Chèngxīng língtái bìyào jīng 秤星靈臺祕要經
Scripture on the Essential Secrets of the Numinous Terrace for Appraising the Influences of Celestial Bodies
Anonymous late-Táng to Five-Dynasties ritual-astrological treatise, seven folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0289 / CT 289 = TC 289), 洞真部 眾術類. The title paraphrases heading 11 of [[KR5a0300|DZ 288 Língtái jīng]], chèngxīng lìfēn 秤星立分 (“Appraising the influence of celestial bodies”; 14b).
About the work
A short two-part treatise. Part 1 (1a–4b) describes a Daoist protection ritual against baleful celestial influences, forming a kind of appendix to the divinatory procedure outlined in [[KR5a0300|DZ 288 Língtái jīng]]; the ritual includes the recitation of Daoist scriptures such as the Dùrén jīng 度人經 and the Xiāozāi jīng 消災經 (3a). Part 2 (5a–7a) consists of two paragraphs (the first followed by a commentary) on the mantic world of the nine luminaries (jiǔyào 九曜); the title of the second paragraph, Dōngwēi dàshù 冬位大數, anticipates a divinatory method (dōngwēi dòushù 冬位斗數) that took definitive form under the Sòng (960–1279), with its earliest known source being [[KR5b0148|DZ 1485 Zǐwēi dòushù 紫微斗數]] (which stipulates the equivalence of zǐwēi 紫微 and dōngwēi 冬位). Frequent quotations from a Jiǔzhí jīng 九執經 (2a, 3b, 4a) — the Jiǔzhí lì 九執曆 (Calendar of the Nine Planets) was introduced to China in 718 — confirm the obvious filiation with Indian astrocalendric traditions.
Prefaces
No formal preface in the source. A short introduction by the author was fortuitously preserved as a commentary to a quotation from a Rénlún jīng 人倫經 (1a–b): “Pure-yú-jīng 人倫經 says that shēnyǒu 申酉 are the seats of the Eight Killings; this seat is uniquely unfit to be seen by fire. Guō Jǐngchún [Guō Pú 郭璞] held that fire sets in the west, and so deduced that one cannot end one’s life there; thereupon by ritual law one wards it off. He ordered the cleansing of a privy, with constant burning of incense, no man entering — only oneself — and at the time of working, hair loosened, sword in hand, standing in the privy. Within an instant, if one met no man, one set the sword in the privy, and so could ward it off; if any man saw it, then both parties were not spared. At the time, Huán Xuán saw it; Pú said: ‘I and you alike are not spared,’ and afterwards it came to pass as he said. The method is not to be hidden away as a secret. Jīnguì jīng 金匱經 has it transmitted by Yī Xíng 一行 (eighth century) and Lǐ Quán 李筌, who recorded it in their Bìsì jīng 祕笥經. The compiler claims to have deleted this part of the text in editing it around 894–897, lest sorcerers (shīwū 師巫) put it to illicit use; later, having changed his mind, he was ready to publish a separate edition of this very part.”
Abstract
Marc Kalinowski, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:338 (§2.A.2, Divination and Numerology), reads the introduction as proof that the received version was written in the first decades of the tenth century. The text shares a common lexical and theoretical background with [[KR5a0300|DZ 288 Língtái jīng]] and is as fragmentary as that work (see 6a for a reference to missing passages). The author, working in the closing decades of the ninth century, shows the typical late-Táng integration of Daoist liturgical practice with Indo-Iranian astrological learning: the Dūlì yúsī jīng 都利聿斯經 stratum visible already in DZ 288 here merges with the home-grown ritual technology of fú 符 and zhòu 咒. The procedures of both works present many similarities with those in DZ 1485 Zǐwēi dòushù, which may represent reformulations by later Sòng innovators. The frontmatter brackets composition between the editorial date implied by the introduction (894–897) and the early Five Dynasties (~930).
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Marc Kalinowski, “Chengxing lingtai biyao jing,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.2, 338. On Indian-derived astrology in late Táng China and the Jiǔzhí lì: Bill M. Mak, “Yusi Jing: A Treatise of ‘Western’ Astral Science in Chinese and its Versified Version Xitian yusi jing,” SCIAMVS 15 (2014), 105–169.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0301
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §2.A.2, 338.