Tàishàng dǎoyǐn sānguāng bǎozhēn miàojīng 太上導引三光寶真妙經
Marvellous Book of the Daoyin Exercises Using the Three Luminaries and the Precious Perfected, Spoken by the Most High
four-folio Táng Daoist companion-scripture to [[KR5a0039|DZ 39 Dǎoyǐn sānguāng jiǔbiàn miàojīng]], functioning as its revelation-preface and transmission-postface; preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0040 / CT 40), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A short four-folio Táng scripture standing in a complementary structural relation to DZ 39 — as John Lagerwey puts it (in Schipper & Verellen 2004, 1:595), “this text stands in relation to DZ 39 as the preface and postface to certain Shàngqīng texts”: it first recounts the circumstances of the revelation and then lays down the procedure of proper transmission in accordance with the Sìjí míngkē 四極明科 (the standard Shàngqīng transmission code, though [[KR5a0184|DZ 184 Tàizhēn yùdì sìjí míngkē jīng]] does not in fact mention this text).
The revelation-frame: Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊 and his court are verifying the registers of the Three Principles when a strange light, streaming from the eastern and western horizons and followed by immortals, suddenly illumines the assembly. Yuánshǐ then explains how the transformations of the Dào lead, through the alternation of sun and moon, to the creation of the celestial administration of the Three Luminaries, and transmits to a zhēnrén a “text of the eight assemblies” — the hymns that form the main body of DZ 39 — hitherto hidden in the palaces of the luminaries.
Prefaces
No separate prefaces. The entire scripture is itself structured as the revelation-preface and transmission-postface to DZ 39, and opens directly with the celestial-court revelation-scene.
Abstract
The scripture is anonymous and undated. John Lagerwey, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:595 (§2.B.8, Dòngzhēn Division), assigns it to the Táng and treats it as the complementary preface-postface to DZ 39. The catalog dynasty 唐 is accepted. Frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 618 / notAfter 907.
No author is attributed; no persons are listed in the catalog meta.
Translations and research
No translation or dedicated scholarly study. Standard scholarly entry: John Lagerwey, “Taishang daoyin sanguang baozhen miaojing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.8, 595.
Other points of interest
The scripture is a compact example of the Daoist editorial practice of generating an auxiliary scripture that functions as the prefatorial-and-colophonic framing for a primary scripture — preserving the revelation-narrative separately from the scriptural content it frames. The pairing DZ 39 / DZ 40 supplies a model for this “split-preface” editorial structure, widely used in the Táng Daoist canon.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0040
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.8, 595 — DZ 40 entry (John Lagerwey).