Tàiwēi xiānjūn gōngguò gé 太微仙君功過格
Table of Merits and Offences [Revealed by] the Immortal Lord of the Tàiwēi [Heaven]
revealed in a dream-audience to 又玄子 (撰, fl. 1171), with autograph preface
About the work
A fourteen-folio ledger of merit-and-demerit (gōngguò gé 功過格), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0186 / CT 186 = TC 186), 洞真部 戒律類, where it is bound together with [[KR5a0188|DZ 187 Tàiqīng wǔshí bā yuàn wén]] in a “two-scriptures-one-juan” (二經同卷) colophon. The work is the earliest preserved of its kind and the model for the very large gōngguò gé literature of the Míng (1368–1644) and Qīng (1644–1912). It enumerates thirty-six categories of meritorious deeds — divided across four “gates” of jiùjì 救濟 (rescue and aid, 12 entries), jiàodiǎn 教典 (classical-and-scriptural teaching, 7 entries), fénxiū 焚修 (incense-burning and self-cultivation, 5 entries), and yòngshì 用事 (everyday conduct, 12 entries) — and thirty-nine categories of impious deeds, similarly distributed across bùrén 不仁 (15), bùshàn 不善 (8), bùyì 不義 (10), and bùguǐ 不軌 (6). Each act is assigned a numerical merit or demerit ranging from less than 1 to over 100 points; the practitioner is to keep a journal at his bedside, recording each evening the day’s deeds in two columns, striking a provisional balance at month’s end and an accumulated balance at year’s end. The framework is self-monitoring rather than bureaucratically monitored: the practitioner’s own honest record-keeping is the moral instrument.
Prefaces
Yòuxuán zǐ’s autograph preface: “The Yì 易 says: ‘A house that accumulates good has a surplus of blessings; a house that accumulates the not-good has a surplus of disasters.’ The Daoist articles say: ‘When good is accumulated, [Heaven] sends down good fortune; when evil is wrought, it sends down disaster as recompense.’ Therefore the teachings of Confucianism and of Daoism are one and not two. In old times the sages and gentlemen and high-Way figures all wrote out vows-and-precepts: inwardly to wash the mind and refine conduct, outwardly to instruct other men, in order to perfect their merit. In the xīnmǎo 辛卯 year of Dàdìng 大定 (1171), in the second month of spring, on the 2nd day at the hour of midnight, in a dream I roamed to the Purple Palace and reverently audienced Tàiwēi xiānjūn 太微仙君, who conferred on me the Gōngguò gé 功過格 and ordered me to transmit it to those of like-faith. Suddenly I awoke; the categories of merit-and-offence were each clear before me. I put on my robe, sat upright, silently turned them over in mind: knowing that this was the descent of the high-immortal’s numen, I dared not be slack — I straightened my dress, placed my cap, washed my inkstone, took up the brush, and ran the brush across the paper, finished it without delay. All of this came from no-thinking, was untouched by deliberate intention. I have written out thirty-six categories of merit and thirty-nine categories of offence, divided into four ‘gates’ each, to make plain the numbers of merit-and-offence and to give them to the cultivators-of-the-True. They will write each day with sun and moon, themselves recording merit-and-offence — once a month making a small reckoning, once a year a great reckoning — to know themselves the proportion of merits to offences, in agreement with the heavenly Tribunal’s reckoning above. In the comparison nothing will be different. To set down a merit each day is easy when the brush is taken up; but to set down an offence is hard. Even a clear-minded scholar, suddenly enlightened to the causes of guilt-and-blessing, the gates of good-and-evil, will know to halve them — and being mindful of them, will be wholly without them. To uphold this practice — far from evil and turning to good — is truly true precept; the immortals will be not far away.” Signed: “Yòuxuán zǐ, of the Wúyōu xuān 無憂軒 in the Huìzhēn táng 會真堂 on Xīshān 西山.”
Abstract
Hans-Hermann Schmidt, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1126–1127 (§3.B.9, The Quánzhēn Order — though in fact the work pre-dates Quánzhēn and is here grouped only because of its later usage by the school), takes the dream-audience preface at face value as a 1171 date for composition. Akizuki Kan’ei 秋月觀暎 has argued from the toponymic anchor “Huìzhēn táng on Xīshān” that the author was affiliated with the Jìngmíng 淨明 tradition associated with Xǔ Xùn 許遜’s cult on Xīshān 西山 in Jiāngxī (Akizuki, Chūgoku kinsei dōkyō no keisei, 197ff.) — though Xīshān itself was Southern-Sòng territory, not Jīn, in 1171, so the toponymic claim is at least partly fictive. The thirty-six categories of merit and thirty-nine of demerit are arranged on a scale of less than 1 to more than 100 points; the author recommends keeping ledger-columns nightly, with monthly and yearly tallies, that the practitioner may “become aware of his actions and change his conduct accordingly.” The work served as the model for the various tables of merits and offences widespread in the Míng and Qīng. The frontmatter follows TC and the autograph preface in dating composition to 1171.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Hans-Hermann Schmidt, “Taiwei xianjun gongguo ge,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1126–1127. Definitive social-historical study of the gōngguò gé tradition: Cynthia J. Brokaw, The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), esp. 43–52 on the present text. Foundational Japanese scholarship: Sakai Tadao 酒井忠夫, “Kōka no kenkyū” 功過の研究, in Sakai Tadao chosakushū (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1999); Akizuki Kan’ei 秋月觀暎, Chūgoku kinsei dōkyō no keisei (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1978).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0187
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.9, 1126–1127.