Tàishàng yùpèi jīndāng tàijí jīnshū shàngjīng 太上玉珮金璫太極金書上經
Superior Scripture, Golden Writ of the Supreme Pole [in Honour] of Jade Pendant and Gold Ring, Spoken by the Most High
Eastern-Jìn Shàngqīng revelation-scripture on the preparatory practice for absorbing astral emanations, centred on the deities Yùpèi 玉佩 and Jīndāng 金璫, twenty-six folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0056 / CT 56), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A twenty-six-folio Shàngqīng revelation-scripture centred on the two deities Yùpèi 玉佩 (“Jade Pendant”) and Jīndāng 金璫 (“Gold Ring”), identified in Shàngqīng cosmology as the hún 魂 and pò 魄 souls of the Primordial Nine Heavens, incarnating the Green Yáng and the White Yīn, and holding imperial rank among the Shàngqīng deities. The scripture presents itself as a preparatory practice for the absorption of astral emanations, in the tradition of the older Shíjīng jīnguāng 石景金光 and the Bǎojiàn jīng 寶劍經 (Scripture of the Jewel-Sword) at whose origin it is placed. The text contains a distinctive series of descriptions of the Three Palaces of the middle and lower parts of the body (6b–9b) and of the deities inhabiting them, peculiar to this scripture; these are not found in any other Shàngqīng text. The closing pages (beginning 23b) contain a practice of Míngtáng xuánzhēn 明堂玄真 (“Mystic Perfected of the Luminous Hall”), drawn from the biography of Máojūn 茅君 ([[KR5a0424|DZ 424 Shàngqīng míngtáng yuánzhēn jīngjué]]), and may have been added later — it is never quoted under the title of the present scripture in anthology contexts.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source.
Abstract
Isabelle Robinet, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:150 (§1.B.2, Shàngqīng), identifies the scripture as an original Shàngqīng revelation-text — rewritten during the revelation process itself, since its style and terminology agree with the other Shàngqīng scriptures — although the text itself claims a more ancient pedigree through its stated link to the Shíjīng jīnguāng / Bǎojiàn scriptures. Quotations in the late-sixth-century Wúshàng bìyào (WSBY) and the early-Táng Sāndòng zhūnáng (SDZN) agree with the received text except for the closing appendix on Míngtáng xuánzhēn practice. The scripture is associated in the Zhēngào 真誥 14.a–b and 13.12a with Master Zhāng of Hándān 邯鄲張先生, who is said to have produced the Wǔdǒu sānyī 五斗三一 method.
The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 364 (opening of the Shàngqīng revelations) / notAfter 420 (close of Eastern Jìn), with dynasty 東晉. No author is attributed; no persons are listed in the catalog meta.
Translations and research
No translation. Standard scholarly entry: Isabelle Robinet, “Taishang yupei jindang taiji jinshu shangjing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §1.B.2, 150. For the wider Shàngqīng astral-absorption tradition: Robinet, La révélation du Shangqing (2 vols., EFEO, 1984); Paul W. Kroll, “In the Halls of the Azure Lad,” JAOS 105 (1985), 75–94.
Other points of interest
The scripture’s naming of Yùpèi and Jīndāng as hún/pò of the Primordial Nine Heavens and as the Green-Yáng and White-Yīn incarnations provides a key primary witness to the sophisticated Shàngqīng cosmological-anthropological identifications between celestial and intra-bodily deities that lie at the foundation of the Shàngqīng visualisation-programme.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0056
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §1.B.2, 150 — DZ 56 entry (Isabelle Robinet).