Yuányáng zǐ jīnyè jí 元陽子金液集
Master Yuányáng’s Collection on the Gold Liquor
by 元陽子 (Yuányáng zǐ)
About the work
A late-Táng or Five-Dynasties alchemical treatise of fifteen folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0238 / CT 238 = TC 237), 洞真部 方法類, sharing a Dàozàng fascicle with [[KR5a0240|DZ 239 Huándān jīnyè gē zhù]] (a related commentary on a Huándān jīnyè gē 還丹金液歌 ascribed to the same Yuányáng zǐ). The text consists of thirty quatrains by Yuányáng zǐ — explicitly invoked as the model in [[KR5a0238|DZ 237 Huándān xiǎnmiào tōngyōu jí]]‘s preface — each followed by an interlinear self-commentary that draws on the canonical alchemical scriptures (the Yīnfú jīng 陰符經, the Cāntóng qì 參同契, the Jīnbì jīng 金碧經, the Lónghǔ jīng 龍虎經) and on attributed sayings of figures including Yīn Zhēnjūn 陰真君, Liú Ān 劉安 (淮南王), and Sūn Sīmò 孫思邈. The verses present the elixir process in symbolic terms — zhēnyīn zhēnyáng 真陰真陽, qīnglóng báihǔ 青龍白虎, huángyá 黃芽, jīnhuá 金華, zhū shā 朱砂 — with constant rejection of vulgar literalising readings that would identify the substances with mundane lead and mercury.
Prefaces
No separate preface in the source. The text opens directly with the first quatrain and its commentary: “True yīn, true yáng are the True Way; they lie just before your eyes — why look so far afield? The common run of men, year after year, burns the Returned Elixir; or, seeing some greenish-yellow tinge, they say: ‘Excellent!’ — Commentary: True yīn is what the sages name the upright qì of the north, the rénguǐ 壬癸 waters, head of the Five Phases…”
Abstract
Schipper, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:787, situates the work in the ninth–tenth century, prior to [[KR5a0238|DZ 237 Huándān xiǎnmiào tōngyōu jí]] (whose author, Qiánzhēn zǐ, explicitly states that he wrote in imitation of the Yuányáng zǐ jīnyè jí) and prior to [[KR5a0237|DZ 236 Jīnjīng lùn]] (which absorbs material from DZ 237). Together, DZ 236, DZ 237, and DZ 238 form a tightly interrelated cluster within the Northern-Sòng anthology of nèidān poetic exposition. The thirty quatrains and their commentary supply the citation-bedrock for that cluster’s theoretical vocabulary. The frontmatter brackets composition accordingly within the late Táng (after 800) and the early Sòng (before 1000), to accommodate a Five-Dynasties (907–960) date as the most likely.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: cross-referenced in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4 (DZ 237, 787). On the late-Táng / Five-Dynasties alchemical poetic tradition: Farzeen Baldrian-Hussein, Procédés secrets du Joyau magique: Traité d’alchimie taoïste du XIe siècle (Paris: Les Deux Océans, 1984); Lowell Skar, “Golden Elixir Alchemy: The Formation of the Southern Lineage of Taoism and the Transformation of Medieval China” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2003).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0239
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.A.4, 787.