Yuánshǐ dòngzhēn císhàn xiàozǐ bào’ēn chéngdào jīng 元始洞真慈善孝子報恩成道經
Book of the Filial Son, Good and Merciful, Who Repays His Debt [to His Parents] and so Achieves the Tao
foundational běnwén 本文 scripture of the Táng Daoist Way of Filial Piety (Xiàodào 孝道), six folios, paired with [[KR5a0380|DZ 380 Dòngxuán língbǎo dàoyào jīng 洞玄靈寶道要經]]; preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0066 / CT 66), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A six-folio Táng Daoist scripture that is the foundational běnwén 本文 of the Daoist Xiàodào 孝道 (“Way of Filial Piety”) — the Daoist devotional movement centred on filial-piety ritual that flourished in the Táng alongside the more famous Buddhist filial-piety scripture corpus. The scripture describes the origin of the teaching: the zhēnrén of the left, the right, and the centre take form by becoming differentiated from the Primordial Beginning (1a); after 90,000 jié 劫, they leave the “jade matrix” with bodies luminous “like the new moon”; another 90,000 jié later, “they transform themselves into babies and attach themselves to their Real Mother” (1b). There they gradually grow up, awaiting the right time to re-enter the world. Each of these “true kings of filial piety” (an epithet bestowed by Yuánshǐ tiānzūn) rules over one of the Sānguāng 三光 — sun, moon, and Northern Dipper. Orphans are able to “repay the primordial debt” by invoking these filial-piety-kings.
The text is a parallel companion to [[KR5a0380|DZ 380 Dàoyào jīng]], with which it shares an identical closing sentence; Hans-Hermann Schmidt (in Schipper & Verellen 2004) concludes the two texts were probably composed by the same person.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source.
Abstract
Hans-Hermann Schmidt, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:552 (§2.B.7, Língbǎo), dates the scripture to the Táng. Diagnostic terms — zhēndào 真道 (“Real Tao”; 4b) and wúshàng [dà]dào 無上[大]道 (1a) — place the composition after the mid-seventh century. The wújìn zàng 無盡藏 (“inexhaustible reservoir”) terminology in DZ 380 (7a) suggests a date around 700 (cf. Jacques Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese Society, Columbia, 1995, 210–217). Traditionally, the Xiàodào is considered a branch of Língbǎo Taoism. The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 618 / notAfter 907, with dynasty 唐. No author is attributed.
Translations and research
No translation. Standard scholarly entry: Hans-Hermann Schmidt, “Yuanshi dongzhen cishan xiaozi baoen chengdao jing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.7, 552. For the wider Xiàodào movement: [[KR5a0449|DZ 449 Xiàodào Wú Xǔ èr zhēnjūn zhuàn 孝道吳許二真君傳]]; Schmidt’s entries on the Xiàodào cluster in the same volume.
Other points of interest
The scripture is the principal primary witness to the Táng Daoist Xiàodào movement’s claim of doctrinal priority over the Buddhist filial-piety corpus: the Chéngdào jīng framing emphasises its theological authority by linking itself to the highest of the Three Caverns (Dòngzhēn 洞真) of the Three Pure Ones (Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊; 1b: wúshàng dàdào yuánshǐ tiānzūn 無上大道元始天尊), while the cognate DZ 380 is merely a dàoyào 道要 (“summary of the Dào”). The doctrinal innovation of the “true kings of filial piety” as rulers of the Three Luminaries is distinctively Daoist.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0066
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.7, 552 — DZ 66 entry (H.-H. Schmidt).