Jīnyè huándān yìnzhèng tú 金液還丹印證圖
Verifying Diagrams of the Liquefied-Gold Cyclically-Transformed Elixir
by 龍眉子 (撰)
About the work
A twenty-three-folio Southern-Sòng nèidān 內丹 (“inner alchemy”) chart-and-poem treatise of the Wùzhēn piān 悟真篇 commentarial tradition, by the otherwise unidentified Lóngméi zǐ 龍眉子 (“Master Dragon-Brow”). The work consists of eighteen drawings divided into two cycles of nine — wàifǎ xiàng 外法象 (“outer symbolic method,” nine chapters detailing the formation of the elixir) and nèifǎ xiàng 內法象 (“inner symbolic method,” nine chapters on its nourishment) — each accompanied by a heptasyllabic-verse poem giving the title and an explanation. The first cycle represents the alchemical experiment as a circle (tàijí 太極, the One Qi underlying all change); the second traces the stages from absorbing the elixir to attaining immortality, again concluding in a circle. Preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0151 / CT 151 = TC 151), 洞真部 靈圖類; reprinted in the Míng Dàoyán nèiwài bìjué quánshū and Fánghú wàishǐ, and accompanied in the Dàozàng jíyào edition by a long commentary by Hánchán zǐ 含蟾子.
Prefaces
The volume opens with a preface by Lóngméi zǐ (dated 1218 in TC’s reading). He observes that the registers of life and death are simply written in the jade tablets of celestial bookkeeping, while the search for masters and the questing of the Way is settled in the cinnabar book of the heart: good and evil are with men, ascent and descent depend on oneself. Reading the Hagiographies of the Assembled Immortals he learns that since antiquity 100,000 men have ascended to Heaven and 8,000 households been carried bodily off — and that this is not by inborn endowment but by laborious learning. The patriarch Xuānyuán 軒轅 was endowed at birth with numinous spirit, “given by Heaven”; Jīngyáng 旌陽 (Xǔ Sūn) was perfected by self-cultivation, “the work of man.” The path requires passing through evil karma to good fortune, surviving demonic trials and trials of resolve; it is hard to obtain and harder to refine. Lóngméi recounts his own twenty-five years of devotion from boyhood, his pointing-out of “a hundred masters” and how he met none until the last and finally awoke; he warns that what is hard to encounter must not be carelessly thrown away. Quoting “the lower gentleman laughs greatly when he hears [the Way]; the supreme sages therefore do not speak” (Lǎozǐ 41), he emphasises the danger of careless transmission. Setting forth the structure of his work — outer symbolic method in nine chapters on the making of the elixir (yuánběn, qiánkūn, dǐngqì, qiānhàn, héhé, zhēntǔ, cǎiqǔ, zhìdù, fǔzuǒ); inner symbolic method in nine chapters on its nourishing (fúdān, jiǔdǐng, jìnhuǒ, tuìhuǒ, chōutiān, mùyù, jīnyè, bàoyuán, cháoyuán) — he closes by likening the hidden teaching to a “snare and net for catching fish and rabbit” that one discards once the prize is in hand.
Abstract
Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:833–835 (§3.A.4, Nèidān and Yǎngshēng), notes that the colophon at 17b–18b dated gēngzi is an error for gēngchén 庚辰 (1220 / 1222 in TC’s reading; cf. TC 834), so that the work was finalised about 1222. Lóngméi zǐ’s identity is unknown, but the colophon of Wáng Jǐngxuán 王景玄, a Daoist of Bái Yùchán’s 白玉蟾 lineage, holds that Bái drew the pictures while Lóngméi composed the poems, and addresses Lóngméi as zǔshī 祖師 (patriarch) — possibly placing Wáng among Lóngméi’s disciples. By the Yuán the work had reached its present form (see the colophon of Líng Jǐng 凌靜 at 18b–20a). The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 1218 / notAfter 1222.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, “Jinye huandan yinzheng tu,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 833–835. Survey: Stephen Little, Taoism and the Arts of China (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2000), 344–347 (with reproductions of several illustrations).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0152
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 833–835.