Xuándū lǜwén 玄都律文
Penal Code of the Mysterious Capital
a fragment of the Zhèngyī 正一 community-discipline code, in seven sections
About the work
A twenty-two-folio fragmentary Zhèngyī 正一 (“Orthodox One”) penal code, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0188 / CT 188 = TC 188), 洞真部 戒律類. The “Mysterious Capital” (Xuándū 玄都) of the title is the seat of Lǎojūn 老君, governing seat of the Daoist heavenly bureaucracy; the lǜ 律 (code) regulates the religious life within the community of the Heavenly Master. Although the present canon-version is only a fragment of what Sòng bibliographies list as an eight- or fifteen-juan work (so VDL 98), the surviving text preserves seven labelled sections: Xūwú shàn’è lǜ 虛無善惡律 (the Empty-Nothingness Good-and-Evil Code), Jièsòng lǜ 戒頌律 (the Recitation-of-Precepts Code), Bǎiyào lǜ 百藥律 (the Hundred-Remedies Code, listing 100 virtuous acts each labelled “is a remedy”), Bǎibìng lǜ 百病律 (the Hundred-Sicknesses Code, listing 100 vices each labelled “is a sickness”), Zhìdù lǜ 制度律 (the Institutional-System Code: regulations on hereditary diocese-succession, the 7th-month annual zūmǐ 租米 tax, the sānhuì rì 三會日 assemblies, the zhì 治 dioceses’ cosmological orientation, the jìng 靜 oratories), and Zhāngbiǎo lǜ 章表律 (the Memorial-Drafting Code: rules for petitions and the diocesan ritual). The catalogue Sāndòng zhūnáng (SDZN) lists several further originally-titled subsections that do not survive here.
Prefaces
No preface in the source. The text opens directly with the Xūwú shàn’è lǜ heading and its enumerated thirteen “items of empty-nothingness” 十三條.
Abstract
Ursula-Angelika Cedzich, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:470–471 (§2.B.2 The Orthodox One Way of the Heavenly Master), identifies the work as a Zhèngyī community-discipline code regulating the religious life of the Heavenly-Master organisation. No conclusion can be drawn from the similar-sounding code-titles (Xuándū nǚqīng shànggōng zuǒguān 玄都女青上宮左官 and the like) cited already in [[KR5b0535|DZ 457 Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo zhìhuì zuìgēn shàngpǐn dàjiè jīng]] 2 (passim); but one of the earliest verifiable citations of the present work is in [[KR5a0156|DZ 133 Tàishàng dōngfāng nèijīng zhù 太上東方內經注]] 6a–7a, where the source is identified as juan 9 of the Xuándū lǜ and corresponds to 3b–4b of the present text. This citation, together with the numerous citations of Xuándū lǜ in Sāndòng zhūnáng (SDZN) and in [[KR5b0241|DZ 463 Yàoxiū kēyí jièlǜ chāo 要修科儀戒律鈔]] for which only rare matches survive in the present canon-text, demonstrates that what we have is merely a fragment of the original. The Sòng bibliographies still list the work in eight or fifteen juan (VDL 98). Among the surviving six sections (the SDZN names a few additional original subtitles), we find: instructions for reciting the rules (jièsòng lǜ 戒頌律); regulations for communal organisation (zhìdù lǜ 制度律) covering, inter alia, the hereditary succession of the master (shī 師), the annual taxes (tiānzū mǐ 天租米), the three days of assembly (sānhuì rì 三會日), and the cosmological orientation and arrangement of the dioceses (zhì 治) and “chambers of quietude” (jìng 靜); and rules for writing memorials (zhāngbiǎo 章表). For each offence against these rules, levels of punishment are specified, ranging from monetary forfeit through reduction of life-units (suàn 算) to ritual demotion. Firmly rooted in the Heavenly-Master tradition, the text reveals later influences in only one paragraph, on the investiture in different grades of ordination culminating in the transmission of the Shēngxuán zhēnwén 昇玄真文 and the Shàngqīng dàdòng [zhēnjīng] 上清大洞[真經] (17a) — a sequence that places the surviving fragment in the seventh century. The frontmatter brackets composition to the seventh century, in agreement with TC.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Ursula-Angelika Cedzich, “Xuandu lüwen,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.2, 470–471. On the early Heavenly-Master code-tradition see Terry Kleeman, Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016), esp. ch. 7; Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). On the zhì diocese-system and sānhuì rì: Franciscus Verellen, “The Heavenly Master Liturgical Agenda According to Chisong zi’s Petition Almanac,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 14 (2004), 291–343.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0189
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.B.2, 470–471.