Zhēnqì huányuán míng 真氣還元銘
Inscription on the True Qì Returning to its Origin
by 強名子 (撰, “Master of the Forced Name”, Five-Dynasties pseudonymous author)
About the work
A short, one-juan epigrammatic míng 銘 (“inscription”) on breathing and meditation, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 264 / CT 264 = TC 1:368–369), 洞真部 方法類. The text is a classical four-character verse-text in the Han epigraphical míng style, accompanied by an explanatory commentary. The author, using the pseudonym Qiángmíng zǐ 強名子 (“Master of the Forced Name” — drawn from Lǎozǐ ch. 25, qiáng wéi zhī míng yuē Dào 強為之名曰道, “if forced to give it a name, I call it the Way”), tells us in his undated preface that during the Zhēnmíng 貞明 reign-period (915–920) of the [Later] Liáng 後梁 dynasty he visited Mount Tài 泰山 and met an immortal who transmitted to him the tǔnà liànxíng 吐納鍊形 (“spitting-out-and-inhaling, body-perfecting”) art. The immortal forbade him to divulge the secrets for twenty years, and so — that time now elapsed — he has worked the instructions into a xīnjīng 新經 (“new scripture”) for inscription in public places and on holy mountains. The accompanying commentary draws extensively on the Huángtíng jīng 黃庭經 and the Tāixī jīng 胎息經, situating the míng squarely within the late-Táng / Five-Dynasties yǎngshēng 養生 tradition that combined breathing techniques (tǔnà, fúqì 服氣, bìqì 閉氣) with visualisation and liànxíng 鍊形 body-refinement.
Prefaces
Qiángmíng zǐ’s autograph preface (paraphrased): “I myself do not know whence I came; that I have feet I call them my feet, that I have a body I call it my body. The ancients told us that Dào may not be named, but to point at it one must use a name. And so I am called Qiángmíng zǐ — the Master of the Forced Name. In the Zhēnmíng 貞明 era of the [Later] Liáng I climbed Tàishān 泰山, where I met a man whose face was like a child’s, his hair white as silk, his eyes shining like stars. He led me by the hand to a stone chamber and there transmitted to me the secret of tǔnà breathing and the liànxíng arts of body-perfection, charging me on pain of celestial reproof not to publish what he had given me until twenty winters had passed. Twenty winters and more have now passed, and I — old and unworthy — am unwilling that these instructions should die with me; I have therefore worked them into the form of a míng with explanations, in the manner of the ancient classics, that they may be inscribed in stone in places of resort and on the famous mountains, and so be transmitted to those who come after.”
Abstract
Kristofer Schipper, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:368–369 (§2.A.4, Yǎngshēng), summarises the work and accepts the author’s preface at face value as situating composition in the first half of the tenth century. The míng form — short epigrammatic four-character verses — is unusual for yǎngshēng literature and lends the work a distinct programmatic character: the verses serve as memorisable seeds that the prose commentary then expands. The commentary’s heavy citation of the Huángtíng jīng and Tāixī jīng shows continuity with the Táng visualisation-cum-breathing tradition. Frontmatter brackets composition ca. 935–950, between the elapsed-twenty-years terminus of the preface and the mid-tenth-century horizon of the Five Dynasties.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Kristofer Schipper, “Zhenqi huanyuan ming,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.4, 368–369. On Five-Dynasties yǎngshēng and breathing literature: Catherine Despeux, Taoïsme et corps humain: le Xiuzhen tu (Paris: Trédaniel, 1994); Livia Kohn ed., Daoism Handbook (Leiden: Brill, 2000), Part III on body practices.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0276
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.4, 368–369.