Huánglù wǔkǔ lún dēngyí 黃籙五苦輪燈儀
Yellow Register Lamp Ritual of the Wheel of the Five Sufferings
Anonymous Sòng–Yuán Daoist dēngyí 燈儀, eight folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0214 / CT 214 = TC 213), 洞真部 威儀類, in the same Dàozàng fascicle as [[KR5a0214|DZ 213 Huánglù pòyù dēngyí]].
About the work
An eight-folio Huánglù 黃籙 (Yellow Register) lamp-liturgy designed to release the deceased from the Five Paths of Transmigration (wǔdào 五道) and the Three Evil Destinies (sān tú 三塗). The opening doxology sketches the cosmology: the marvellous origin precedes the cosmos; round and square fix their positions; the light and pure gather to make qián 乾 (the sky-cover), the heavy and turbid congeal to make kūn 坤 (the earth-car); at Kūnlún 崑崙, the great hub of the Earth-Wheel, the assembled immortals radiate outward like spokes, encircling the seas and revealing the great deep-carrying merit. Then there are thirty-six earths and Nine Fortifications (jiǔlěi 九壘), the abode of direct yīn, the expanse of unfeatured emptiness; the wind-wheel and the water’s edge are the dark region of long darkness, the pitch-black road of perpetual night, where souls are shackled in the obscure prison, the dead confined in the black hell, examined and tortured day upon day without halt — a suffering they cannot traverse without the great bounty of the Way. Whence Yuánhuáng 元皇 set up his teaching and the Most High handed down his Rule: opening a dharma-wheel platform where the Five Suffering Lamps are lit, the Five Paths are moved and the Nine Depths illuminated. The body of the rite consists of five (or more) invocations to the Xúnshēng jiùkǔ tiānzūn 尋聲救苦天尊, each keyed to one of the five destinies (hell, hungry ghosts, animals, men, devas), with a lamp lit to transform the sufferings of that path.
Prefaces
No separate preface in the source. The opening cosmological doxology functions as introduction.
Abstract
John Lagerwey, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:969 (§3.B.1, Zhèngyī), classes this lamp-rite within the standardized Huánglù funerary collection. Its conceptual architecture — the wǔdào (“five paths”) and the sāntú (“three evil destinies”) — is borrowed from Buddhist transmigration doctrine, as is the xúnshēng jiùkǔ (“seeking the sound, saving from suffering”) invocation formula, which reworks the Avalokiteśvara-style responsive delivery into a Daoist liturgical address. The frontmatter brackets composition broadly 1100–1300.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: John Lagerwey, “Huanglu wuku lun dengyi,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.1, 969. On Buddhist-Daoist cross-pollination in the wǔdào / liùdào system: Stephen F. Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994); Christine Mollier, Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China (Honolulu 2008).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0215
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.1, 969.