Yuánshǐ tiānzūn shuō Zǐtóng dìjūn běnyuàn jīng 元始天尊說梓童帝君本願經
Scripture of the Original Vow of the Divine Lord of Zǐtóng, as Expounded by Yuánshǐ Tiānzūn
Southern-Sòng / Yuán scripture of the Wénchāng 文昌 cult, twelve folios, belonging to the Wénchāngjīng cluster as the longer companion to [[KR5a0028|DZ 28 Yìngyàn jīng]]; preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0029 / CT 29), 洞真部 本文類 — the Dàozàng jíyào 道藏輯要 preserves it as JY015 under the alternate title 元始消劫梓潼本願真經
About the work
A twelve-folio Daoist scripture in the Buddhist běnyuàn 本願 (“original vow”) genre, framed as a heavenly-court audience at which Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊 presides over a discussion of the declining state of world morality and the impending jié 劫 disasters. The Cíjì zhēnrén 慈濟真人 (“Perfected of Compassionate Salvation”) asks that someone be dispatched to relieve the sufferings of mankind; Yuánshǐ tiānzūn proposes the great Sichuan deity Zǐtóng — who oversees officials’ fates through the Guìlù 桂錄 (“Cinnamon Record”), has manifested himself in more than ninety transformations, has been entrusted by the Jade Emperor with a rúyì 如意 sceptre, and has been assigned to convert the populace through the “flying phoenix” (飛鸞) of spirit-writing (planchette) (2a). The body of the scripture elaborates the Zǐtóng dìjūn’s salvational programme, his Buddhist-inspired vows, and the efficacy-promises of recitation.
The scripture links the deity to the traditional and canonical cult-centre at Qīqū shān 七曲山 in Zǐtóngxiàn 梓潼縣, northern Sichuan — unlike the cognate DZ 28, which links him to the alternate Fènghuáng shān 鳳凰山 centre — establishing the present text as the recension of the mainline Zǐtóng cult.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the heavenly-court audience.
Abstract
Dating follows the same framework as DZ 28: the reference to the “ninety-odd transformations” of the Zǐtóng dìjūn (2a) is only possible after 1194, the composition-date of the last fourteen episodes of the ninety-four-chapter recension of [[KR5a0170|DZ 170 Zǐtóng dìjūn huàshū]]. Terry Kleeman, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1207 (§3.B.11), dates the scripture most probably to the thirteenth century, before the cult’s temporary suppression at the beginning of the Yuán, though noting that it could equally be a product of the later-Yuán revival. The catalog-meta “after 1194” is consistent with this. The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 1194 / notAfter 1368 (end of Yuán), with dynasty 南宋—元. The deity is wikilinked under his canonical Daoist name 文昌帝君 with (attributed).
The scripture’s Buddhist-inflected běnyuàn title and structure reflect the deliberate Daoist appropriation of the Buddhist pūrvapraṇidhāna (“prior vow”) literary form in the late-Sòng cult-scripture project. The Cíjì zhēnrén questioner-figure is a Daoist transposition of the standard Mahāyāna dharmaparyāya interlocutor role.
Translations and research
Terry F. Kleeman, A God’s Own Tale: The Book of Transformations of Wenchang (SUNY, 1994), is the principal English-language monograph on the cult, with extensive discussion of DZ 28, DZ 29, and DZ 170. Kleeman’s scholarly entry on DZ 29 is Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.11, 1207. For the wider Sòng-Yuán Wénchāng jīng cluster and its relation to the Huàshū see Matsumoto Kōichi, Sōdai no dōkyō to minkan shinkō (Kyūko Shoin, 2006).
Other points of interest
The scripture’s deployment of the Buddhist-derived běnyuàn form provides an unusually clean instance of Daoist-Buddhist genre translation: Yuánshǐ tiānzūn occupies the structural position of Śākyamuni, the Zǐtóng dìjūn occupies that of an advanced bodhisattva, the Cíjì zhēnrén occupies that of the paripṛcchaka questioner, and the kalpa-disaster frame corresponds to the Buddhist kalpa-antara doomsday. The scripture is one of the clearest examples in the Daozang of the late-Sòng Daoist adaptation of the Mahāyāna scripture-genre repertoire.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0029
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.11, 1207 — DZ 29 entry (Terry Kleeman).
- Terry F. Kleeman, A God’s Own Tale: The Book of Transformations of Wenchang (SUNY, 1994).