Zǐyáng zhēnrén Wùzhēn piān zhùshū 紫陽真人悟真篇註疏
Commentary on Zǐyáng Zhēnrén’s Awakening to Truth
by 張伯端 (root text, 1075), with commentary by 翁葆光 (註, 1173); transmitted by 陳達靈 (傳, 1174); edited and annotated by 戴起宗 (編, ca. 1335)
About the work
An eight-juàn edition of the Wùzhēn piān 悟真篇 — Zhāng Bóduān’s 1075 nèidān magnum opus and the second cornerstone, after the Cāntóng qì, of Chinese inner alchemy — bearing the commentary of Wēng Bǎoguāng 翁葆光 (zì Yuánmíng 淵明, hào Wúmíngzǐ 無名子, Xiāngchuān wēng 象川翁; fl. 1173), with further sub-commentary and editorial apparatus by the Yuán philologist Dài Qǐzōng 戴起宗 (zì Tóngfù 同甫, hào Kōngxuánzǐ 空玄子; fl. ca. 1335). Preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0141 / CT 141 = TC 141), 洞真部 玉訣類, and also in the Sìkù quánshū and the Jīndān zhèngli dàquán. The Daozang witness is the most expansive of the surviving WēngDài editions of the poem — eight juàn against the three of the Sìkù edition — and incorporates a Wùzhēn piān jì 悟真篇記 (notes on the transmission, by Lù Sīchéng 陸思誠) and the appendix Wùzhēn zhízhǐ xiángshuō sānchéng bìyào 悟真直指詳說三乘秘要 (separately catalogued in the Daozang as DZ 143).
Prefaces
The Kanripo source directory for KR5a0142 contains no text files (only a Readme.org); prefatorial material is therefore not transcribed here. The same prefatorial complex — Wēng Bǎoguāng’s preface (dated 1173), Chén Dálíng’s preface (1174), Lù Sīchéng’s Wùzhēn piān jì, and Zhāng Bóduān’s own postface — is reproduced in KR5a0143 and KR5a0144 (cf. their _000.txt source files), to which the reader is referred.
Abstract
According to Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:817–819 (§3.A.4, Nèidān and Yǎngshēng), the present edition descends through the ZhāngLiúWēngChén transmission — Zhāng Bóduān to Liú Yǒngnián 劉永年 to Wēng Bǎoguāng to Wēng’s contemporary Chén Dálíng (hào Zǐyáng wēng 紫陽翁), Chén thence to his disciple Bóyúnzǐ 白雲子 (whose introduction is extant in DZ 143 14b, and whose preface to the present text is dated 1204). Several Wēng-commentary recensions circulated in the Southern Sòng; the present recension is, on Dài Qǐzōng’s claim, the version that incorporated Wēng Bǎoguāng’s “original Wùzhēn piān edition of the Lú family,” which Wēng later acquired and on which he commented. Several poems and quotations of a biéběn 別本 (“separate edition”) cited by Dài (e.g. the lyric Ráojūn liǎowù zhēnrú xìng 饒君了悟真如性 at 8.17b, also at DZ 145 2.40a) suggest that the original Lú-family edition was already lost or incomplete during the Southern Sòng (1127–1279). Composition of the received recension — that is, the editorial work of Dài Qǐzōng — is dated to ca. 1335; the frontmatter accordingly brackets the work to 1335–1340.
Translations and research
Tenney L. Davis and Chao Yün-ts’ung translated the Wùzhēn piān in “Chang Po-tuan, Chinese Alchemist of the Eleventh Century,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 73.5 (1939): 97–117. Modern scholarly translation: Thomas Cleary, Understanding Reality: A Taoist Alchemical Classic (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987); Fabrizio Pregadio, Awakening to Reality: The “Regulated Verses” of the Wuzhen pian (Mountain View: Golden Elixir Press, 2009). Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Ziyang zhenren Wuzhen pian zhushu,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 817–819. See also Isabelle Robinet, “Original Contributions of Neidan to Taoism and Chinese Thought,” in Livia Kohn ed., Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1989), 297–330; and the same author’s “Pang Wenfen and the Wuzhen pian chengshu didian.”
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0142
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 817–819.