Yuánshǐ dòngzhēn juéyí jīng 元始洞真決疑經
Dòngzhēn Scripture for Resolving Doubts, Spoken by [the Heavenly Worthy of] the Primordial Beginning
seventeen-folio scripture corresponding to juan 2 of the lost Běnjì jīng 本際經 corpus, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0059 / CT 59), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A seventeen-folio scripture that preserves juan 2 of the early seventh-century Tàixuán zhēnyī běnjì jīng 太玄真一本際經 (Běnjì jīng, DZ 1111 Tàixuán zhēnyī běnjì miàojīng — a partial Míng recension) — the most ambitious and influential Daoist doctrinal scripture-cycle of the late Suí and early Táng. Relative to the partial parent-scripture DZ 1111, the present text contains more textual variants and is corrupt in two places (12a–13a repeats 8b–9b, and 17a has lacunae). The title “Juéyí jīng” (“Scripture for Resolving Doubts”) derives from the contents: Yuánshǐ tiānzūn directly resolves doubts by answering questions put to him (1b, 16a–b), and before “entering mystery” (shēngxuán rù miào 昇玄入妙; 3a), he entrusts the Lord of the Dào with the task — hence the subtitle Fǔshū pǐn 付囑品 in DZ 1111 — of dispersing the doubts of the people, with the adept Xǔ Láilè 徐來勒 assigned to help disseminate the teaching (3b, 4b–5a).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source.
Abstract
Hans-Hermann Schmidt, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:522 (§2.B.7, Língbǎo), dates the scripture to the early seventh century, consistent with the Běnjì jīng corpus as a whole. The title Tàishàng juéyí jīng 太上決疑經 — under which the present text is sometimes cited — is already current in the eighth century, as appears from the citation in the early-eighth-century [[KR5a1123|DZ 1123 Yīqiē dàojīng yīnyì miàomén yóuqǐ 一切道經音義妙門由起]] 12a and in the Chū xué jì 初學記 23.553. The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 600 / notAfter 700, with dynasty 唐初期. No author is attributed.
The Běnjì jīng corpus is one of the most doctrinally ambitious products of the SúiTáng Daoist doctrinal project: a multi-juan scripture-cycle that deploys a sustained Mahāyāna-Daoist dialectical apparatus within the Daoist cosmological frame of Yuánshǐ tiānzūn’s revelation. Much of the corpus survives only through Dūnhuáng manuscripts and through the partial canonical recensions (DZ 59, DZ 329, DZ 1111); Wàn Yì 萬毅’s and Liú Yìqīng 劉屹’s studies of the Dūnhuáng Běnjì jīng manuscripts have re-established the corpus’s full scope and import.
Translations and research
No complete translation. Standard scholarly entry: Hans-Hermann Schmidt, “Yuanshi dongzhen jueyi jing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.7, 522. For the Běnjì jīng corpus more broadly: Wàn Yì 萬毅, Dūnhuáng běn 〈Tàixuán zhēnyī běnjì jīng〉 jí xiāngguān wèntí yánjiū 敦煌本《太玄真一本際經》及相關問題研究 (Mínzú chūbǎnshè, 2007); Liú Yìqīng 劉屹, Jìng-tiān yǔ chóng-dào: Zhōng-gǔ jīng-jiào dàojiào xíngchéng de sīxiǎng shǐ bèijǐng 敬天與崇道：中古經教道教形成的思想史背景 (Zhōnghuá shūjú, 2005). In Japanese: Yamada Takashi 山田俊, Kyōgi to senken: Chūsei Dōkyō no shisō kōzō 教義と遷賢：中世道教の思想構造 (Kyūko Shoin, 1997).
Other points of interest
The preservation of juan 2 of the Běnjì jīng as a separate canonical item under the revealing-title Juéyí jīng is a distinctive feature of the Sòng and Míng editorial process: what in the SúiTáng corpus was a single multi-juan scripture is fragmented into independent shorter canonical scriptures. The Běnjì jīng’s extensive Dūnhuáng manuscript base — and the comparison with DZ 59, DZ 329, and DZ 1111 — supplies one of the richest philological laboratories in the Daoist canon for the study of transmission-history.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0059
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.7, 522 — DZ 59 entry (Hans-Hermann Schmidt).