Tàishàng yùhuá dòngzhāng báwáng dùshì shēngxiān miàojīng 太上玉華洞章拔亡度世昇仙妙經
Marvellous Scripture of the Cavern-Stanzas of the Jade Flower of the Most High for Saving Souls from Hell, Saving the World, and Ascension to Heaven
Jīn-dynasty Daoist revelation-scripture in nine stanzas received through the Shanxi herdsboy-turned-immortal Dù Chángchūn 杜長春 in 1143, twelve folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0077 / CT 77), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A twelve-folio Daoist revelation-scripture in nine stanzas. The scripture opens in the Heaven of Jade Purity on the Xuándū shān 玄都山, where Yuánshǐ tiānzūn, ascending his throne, “causes the gongs to resound” to summon all the spirits of the universe to an “assembly of the Law.” The zhēnrén Tōngxuán 通玄眞人 asks what to do so that the people “in the inferior world” stop sinning and return to the Orthodox Way: “It is difficult to follow the way of the human heaven, easy to go down the path of demons. Not seeing the light, men fall into the yīn fortress (hell).” Even those who, in fear of death, practise the techniques of longevity, end nonetheless in the Bureau of Earth. What should be done?
Yuánshǐ tiānzūn explains to Tōngxuán that all the problems occur because people do not obey the Ten Commandments: “It is not the hells that [visit punishment] on people; people bring punishment on themselves.” Tiānzūn then describes a “golden book of the Jade Gate, hidden in the upper library of Xuándū,” whose recitation will save people from all the ills of the three spheres of the universe. The term Yùhuā 玉華 (“Jade Flower”) appears in the text (10b), but its meaning is not explicit; the text contains many allusions to alchemical practice, and the term is probably also to be understood in that context.
Prefaces
Postface recounting the origin of the scripture, dated 1143 (Huángtǒng 皇統 2):
Translated summary:
The Tiānníng Wànshòu guàn 天寧萬壽觀 of Fénzhōu 汾州 [Fenzhou, Shānxī] was originally the Táng-era Kāiyuán guàn 開元觀 — the seat of the liànshī Yán 閻鍊師, who propagated the supreme virtue and extended the mysterious current, truly an extraordinary man who attained the Way. Over four hundred years later, the imperial rescripts of Táng and Sòng to Yán — together with hymns — are engraved on stone and may still be consulted. But in the aftermath of wars the community of feathered-robed ones [Daoists] had grown thin. In the winter of the second year of Huángtǒng (1143) the brethren sighed together: “Shall we not be ashamed before our forebear Yán liànshī?”
Recently they had heard that at Xīguō 西郭 of Xiàoyì 孝義 there was one Dù Chángchūn 杜長春 — a boy not yet capped, a herdsboy who had met an immortal-perfected and in a single night had reached dùnwù 頓悟 “sudden awakening,” as one roused from dream or from drunkenness; he discoursed on profound matters, taught by poems and inscriptions like a dragon or serpent of brush, and wrote talismans and spell-waters that healed disease; both near and far heard of him and rejoiced. The community resolved to invite him to reside in a hermitage at the abbey, to perform transformations and revive the teaching — would this not be fitting?
All the Daoists rejoiced; they and the gentlemen who loved the Way jointly built a hermitage behind the abbey, with corridors and verandas, and planted pines and bamboos. They invited Dù Chángchūn from Xiàoyì to reside there and propagate the teaching. The following year, at the Superior Principle jiào 醮 (i.e. the 15th of the 1st lunar month), nearly a thousand attended. One day Dù addressed the assembly: “I possess a Tàishàng zhēnjīng of one juan not yet circulating in the world; I wish to transmit it to you. Its recitation above dispels heavenly disasters, in the middle certifies the body’s salvation, below averts demonic calamities — it saves from suffering, abolishes sin, and is the key to long life and achievement of the Way.”
All rejoiced and asked to hear more. On the Zhēnyuán 真元 festival of the second lunar month, they set up an offering to request the scripture in trust; on the Shàngsì 上巳 festival of the third month, they set up an offering to transmit the scripture in one juan, titled Tàishàng yùhuá dòngzhāng báwáng dùshì shēngxiān miàojīng, written on silk, some three thousand characters, arranged in nine stanzas with the Perfected’s numinous talismans and divine incantations appended at the end. On that day, with incense and flowers gathered, they processed to the Tàixiāo diàn 太霄殿 before the Three Pure Ones, read it aloud while the whole assembly knelt listening with heads bowed. All wished to recite it for life. They had the text engraved on blocks and printed in fascicles, presenting copies to devout Daoists to spread its transmission.
Abstract
The scripture is one of the very few Daozang texts whose revelation is documented to a specific year and place. The postface situates the revelation at Tiānníng Wànshòu guàn (Fénzhōu, Shānxī) under the Jìn 金 dynasty in 1143, received by the illiterate-turned-adept Dù Chángchūn 杜長春, an unordained youth who had encountered a Daoist immortal and experienced dùnwù 頓悟 “sudden awakening.” The explicit Huángtǒng 2 date-frame (1143, under Jīn Xīzōng 熙宗) and the precise calendric-ritual sequence (three successive jiào offerings in the first, second, and third lunar months of the year) give this scripture a documentary precision rare in Daoist revealed literature. The frontmatter locks the composition-date at 1143 for both notBefore and notAfter; dynasty 金 (Jurchen Jīn).
John Lagerwey’s entry in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:985–986 (§3.B.3, Língbǎo), treats the postface as the principal source of the text’s history. No author is attributed in the frontmatter sense; Dù Chángchūn, as recipient of a revelation, appears in prose.
Translations and research
No translation. Standard scholarly entry: John Lagerwey, “Taishang yuhua dongzhang bawang dushi shengxian miaojing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.3, 985–986. The Dù Chángchūn transmission is one of the better-documented Jīn-era Daoist revelations and is relevant to the pre-Quánzhēn Shānxī Daoist revival of the 1140s.
Other points of interest
The postface is a rare and richly-detailed Daozang witness to a localised Daoist revelation under the Jīn (Jurchen) dynasty: the narrative arc from Táng Kāiyuán guàn foundation, through four centuries of continuous activity, the disruption of the 1120s–30s SòngJīn wars, the 1140s local revival, the dùnwù experience of a boy herdsman, and the multi-stage scriptural transmission ritual constitutes one of the finest extant Jīn-era Daoist revelation-histories. The prescription that the assembly of three thousand-character text be written “on silk” with appended talismans and incantations, engraved on blocks, and printed in fascicles provides a concrete picture of mid-twelfth-century Daoist scriptural publishing.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0077
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.3, 985–986 — DZ 77 entry (John Lagerwey).