Xiūzhēn shíshū Huángtíng nèijǐng yùjīng zhù 修真十書黃庭內景玉經注
Commentary on the Jade Scripture of the Inner Landscape of the Yellow Court, from the “Ten Books on Cultivating Perfection”
by 白履忠 (註, Bái Lǚzhōng, hào Liángqiū zǐ 梁丘子, fl. 722–729)
About the work
A three-juan recension of Bái Lǚzhōng’s 白履忠 (hào Liángqiū zǐ 梁丘子, fl. 722–729) Táng-period commentary on the Tàishàng huángtíng nèijǐng yùjīng 太上黃庭內景玉經 KR5b0015, juan 55–57 of the Xiūzhēn shíshū 修真十書, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 263k / CT 263.55), 洞真部 方法類. Bái Lǚzhōng was a court Daoist of the reign of Emperor Xuánzōng 玄宗 (r. 712–756); his biography in Xīn Táng shū 新唐書 192.5124 explicitly mentions the present commentary. The text is the canonical Táng-period commentary on the Nèijǐng version of the Huángtíng jīng 黃庭經 — the central scripture of medieval Daoist visualisation practice on the body’s inner pantheon. The commentary is complete, attending to each detail of practice and metaphysics, and drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources. It treats every one of the thirty-six chapters of the Nèijǐng with both line-by-line philological gloss and synthesizing exposition, identifying the bodily palaces, their resident spirits, the visualisation procedures, and the qì-circulation methods. Bái’s commentary was much copied in Sòng libraries (VDL 88), and the present Xiūzhēn shíshū recension is one of two extant Daozang witnesses, the other being the independent transmission DZ 402 (in 3 juan).
Prefaces
The Xiūzhēn shíshū recension preserves the prefatory Huángtíng nèijǐng yùjīng recitation-formula in which two prefaces are merged into one: the preface of the earlier Wǔchéng zǐ 務成子 commentary (here the first part) and Bái Lǚzhōng’s own preface (the second part). This is the same merged form found in DZ 402 and in Yúnjí qī qiān 雲笈七籤 11.1a–b. Bái’s own preface is short and explains his purpose and the method of his commentary: “The Huángtíng nèijǐng yùjīng is the secret canon of the upper qīng 清 heaven, transmitted to Lord Lǎo and thence to mortals; through careful reading one may know one’s own viscera and one’s own gods, and through visualisation enter the realm of the immortals. I have followed the chapters and added explanation where the words are dark, and have appended notes from the previous masters where they bear on the meaning.” The Wǔchéngzǐ preface — much longer — describes the descent of the scripture from the upper heaven and its early transmission.
Abstract
Kristofer Schipper, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:348 (§2.A.4, Yǎngshēng), notes that Bái Lǚzhōng’s commentary is the canonical Táng commentary on the Nèijǐng yùjīng, and that the present Xiūzhēn shíshū recension differs from DZ 402 in the order of the prefaces (the Wǔchéngzǐ preface here precedes Bái’s own; in DZ 402 the sequence is reversed). Both prefaces are in the Xiūzhēn shíshū version presented as if they were entirely Bái’s own work. The commentary’s broad citation-base (drawing on the Lièxiān zhuàn, the Shénxiān zhuàn, the Zhēngào 真誥, the early Shàngqīng corpus, etc.) made it the indispensable SòngYuán reference work on the Nèijǐng; later commentaries by Liú Chǔxuán 劉處玄 (DZ 401) and Jiāng Shènxiù 蔣慎修 (DZ 403) all stand in dialogue with Bái’s text. The frontmatter brackets composition to Bái’s documented period of activity (722–729).
Translations and research
The Liángqiū zǐ commentary is partially translated and extensively discussed in Kristofer Schipper, Concordance du Houang-t’ing king: Nei-king et Wai-king (Paris: EFEO, 1975); see also Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), and Robinet, “Original Contributions of Neidan to Taoism and Chinese Thought,” in Livia Kohn ed., Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques (1989), 297–330. The standard reference on the Huángtíng corpus: Paul Kroll, “Body Gods and Inner Vision: The Scripture of the Yellow Court,” in Donald Lopez ed., Religions of China in Practice (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996), 149–55. Standard scholarly entry: Kristofer Schipper, “Huangting neijing yujing zhu,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.4, 348.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0274
- Parallel: KR5b0086 Huángtíng nèijǐng yùjīng zhù (DZ 402, the independent transmission).