Huángdì zháijīng 黃帝宅經
The Yellow Emperor’s Scripture on Dwellings
Anonymous late-Táng to Five-Dynasties topomantic manual on the siting and construction of human dwellings, two juan, attributed (programmatically) to Huángdì 黃帝, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0282 / CT 282 = TC 282), 洞真部 眾術類.
About the work
A two-juan late-Táng or early-Five-Dynasties Daoist treatise on zháifǎ 宅法 (the topomantic siting of dwellings), the earliest extant work of its kind to be transmitted intact. The opening chapter (1.1a–2b) functions as an unannotated introduction; the rest of juan 1 is a general exposition of zhái technique, dotted with citations of an earlier Yìjué 翊訣 by a Hàn-period Xú Jūn 徐俊. Juan 2 presents and comments on two diagrams of the yáng and yīn dwellings (figure 22 in the Taoist Canon), with all quotations drawn from a “Book” (presumably an earlier zháijīng — also cited in juan 1, both in the notes 1.3b and the body 1.8a). Juan 1 lists twenty-nine topomantic works of authorship, the most recent being those of Lǐ Chúnfēng 李淳風 (602–670) and Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn 司馬承禎 (655–735, here called Sīmǎ tiānshī 司馬天師). The work’s system depends on the seasonal cycle, the sexagenary gānzhī binomials, and the indices of the twenty-four positions — without reference to the compass (luópán 羅盤) or the three shifted arrangements of the twenty-four positions characteristic of the later “southern tradition.”
Prefaces
No preface in the source. The text opens directly: “The dwelling (zhái 宅) is the pivot of yīn and yáng and the rule of human relations; without one broadly versed in things and clear in worth, it is not possible to grasp the Way of it. Among the five sorts of [topomancies], the most essential is the method of dwellings — the truly secret art. Of all that men inhabit, none falls outside the dwelling. Though great or small be unequal, yīn and yáng differ; even one who lodges as a guest in a single room has good and ill fortune in it: the great are spoken of in great terms, the small in small. Where there is transgression, there is calamity; where remedy is applied, the calamity ceases — like the efficacy of medicine on disease…”
Abstract
Marc Kalinowski, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:334–335 (§2.A.2, Divination and Numerology), observes that the work is not mentioned in any bibliographic catalogue before the Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要 (109.1a–b). The Sìkù compilers situate it within a topomantic tradition reaching back to the Hàn shū·Yìwén zhì 漢書藝文志 30.1774 (which lists a Gōngzhái dìxíng 宫宅地形 in 20 juan), and consider the Huángdì zháijīng one of the oldest extant treatises of Chinese mantic arts. The latest authors mentioned in the text — Lǐ Chúnfēng (d. 670) and Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn (d. 735) — are the principal terminus post quem; the author addresses “topomancers of recent times” (jìnlái xuézhě 近來學者, 1.2a) and considers the listed earlier works as the “old system” (gǔzhì 古制, 1.1b). A copy of juan 1 is attested in the Dūnhuáng manuscripts (Pelliot chinois 3865), placing composition at the latest in the late Táng (618–907) or Five Dynasties (907–960). The text is unrelated to the southern tradition that shaped modern Chinese geomancy from the Northern Sòng onward; it lacks the luópán and the three differently shifted arrangements of the twenty-four positions, and posits an absolute priority of calendrical calculation over real-site observation. The frontmatter brackets composition 780–960, defensibly later than Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn’s death (735) and at the latest the Five Dynasties.
Translations and research
Translation: Stephen L. Field, Ancient Chinese Divination (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008) — partial. Standard scholarly entry: Marc Kalinowski, “Huangdi zhaijing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.2, 334–335. Standard study of Chinese topomancy: Stephen L. Field, Ancient Chinese Divination; Ole Bruun, An Introduction to Feng Shui (Cambridge: CUP, 2008).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0294
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.2, 334–335.