Dìfǔ shíwáng bádù yí 地府十王拔度儀
Ritual of the Ten Kings of the Underworld for Salvation from Sin
Anonymous Sòng-dynasty Daoist mortuary liturgy, twelve folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0215 / CT 215 = TC 215), 洞真部 威儀類.
About the work
The Dìfǔ shíwáng bádù yí is a Daoist ritual for delivering the souls of the deceased from the ten hells situated under Mount Fēngdū 酆都. The text frames the rite as a teaching dialogue between the Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊 and the Wondrous-Conduct Perfected (Miàoxíng zhēnrén 妙行真人), in which the Tianzun reveals at each station the name and the office of the presiding Zhēnjūn 真君 of the corresponding palace, the Buddhist-style “popular” name of that king (Qínguǎng dàwáng 秦廣大王, Chūjiāng dàwáng 初江大王, Sòngdì dàwáng 宋帝大王 etc.), the kinds of torment found there, and the appropriate verse-laudation (jì 偈) to be sung. The officiant offers incense, recites the verse, and so leads the soul out of each hell in turn — one hell per qī 七 of the seven-week mourning cycle, the eighth corresponding to the hundredth-day rite, the ninth to the first anniversary, and the tenth to the dàxiáng 大祥 (“greatly auspicious event”) at the end of mourning. Each station has its assigned Tiānzūn — Tàiyǐ jiùkǔ tiānzūn 太一救苦天尊, Yùbǎo huángshàng tiānzūn 玉寶皇上天尊, Xuánzhēn wànfú tiānzūn 玄真萬福天尊, and so on — in a clearly worked-out pantheon that systematically Daoizes the Buddhist-derived ten-kings cult that had flourished since the Táng.
Prefaces
No separate preface in the source; the rite opens with a triple incense-offering followed by the qǐ shèng rù kē 啓聖入科 (“invoking the Sages, entering the rules”) section, which serves as the framing introduction. The qǐ shèng rù kē opens: “Reverently: Heaven is high and Earth low; the bǐnhuì 品彚 (categories of beings) are arrayed and made manifest. The sun rises and the moon sets, and the four seasons relieve one another. What is born must end; nothing without beginning fails to come to a close. Looking at how mountains and marshes themselves cannot stay hidden, we know that the toll of forms and numbers cannot be evaded. August Heaven oversees, and the Maker of Things knows no partiality: in life there are gradations of high and low, but in death there is no gap between high and low. Man’s life in the world is illusion-and-transformation, not solid; the assembled body is forced into being. The four limbs are like a spring dream just before the pillow, like the spark in a stone, like a candle blown out by a fierce wind, like froth on water — gone in an instant, ruined in a moment. Form returns to earth; the pò 魄 returns to the obscure realm…”
Abstract
John Lagerwey, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1003 (§3.B.3, Língbǎo), describes the rite as a Daoist appropriation of the Ten Kings cult of medieval Chinese popular religion. The Ten Kings (Shíwáng 十王), each assigned to a specific stage of the post-mortem journey, were widely worshipped in TángSòng Buddhism (cf. the Foshuō shíwáng jīng 佛說十王經, Stephen Teiser, The Scripture on the Ten Kings [Honolulu 1994]). The Dìfǔ shíwáng bádù yí substitutes for the Buddhist saviors a roster of Daoist Tiānzūn presided over by Tàiyǐ jiùkǔ tiānzūn, casts the underworld as the domain of the Běiyīn tiānjūn 北陰天君 / Fēngdū dàdì 酆都大帝, and integrates the cycle into the Daoist Huánglù 黃籙 mortuary system. A “ritual of the Ten Kings to be chanted” is mentioned in [[KR5a0220|DZ 219 Língbǎo wúliàng dùrén shàngjīng dàfǎ]] 71.11a, and the present rite may be compared with the Xiè shíwáng 謝十王 in DZ 466 Língbǎo lǐngjiào jìdù jīnshū 172.5b–13a (ed. Lín Língzhēn 林靈真, late 13th c.). The frontmatter dates the text broadly to the Sòng (1100–1279), within the Língbǎo dàfǎ synthesis that DZ 219 exemplifies.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: John Lagerwey, “Difu shiwang badu yi,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.3, 1003. On the Ten Kings cult more broadly: 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); on the Daoist bádù 拔度 / liàndù 鍊度 mortuary complex, Matsumoto Kōichi 松本浩一, “Sōdai no Kōroku sai” 宋代の黄籙齋, Shūkyō shigaku ronshū (1978), 179–207.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0216
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.3, 1003.