Yuánshǐ wúliàng dùrén shàngpǐn miàojīng zhùjiě 元始無量度人上品妙經註解
Commentary and Explication on the “Wondrous Scripture of Limitless Salvation”
accessible Yuán-era Dùrén jīng commentary by Xuē Jìzhāo 薛季昭 of Lúshān 廬山, presented 1303 (or 1304); three juan; preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0093 / CT 93 = TC 92), 洞真部 本文類
About the work
A three-juan commentary on the Dùrén jīng by Xuē Jìzhāo 薛季昭 (hào Xiānwēng 仙翁), a Daoist master from Lúshān 廬山 in possession of the Shàngqīng dàdòng bǎolù 上清大洞寶籙 register (3.22b). The commentary is preceded by a liturgical memorial with the discrepant dates Dàdé 大德 7 (1303) and jiǎchén 甲辰 (1304) — the latter probably a transcriptional error for Dàdé 7 guǐmǎo 癸卯 (1303), or vice versa. In the memorial Xuē humbly presents his work to the Jade Emperor: “Many people recite this book, but few understand it. It is not that earlier worthies have not written commentaries, but they tend to be obscure, and latter-day adepts have difficulty understanding them.” Xuē presents himself as one who has “received the heart-seal transmission of the master” and is in charge of the Altar for the Manifestation of Thunder (Xiānléi tán 顯雷壇). He hopes to earn merit and compensate for his own sins by writing as straightforward a commentary as possible — and indeed his commentary is comparatively unencumbered by esoteric readings and descriptions of the spiritual bureaucracy.
A series of postfaces recounts the publication. According to Lǐ Yuèyáng 李月陽, also of Lúshān and writing in 1305, Xuē’s reticence to publish was overcome first by a local layman’s decision to finance the engraving, and then by the words of encouragement uttered by the divine Marshal Wáng on the Thunder Altar of Anterior Heaven in West Market five days after the completion of the carving had been liturgically announced (3.19a–20a). In 1308, according to a postface by Xuē (3.20a–22a), he spent a night on the same altar; during the night the “ancestral master” Léi Mò’ān 雷默庵 came to him in a dream with two announcements: first, that Xuē’s name had been registered in the Shénxiāo celestial offices because his “merit in explaining [the Dùrén jīng] is equal to mine”; second, that a text was about to be revealed to him (the heart-seal transmission mentioned in the preface). Eight days later, as predicted, a text is revealed to Xuē by Xīn Zhōngyì 辛仲義, the divine Clerk of the Thunder Clap who had originally revealed the Hùnyuán Thunder rites to Léi Mò’ān ([[KR5a0297|DZ 297 Lìshì zhēnxiān tǐdào tōngjiàn xùbiān]] 5.12b). A final text by Xuē tells the history of the revelation and transmission of the “precious declaration of the Primordial Beginning,” which Xuē wrote out on the Scriptural Altar of the Sea of Snow Heart-Mirror in 1316.
Xuē states explicitly that his commentary is intended for religious novices (chūzhēn dédào zhě 初真得道者; 2.24b, 3.4b, 21b), whether or not they have received a ritual register (fǎlù 法籙). He simplifies the Dùrén jīng by — in an undated postface (3.18a–19a) — going against contemporary practice and excluding the Língshū xiàpiān 靈書下篇 and the Tàijí zhēnrén hòuxù 太極真人後序. He borrows regularly from Guō Wǎngfèng’s commentary (DZ 88) (esp. juan 2; cf. 2.3a on Kūnlún with DZ 88 2.9a) and from [[KR5a0087|Lǐ Shàowēi in the Sìzhù (DZ 87)]] (esp. juan 3). He shares with [[KR5a0090|Xiāo Yīngsǒu’s Nèiyì (DZ 90)]] both the mode of liturgical presentation and the zhìfú 職符 (3.18a; DZ 90 Nèiyì 5.36a), and alludes once to Shénxiāo literature (2.29b).
Distinctive to Xuē’s commentary is its relative simplicity and its repeated references to the ritual context of scripture recitation: where Yán Dōng 嚴東 interprets the phrase “today there is the joy of transmission” as a reference to the transmission of the Dùrén jīng to Dàojūn within the text itself ([[KR5a0087|DZ 87 Sìzhù]] 2.58a), Xuē interprets it as a reference to actual religious initiation: “today so-and-so is being initiated” (2.20b–21a).
Prefaces
- Liturgical memorial by Xuē Jìzhāo dated Dàdé 7 (1303) and jiǎchén (1304).
- Postface by Lǐ Yuèyáng of Lúshān, 1305, on the publication history.
- Postface by Xuē Jìzhāo, on the 1308 dream-revelation from Léi Mò’ān and the subsequent revelation by Xīn Zhōngyì.
- Final text by Xuē, 1316, on the “precious declaration of the Primordial Beginning.”
Abstract
John Lagerwey, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:719–721 (§3.A.1), provides the principal scholarly treatment. The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 1303 (earliest date in the prefatorial apparatus) / notAfter 1316 (Xuē’s final postface), with dynasty 元. Xuē Jìzhāo is the sole catalog-meta person wikilinked.
Translations and research
No complete translation. Standard scholarly entry: John Lagerwey, “Yuanshi wuliang duren shangpin miaojing zhujie” [TC 92 = DZ 93], in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.1, 719–721. For Xuē’s relation to Léi Mò’ān and the Shénxiāo thunder-rite tradition see Lagerwey’s adjacent entries and Judith M. Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature (1987), 209–211.
Other points of interest
Xuē Jìzhāo’s commentary is distinctive among the Dùrénjīng commentaries for its deliberate ritualisation of the scripture: interpretations that in other commentaries are allegorical or alchemical are here tied to concrete ritual initiation practices of the Yuán Shénxiāo lineage. The sequence of prefaces and postfaces — 1303/1304, 1305, 1308, 1316 — provides an unusually detailed chronology of a medieval Daoist commentary’s composition, publication, and subsequent dream-revelation supplementation.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0093
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.1, 719–721 — DZ 93 entry (John Lagerwey).