Tāixī jīng zhù 胎息經註
Commentary on the Book of Embryonic Breathing
by 幻真先生 (注)
About the work
A three-folio late-Táng commentary on the one-folio [[KR5a0014|DZ 14 Gāoshàng yùhuáng tāixī jīng]], the “Book of Embryonic Breathing,” transmitted as the work of Huànzhēn xiānshēng 幻真先生 (“Master Illusion-True”), a ninth-century specialist on respiratory cultivation whose real identity is unknown. The text is preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0130 / CT 130), 洞真部 玉訣類, and is appended in the same Dàozàng fascicle as two companion pieces, [[KR5a0132|DZ 131 Tāixī bìyào gējué]] and [[KR5a0133|DZ 132 Tàiqīng zhēnrén luòmìng jué]].
Prefaces
No preface in the source; the text opens directly with the root-scripture line 胎從伏氣中結 and its commentary, and closes with a short verse-inscription (胎息銘).
Abstract
The compilers of the Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要 considered Huànzhēn xiānshēng to be the author of the root scripture as well, but the Tāixī jīng also circulates independently (see DZ 14) and in a slightly variant form in Yúnjí qīqiān 雲笈七籤 60.27a–28b; the commentary itself is found at YJQQ 60.14a–27a. Huànzhēn xiānshēng is generally identified with the author of [[KR5a0828|DZ 828 Huànzhēn xiānshēng fúnà yuánqì jué]] (the surface character 幼 in the DZ edition being a scribal error for 幻), a major Táng treatise on embryonic breathing; an attached preface dates that work to the Tiānbǎo era (742–756), but the same preface circulates with DZ 824 under a Dàlì era (766–779) date, casting doubt on the Tiānbǎo attribution. Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:367–368 (§2.A.4.b, Respiratory Techniques), observes that the equation tāixī 胎息 = nèidān 內丹 on 1a and 3b, and the borrowing at 3a from [[KR5a0825|DZ 825 Yánlíng xiānshēng jí xīnjiù fúqì jīng]] 17b, point to late-Táng or even post-Táng compilation, probably before the Yúnjí qīqiān. The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 850 / notAfter 900.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Taixi jing zhu,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.4.b, 367–368. For the background on embryonic-breathing literature see Henri Maspero, “Les procédés de ‘nourrir le principe vital’ dans la religion taoïste ancienne,” Journal asiatique 229 (1937): 177–252, 353–430, trans. as “Methods of ‘Nourishing the Vital Principle’ in the Ancient Taoist Religion,” in Maspero, Taoism and Chinese Religion (Amherst: U. Massachusetts Press, 1981), 443–554.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0131
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.4.b, 367–368.