黃帝陰符經

Huángdì yīnfú jīng 黃帝陰符經

The Yellow Emperor’s Scripture of the Hidden Contracts

anonymous early-Táng scripture in three sections of about four hundred characters, attributed pseudepigraphically to the Yellow Emperor, standing at the head of one of the largest commentarial traditions in the Daozang (some thirty-nine Daozang titles); preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0031 / CT 31), 洞真部 本文類

About the work

A compact scripture of approximately four hundred characters — the received “long version” — on the cosmic forces and principles and their seen and unseen influences in the human world. The text is divided into three sections, each introduced with the formula combining a civil-culture (wén 文) and a military-means (wǔ 武) aspect:

1. Shénxiān bàoyī yǎn dào zhāng shàng 神仙抱一演道章上 (“The Immortal Embraces the One: this is the Exposition of the Dào”) — section 1, on cosmic principle.
2. Fùguó ānmín yǎn fǎ zhāng zhōng 富國安民演法章中 (“Enriching the State and Pacifying the People: this is the Exposition of the Fǎ”) — section 2, on political principle.
3. Qiáng bīng zhànshèng yǎn shù zhāng xià 強兵戰勝演術章下 (“Strengthening Troops and Fighting Victoriously: this is the Exposition of the Shù”) — section 3, on military principle.

The text’s rhetorical manner is exceptionally condensed and aphoristic — “One who observes the way of heaven and executes the action of heaven has all” (觀天之道、執天之行、盡矣); “Heaven has five thieves; one who sees them will flourish” (天有五賊，見之者昌); “Heaven and humanity act together, and the myriad transformations fix their foundation” (天人合發、萬變定基) — and the scripture’s concealed-contract (yīnfú 陰符) rhetorical frame positions the reader as initiate of mysteries hidden from the common view. The yīnfú concept is drawn from the Warring-States political-military literature on strategic deception and is here refashioned as a cosmological-and-ethical key to the unity of the inner and the outer worlds.

Prefaces

No prefaces in the source recension. The text opens directly with the first section-title and proceeds through the three sections without editorial envelope. Prefaces circulated with the various commentarial recensions are preserved in those commentaries (see, e.g., the preface attributed to Zhūgé Liàng 諸葛亮 in [[KR5a0108|DZ 108 Huángdì yīnfú jīng jízhù 黃帝陰符經集注]] by Lǐ Quán 李筌).

Abstract

The Yīnfú jīng is pseudepigraphically attributed to Huángdì 黃帝, the Yellow Emperor; its traditional origin-narrative — first elaborated in the early tenth century by Dù Guāngtíng 杜光庭 (850–933) and preserved at [[KR5a0110|DZ 110 Huángdì yīnfú jīng shū 黃帝陰符經疏]] (a work falsely ascribed to Lǐ Quán) — reports that the Táng military-strategist Lǐ Quán 李筌 (fl. 713–741) received the text from the mysterious Líshān lǎo mǔ 驪山老母 (“Old Woman of Mount Lí”), who revealed both the text and its “authentic” interpretation and confirmed its Yellow-Emperor pedigree.

The textual history has three strata:

1. A proto-Yīnfú existed by the sixth century: Ōuyáng Xún 歐陽詢 (557–641) in his Yìwén lèijù 藝文類聚 88.1507 quotes a sentence with the title Yīnfú that is indeed found in the present text at 1a.

2. The three-paragraph structure with its dàofǎshù subtitles first appears around 750 in the Lǐ Quán-ascribed Huángdì yīnfú jīng shū. Chǔ Suìliáng’s 褚遂良 (596–658) Táng Chǔ Hénán Yīnfú jīng mòjì 唐褚河南陰符經墨迹 reproduces the long version, though the authenticity of Chǔ’s work is disputed (see Yú Jiāxī 余嘉錫, Sìkù tíyào biànzhèng 四庫提要辨證, 1178–1180).

3. The long-version (400-character) text of DZ 31 is fixed by mid-Táng at latest, and becomes the standard version from Lǐ Quán onward, against the tradition’s own claim of a 300-character original. This discrepancy is addressed at the commentarial level in [[KR5a0113|DZ 113 Huángdì yīnfú jīng jiě 黃帝陰符經解]], which connects Xī Wángmǔ 西王母 and the Yellow Emperor with a putative 400-character original revelation.

Frontmatter dating: notBefore 713 (opening of Lǐ Quán’s floruit) / notAfter 800 (upper bound to cover the text’s stabilisation in the mature Táng). Dynasty 唐.

The scripture’s bibliographical classification has oscillated between “military” and “Taoist” in the Chinese bibliographical tradition (see Piet van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Period, 1984, 139–140); its integration into the Daozang and its placement as DZ 31 reflect the decisive Sòng settlement in favour of a Daoist classification. No author is attributed; the catalog meta gives only a date (8th c.?).

Translations and research

Complete English translations include: Livia Kohn and Thomas Cleary, The Taoist Experience (SUNY, 1993); Thomas Cleary, Vitality, Energy, Spirit: A Taoist Sourcebook (Shambhala, 1991), 22–27. Standard scholarly treatment: Florian C. Reiter, “The ‘Scripture of the Hidden Contracts’ (Yin-fu ching): A Short Survey on Facts and Findings,” Nachrichten der Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens 136 (1984), 75–83; his entry on DZ 31 in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:— (§2.A.4, adjacent to the commentary cluster). Christopher Rand, “Li Ch’üan and Chinese Military Thought,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 39 (1979), 107–137. Miyakawa Hisayuki 宮川尚志, “Inbu-kyō” 陰符經, in Tōyō shigaku ronshū 東洋史学論集 (1990). Xiāo Dēngfú 蕭登福, Huángdì Yīnfú jīng zhù yì 黃帝陰符經註譯 (Zhōngguó shūdiàn, 1994). Lǐ Dàhuá 李大華, “Lùn Yīnfú jīng chǎnshēng niándài jí qí jiàzhí” 論陰符經產生年代及其價值, Zhōngguó zhéxué shǐ yánjiū 中國哲學史研究 (1986). The commentarial tradition is enormous: Lǐ Quán’s own [[KR5a0108|DZ 108 Jízhù]], Zhāng Guǒ’s 張果 [[KR5a0112|DZ 112 Zhù]] (mid-Táng, written to refute Lǐ Quán), the Lǐ-Quán-ascribed [[KR5a0110|DZ 110 Shū]] (actually early tenth-c. Dù Guāngtíng milieu), and a long series of Sòng, Yuán, and Míng commentaries run through DZ 109–136 and beyond.

Other points of interest

The Yīnfú jīng is, along with the Dàodé jīng and the Zhuāngzǐ, one of the three most intensely commented Daoist scriptures in the entire Chinese tradition, with some thirty-nine commentaries preserved in the Daozang alone and many more in the wider literature. Its condensed, aphoristic style has made it a favourite locus for nèidān 内丹 (“inner alchemy”) exegesis from the Sòng onward, and it is routinely paired with the Dàodé jīng and Cāntóng qì as the three canonical bases of the inner-alchemical curriculum. The scripture’s influence outside Daoism is also considerable: it is a frequent reference-point in Chán Buddhist and Neo-Confucian writing on the relation between dào and action, and its phrase 天人合發 (“Heaven and humanity act together”) became a philosophical touchstone in the Sòng Daoist-Confucian dialogue.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5a0031
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.4 — DZ 31 entry (Florian C. Reiter).
• Thomas Cleary, Vitality, Energy, Spirit (Shambhala, 1991), 22–27.