Sāncái dìngwèi tú 三才定位圖
Illustrated Pantheon Fixing the Positions of the Three Spheres
presented to the throne by 張商英 (進)
About the work
An eight-plus-eleven-folio illustrated Daoist pantheon, presented to the throne by the Northern-Sòng statesman, ritual specialist and Daoist-Buddhist syncretist Zhāng Shāngyīng 張商英 (1043–1121). The volume is preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0155 / CT 155 = TC 155), 洞真部 靈圖類, where the title-page reads 二圖同卷 (“two charts in the same juan”): the present Sāncái dìngwèi tú and the Shàngqīng dòngzhēn jiǔgōng zǐfáng tú 上清洞真九宮紫房圖. Zhāng’s work was probably composed under imperial commission during Huīzōng’s 徽宗 reign (1100–1126), and its surviving illustrations are an important document of early-Sòng theology — depicting in turn the Empty Sovereigns (xūhuáng 虛皇), the Three Pure Ones (Sānqīng 三清), and the Heaven of the Jade Emperor (Yùhuáng 玉皇 and the Thirty-Two Heavens; cf. TC fig. 32). An obviously misplaced and incomplete picture of the Controller of Fate (Jiǔtiān sīmìng 九天司命; the “Heavenly Worthy of the Protection of Life” Bǎoshēng tiānzūn 保生天尊) is inserted between the second and third of the Three Pures (cf. TC fig. 33).
Prefaces
The volume opens directly with the table of contents (piānmù 篇目) of the Sāncái dìngwèi tú, beneath the author’s full ceremonial titulature: Tōngfèng dàfū shǒu Shàngshū yòu púshè jiān Zhōngshū shìláng Shàngzhùguó Qīnghéjùn kāiguógōng shíyì èr qiān jiǔ bǎi hù shíshí fēng jiǔ bǎi hù Zhāng Shāngyīng jìn 通奉大夫守尚書右僕射兼中書侍郎上柱國清河郡開國公食邑二千九百戶食實封九百戶張商英進 (“presented by Zhāng Shāngyīng, Grand Master for Awaiting Orders, Vice Director on the Right of the Department of State Affairs and concurrently Vice Director of the Secretariat, Pillar of State, Dynasty-Founding Duke of Qīnghé Commandery, with stipendiary fief of 2,900 households and effective enfeoffment of 900 households”). The shàng piān 上篇 (“upper section”) then opens: “The Língshū jīng 靈樞經 says: the summit of Mount Kūnlún 崑崙 is called Jade Capital Mountain (Yùjīng shān 玉京山); on Yùjīng there is one Heavenly Thearch and in each of the four directions eight Heavenly Thearchs, totalling thirty-three Thearchs — what the Tàishǐ gōng (Sīmǎ Qiān) called ‘the sun and moon are eclipsed and become day and night.’ The palace where the Yùjīng Tiāndì dwells is called the Tōngmíng diàn 通明殿 in the Yìshèng zhuàn 翊聖傳, because the radiance of his body lights up the radiance of the palace. The Língshū jīng further says: above Jade Capital Heaven are the Three Pures Heavens — Tàiqīng (also called Dàchì 大赤), Shàngqīng (also called Yúyú 禹餘), Yùqīng (also called Qīngwēi 清微); these are the Heavens to which the Nine Sovereigns descended their pneumas, by which yīnyáng and the spirit-and-form transformations were inaugurated, where the self receives joy. The Xūhuáng tiān 虛皇天 is the heaven from which the True Nine Sovereigns above sent down their pneumas to wind and below entrusted them to the marsh, thereby creating the world; pneumas being yin and yang, men are male and female, and the Dòngjīng 洞經 calls them Yùtóng 玉童 and Yùnǚ 玉女. This is why I, your servant, list the Three Pures’ residences as: Yùqīng = Qīngwēi tiān, Shàngqīng = Yǔyú tiān, Tàiqīng = Dàchì tiān.” The xià piān 下篇 (“lower section”) then expounds the eight trigrams as deriving from the pneumas of the True Nine Sovereigns.
Abstract
Kristofer Schipper, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:876–878 (§3.A.6, Sacred History and Geography), identifies Zhāng Shāngyīng as the Northern-Sòng statesman and liturgist, and observes that the work was probably composed on imperial order. According to the original piānmù, it served as a guide to the entire scope of the universe, from the highest sphere of the primordial Empty Sovereigns to the Heavens of the Three Pures, the deities of the cosmic energies of the Eight Trigrams (bāguà 八卦) and all their derivatives, the Heaven of Yùhuáng, the Three Officials (sānguān 三官), the Stars of the Dipper, the Twenty-Eight Stellar Mansions, and the Six Palaces of the Underworld (Fēngdū liù gōng 酆都六宮); only part of this great pantheon’s illustrations survive. Schipper notes (TC 877) that the illustrations at the beginning of [[KR5a0157|DZ 156 Shàngqīng dòngzhēn jiǔgōng zǐfáng tú]] (1a–4a) — depicting two of the Three Officials, the Gates of Heaven (èr gé 二閣), the Stars of the Dipper and Twenty-Eight Mansions — also originally belonged to the present work, the legends showing many similarities. Despite its lacunal state, the work remains, in Schipper’s judgement, “a precious document on early Song theology.” The frontmatter brackets composition notBefore 1100 / notAfter 1121, the latter being Zhāng’s death year.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Kristofer Schipper, “Sancai dingwei tu,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.6, 876–878. On Zhāng Shāngyīng see Patricia B. Ebrey, Emperor Huizong (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 2014), index s.v.; on Sòng pantheon-images more broadly see Edward L. Davis, Society and the Supernatural in Song China (Honolulu: U. Hawai’i Press, 2001).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0156
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.6, 876–878.