Lǚ Chúnyáng zhēnrén Qìnyuánchūn dāncí zhùjiě 呂純陽真人沁園春丹詞註解
Explication of the Alchemical Lyric “Spring in the Garden by the Qín” by the Zhēnrén Lǚ Chúnyáng
by 呂洞賓 (詞, attributed) and 俞琰 (註解)
About the work
An eleven-folio nèidān 內丹 (“inner alchemy”) commentary by the late-Sòng / early-Yuán Yìjīng and inner-alchemy master Yú Yǎn 俞琰 (1258–1314), hào Línwū shānrén 林屋山人 / Quányángzǐ 全陽子, on the famous Qìnyuánchūn 沁園春 cí-lyric ascribed to Lǚ Yán 呂喦 (Lǚ Dòngbīn 呂洞賓), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0136 / CT 136 = TC 136), 洞真部 玉訣類. Yú reads the poem line by line as a concealed code for the Southern-Lineage nèidān programme, identifying its alchemical figures (qī fǎn huándān 七返還丹, yīnyáng hours, hé chē 河車, qū jiāng 曲江) with stages in the gathering of the True Yáng at midnight, the union with the True Yīn to obtain the Seed, fire-phasing, and the final accumulation of merit.
Prefaces
No preface in the source; the commentary opens directly with the lyric and Yú Yǎn’s gloss, signed at the head 林屋山人全陽子註解.
Abstract
The Qìnyuánchūn “Spring in the Garden by the Qín” is a cí-lyric set to one of Lǚ Dòngbīn’s reputed tunes; though absent from the early bibliographies, it can be traced back to the eleventh century, the story of its transmission being recounted by Liú Fù 劉斧 (1040–after 1113) in Qīngsuǒ gāoyì 青瑣高議 8.82, where the poem is said to have been revealed to a jìnshì of Yuèyáng 岳陽 in Húnán named Cuī Zhōng 崔中 (see Baldrian-Hussein, “Yüeh-yang and Lü Tung-pin’s Ch’in-yüan ch’un”). Yú Yǎn (cf. [[KR5a1005|DZ 1005 Zhōuyì cāntóng qì fāhuī]]) reads the lyric in line with the practices of his school, drawing copiously on the [[KR5a1004|Cāntóng qì]], the [[KR5a0142|Wùzhēn piān]], Bái Yùchán 白玉蟾, Xuē Zǐxián 薛紫賢 (see Xuē Dàoguāng), Shào Yōng 邵雍, the Cuìxū piān 翠虛篇 of Chén Nán 陳楠 (“Chén Nímwán” 陳泥丸), Zhāng Bóduān, and Chén Cháoyuán 陳朝元: the chief scholarly interest of the commentary lies precisely in the breadth of its citations. Composition falls within Yú’s mature inner-alchemy years; the frontmatter brackets the work to 1284–1314.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Lü Chunyang zhenren Qinyuan chun danci zhujie,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1174. See also Baldrian-Hussein, “Yüeh-yang and Lü Tung-pin’s Ch’in-yüan ch’un,” T’oung Pao 72 (1986): 132–168.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0137
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1174.