Huángdì lóngshǒu jīng 黃帝龍首經
Book of the Dragon’s Head, Transmitted by the Yellow Emperor
Anonymous Hàn-period manual on liùrén 六壬 calendrical divination, two juan, attributed (programmatically) to Huángdì 黃帝, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0283 / CT 283 = TC 283), 洞真部 眾術類.
About the work
The first of three Daozang treatises on the astrocalendrical divination known as liùrén 六壬 — a method that, until the Sòng, was practised with the aid of a divination board (shì 式) of the kind known to have existed since the Hàn (the term tuīshì 推式 “turning the board” appears at 2.18a). Two juan, divided into seventy-two paragraphs, with an extensive interlinear commentary that quotes a great many ancient sources; in several places the main text refers to the same sources (1.13a, 17a, 21b, and 2.21b), so that text and commentary appear to have become intermingled in the course of copying.
Prefaces
The author’s prefatory frame (2b) sets the work in legendary time: “When the Yellow Emperor was about to leave the world and ascend to Heaven on a dragon, he transmitted this book — which he himself had received from Xuán nǚ 玄女 — to his descendants. Upon his departure the dragon’s head was the last thing to be seen, hence the title.”
Abstract
Marc Kalinowski, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:85 (§1.A.2, Divination), observes that the earliest references to the Lóngshǒu jīng are in Bàopǔzǐ 抱朴子 19.307, Wǔxíng dàyì 五行大義 2.12a, and the Yánshì jiāxùn 顏氏家訓 19.520–521; the Suí shū·Jīngjí zhì 隋書經籍志 34.1029 gives the present title and number of juan. Hóng Yìxuān 洪頤煊 in his preface to his 1805 edition (Píngjīnguān cóngshū 平津館叢書) reveals the multiple connections between the book and Hàn society. The text has, however, undergone modifications, since a number of quotations preserved in Wǔxíng dàyì can no longer be located in the present version. The commentary at 1.3a gives a list of correspondences between the twelve equatorial xiù 宿 and the civil calendar identical to that found on the most ancient model of a liùrén board, dated 173 BCE (cf. Wénwù 文物 8 [1978]: 12–31) — a striking concordance, since none of the surviving Hàn astronomical treatises mentions this set, nor do any other extant liùrén manuals except [[KR5a0296|DZ 284 Huángdì jīnguì yùhéng jīng]]. The frontmatter accordingly brackets composition broadly to the Hàn (-200 to 220).
Translations and research
No full English translation. Standard scholarly entry: Marc Kalinowski, “Huangdi longshou jing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §1.A.2, 85. On liùrén: Marc Kalinowski, “Les instruments astro-calendériques des Han et la méthode liu ren,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 72 (1983), 309–419.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0295
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §1.A.2, 85.