Xuánfēng qìnghuì lù 玄風慶會錄
Record of the Celebrated Encounter of the Mystery-Wind
recorded by imperial command by 耶律楚材 (奉敕編錄, zì Jìnqīng 晉卿, hào Zhànrán jūshì 湛然居士, 1190–1244; styled in the colophon by the Khitan clan-name variant 移剌楚才), with anonymous preface dated rénchén 壬辰 (1232)
About the work
A nine-folio record of three lectures delivered by the Quánzhēn 全真 patriarch Qiū Chǔjī 丘處機 (Chángchūn 長春, 1148–1227) before Chinggis Khan at his temporary residence in the Hindu Kush in winter 1222, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0176 / CT 176 = TC 176), 洞真部 譜錄類. The Khan, having dispatched the official Liú Zhònglù 劉仲祿 to summon Qiū from Shāndōng in 1219, had the master’s exposition of the Way set down by his Khitan secretary Yēlǜ Chǔcái 耶律楚材, whose name appears in the Daozang as 移剌楚才 (“Specially-attached Imperial Servant, General of the Resplendent Military, Vice-Director in the Ministry of Rites, Yílá Chǔcái, by imperial command edited and recorded”). The work circulates as a companion to Lǐ Zhìcháng’s 李志常 Chángchūn zhēnrén xī yóu jì 長春真人西遊記 (DZ 1429), which records the journey itself; Xuánfēng qìnghuì lù alone preserves the doctrinal substance of the audiences.
Prefaces
Anonymous preface (致十一), composed at the zhì 至 (longest) day of rénchén 壬辰 (winter solstice 1232): “The preceptor of state, the Chángchūn zhēnrén 長春真人 — having received the imperial summons, was unwilling at first but then set out, parted from the central lands, crossed the flowing sands, set forth the way and the virtue to bring his ruler to right, halted weapons and rescued men: when his merit was complete he withdrew himself and weary of the world ascended to Heaven. From the time the Most-High Mystery-Origin (Lǎojūn) went west, in the silence of a hundred and a thousand years, only one such man as the Perfected has been seen. The traces of his outward journey and return are recorded in detail in the Xī yóu jì 西遊記; only what remained — his presentation of the Way to His Majesty in mystic words and abstruse intent — His Majesty had attendants set down and store privately. The years now exceeded ten, [the imperial copy] has been transmitted out, that it might be printed and circulated to the world, that we under Heaven might together know this remarkable affair of the Celebrated Encounter of the Mystery-Wind.” Title-page colophon: “Recorded at imperial command by the Specially-attached Imperial Servant, General of the Resplendent Military, Vice-Director of the Ministry of Rites, Yílá [= Yēlǜ] Chǔcái” 元侍臣昭武大將軍尚書禮部侍郎移剌楚才奉勑編錄.
Abstract
Florian C. Reiter, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1138 (§3.B.9, The Quánzhēn Order), establishes the work’s authorship: the account was in fact written by Yēlǜ Chǔcái 耶律楚材, the Khitan literatus and chief Sinitic adviser to the early Mongol court; “Yílá Chǔcái” 移剌楚才 is a (Khitan-clan) distortion of the same name standardised in later usage as 耶律. The anonymous preface (1232) speaks of Qiū Chǔjī’s visit to the temporary residence of the Khan, comparing the event to the famous westward journey ascribed to Lǎozǐ. The bulk of the text records three of the audiences between Qiū and Chinggis Khan in winter 1222, presenting the master’s responses to the Khan’s request for a medicine of long life: Qiū lays out his philosophy and the conditions that shape a human life, with attention especially to the conditions of the ruler, urging the Khan to restrain his appetites for women and slaughter, to remit the three-year tax on Shāndōng and Hébĕi, and to govern after the model of qīngjìng 清靜 (clear stillness). He cites the precedents of the Hàn revelations to Yú Jí 于吉 and Zhāng Dàolíng 張道陵, of Wáng Zuǎn 王纂 in the Jìn, and of Kòu Qiānzhī 寇謙之 under the Northern Wèi, framing himself within a long line of Daoist preceptors of state. The most striking passages were translated by Arthur Waley in The Travels of an Alchemist (1931) 21–25. The frontmatter brackets composition between the audiences themselves (1222) and the preface (1232).
Translations and research
Partial translation: Arthur Waley, The Travels of an Alchemist: The Journey of the Taoist Ch’ang-Ch’un from China to the Hindukush at the Summons of Chingiz Khan (London: Routledge, 1931), 21–25, translates substantial portions of the present text. Standard scholarly entry: Florian C. Reiter, “Xuanfeng qinghui lu,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1138; see also Zhāng Zhēng 張正, “Genfū keikai roku wo megutte” (cited in TC bibliography). On Yēlǜ Chǔcái see Igor de Rachewiltz, “Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai (1189–1243): Buddhist Idealist and Confucian Statesman,” in A. F. Wright & D. Twitchett eds., Confucian Personalities (Stanford 1962), 189–216. On Qiū’s audience and the Mongol-Quánzhēn relationship, Vincent Goossaert, “The Invention of an Order: Collective Identity in Thirteenth-Century Quanzhen Taoism,” Journal of Chinese Religions 29 (2001), 111–138.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0177
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1138.