Qī zhēn niánpǔ 七真年譜
Chronological Biographies of the Seven Perfected
compiled by 李道謙 (編, hào Tiānlè dàorén 天樂道人, also Héxhēn zǐ 和真子), 1271
About the work
A twenty-two-folio annalistic chronology of the Quánzhēn 全真 founder Wáng Chóngyáng 王重陽 (Wáng Zhé 王嚞, 1112/1113–1170) and the Seven Perfected (Qī zhēn 七真) — Mǎ Dānyáng 馬丹陽, Tán Chùduān 譚處端, Liú Chǔxuán 劉處玄, Qiū Chǔjī 丘處機, Wáng Chùyī 王處一, Hǎo Dàtōng 郝大通, Sūn Bù’èr 孫不二 — preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0175 / CT 175 = TC 175), 洞真部 譜錄類. The chronology runs year by year from Sòng Huīzōng’s Zhènghé 政和 2 (1112), when Wáng Chóngyáng was born, to the dīnghài 丁亥 year (1227), the year of Qiū Chǔjī’s death, gathering for each year the principal events affecting Wáng or one of the seven, drawn from the masters’ collected works (wénjí 文集) and from earlier funerary stelae and monastic biographies. The chronology was compiled at the Quánzhēn ancestral cloister Zǔtíng 祖庭 at Liújiǎng 劉蔣 village, south of Cháng’ān, where Lǐ Dàoqiān served as abbot.
Prefaces
The text has no opening preface but closes with a postface (hòuxù 後序) by the compiler dated the zhōngyuán 中元 day of the xīnwèi 辛未 year of zhìyuán 至元 (1271): “Year-by-year chronologies are an old practice — they make plain the records of a man’s career, that later ages may consult them. Our seven Perfected of the mystery-gate, though their bodies wandered beyond the world, had the Way’s full measure within the human realm; at the moment when our dynasty took up the Mandate, the merit of their saving the world and reaching things was not slight. Lǐ Hànlín 李翰林, hào Jìngzhāi 敬齋, of Fēnglóng 封龍, has said: ‘When the Seven Perfected saved the world, they truly accorded with the heart of Shàngdì; and when Shàngdì loved the people, he truly relied upon the Seven Perfected’s teaching.’ Otherwise, why should Heaven have produced our holy emperor to pacify the four seas, and produced Chángchūn 長春 to attend his great Mandate, the two gathering up their essence and meeting their spirits, beginning together and ending together? — looking at this matter one can see it. In the leisure of my burning incense and reciting, without measuring my own crookedness, I went widely through the masters’ collected works and the various biographies, beginning with the year of Chóngyáng’s coming into the world and ending with the autumn of Chángchūn’s ascent — across one hundred and sixteen years, sifted and ordered the events of their careers as a single chronology. Where one or two biographies disagree with the masters’ own collected works, I have set aside the biographies and followed the wénjí: for the wénjí’s record is more truthful, the biographies sometimes thin. Alas! the great outline of the Seven Perfected’s beginnings and endings is here. As for the Perfected’s ‘sitting still while the dragon shows itself, peals of thunder while the abyss stays silent, the divinity moves and Heaven follows’ — the marvel of unforced action — that no brush or tongue can fully describe. What is recorded here only takes the traces of their cultivation and teaching, by way of opening up the matter for the boys-just-beginning, that they may know the source of the masters they look up to. I would not presume to bother my fellow-disciples.” Signed at the Yúnxī Dàoyuàn 筠溪道院 within the Ancestral Cloister of Zhōngnán, by “the Tiānlè dàorén Lǐ Dàoqiān 天樂道人李道謙.”
Abstract
Florian C. Reiter, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1138 (§3.B.9, The Quánzhēn Order), notes that the work was compiled at the Liújiǎng-village ancestral hall in Shǎnxī — the western centre of the Quánzhēn school — and that its biographical material on Wáng Zhé is taken from a stele biography by Wáng Cuì 王粹. The chronology covers from Wáng Chóngyáng’s birth (1112) to Qiū Chǔjī’s death (1227); the biographies attempt to reconcile contradictions between earlier (unspecified) sources by collating them against the masters’ own wénjí, which the compiler treats as the most authentic and reliable witnesses. The frontmatter follows TC and the postface in dating composition to 1271.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Florian C. Reiter, “Qizhen nianpu,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1138. On Lǐ Dàoqiān as Quánzhēn historian see also Pierre Marsone, Wang Chongyang et la fondation du Quanzhen (Paris 2010); Vincent Goossaert, La création du taoïsme moderne (Paris: EHESS, 1997).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0176
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1138.