Tàishàng Yuánshǐ tiānzūn shuō dàyǔ lóngwáng jīng 太上元始天尊說大雨龍王經
Scripture of the Great Rain-Producing Dragon-Kings, Spoken by the Most High Yuánshǐ Tiānzūn
Táng Daoist prophylactic drought-rain scripture, three folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0051 / CT 51), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A three-folio Táng Daoist scripture whose core is an enumeration of the names of sixty-eight dragon-kings (lóngwáng 龍王) for invocation during droughts. Good laymen and laywomen (shàn nánzǐ shàn nǚrén 善男子善女人) are exhorted to go wherever a drought is occurring, to copy the text, to transmit it in a “pure and solemn” manner, and then to request a “Ritual Master of Great Virtue” (gōngdé fǎshī 功德法師) to recite it on a Daoist ritual-area — which the scripture also calls a jìngtǔ 淨土 “Pure Land” — to pray for rain on the six monthly days of fasting (liùzhāi rì 六齋日; 1b). The text opens in the same fashion as [[KR5a0062|DZ 62 Yuánshǐ tiānwáng huānlè jīng]]: “When Yuánshǐ tiānzūn had completed [a tour of inspection] of the Five (Ten in DZ 62) Directions…”
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source.
Abstract
John Lagerwey, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:557–558 (§2.B.7.a.3), assigns the scripture to the Táng on the strength of its characteristic Táng terminology — shànnánzǐ / shànnǚrén for “good laymen and laywomen,” jìngtǔ for a Daoist altar-area, Gōngdé fǎshī for the ritual officiant, héyǐgù 何以故 for “For what reason?” — all diagnostic of Táng Mahāyāna-Daoist vocabulary. The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 618 / notAfter 907, with dynasty 唐. No author is attributed.
Translations and research
No translation. Standard scholarly entry: John Lagerwey, “Taishang yuanshi tianzun shuo dayu longwang jing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.7.a.3, 557–558.
Other points of interest
The scripture is a clean specimen of the Táng Daoist absorption of Buddhist Nāgarāja 龍王 figures into a Daoist drought-ritual programme, with the sixty-eight dragon-king names carrying a marked Indic-Buddhist scriptural pedigree adapted to a Daoist officiating context.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0051
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.7.a.3, 557–558 — DZ 51 entry (John Lagerwey).