōbunsha, 1991), and Kamitsuka Yoshiko 神塚淑子, Rikuchō Dōkyō shisō no kenkyū 六朝道教思想の研究 (Sōbunsha, 1999), treat the Língbǎo context into which DZ 22 inserts itself. 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 manuscripts to reconstruct the text’s earliest transmissional state.
Other points of interest
The scripture’s claim that the Wǔpiān zhēnwén existed prior to Yuánshǐ himself, “launching the cosmogony,” supplies the most radical Daoist scriptural claim to ontological priority: language is placed ontologically before even the self-generating absolute, a position that gives the Língbǎo canon its distinctive self-understanding as writing that anchors rather than follows cosmic process. The ritual-calendar doctrine of the liù zhāi / shí zhāi rì fixed in 2.17b–3.7b became — through Táng Dù Guāngtíng’s 杜光庭 ritual syntheses and Sòng compilations such as the Yúnjí qīqiān 雲笈七籤 — the standard justification of the Daoist fasting year into the modern period. The Zhēnwén themselves have become, along with the Dàodé jīng, one of the two most frequently reproduced Daoist scriptural images in the late-imperial temple programme.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0022
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §1.B.3, 215–216 — DZ 22 entry (Hans-Hermann Schmidt).
- Bokenkamp, “Sources of the Ling-pao Scriptures,” in Tantric and Taoist Studies II (IBEO, 1983), 454–456.