Hàn Wǔdì nèizhuàn 漢武帝內傳
The Inner Story of Emperor Wu of the Han
Anonymous Six-Dynasties Daoist novel, thirty-one folios, attributed in the textual tradition to Bān Gù 班固 (32–92) and to Gě Hóng 葛洪 (283–343) — both attributions spurious — preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0292 / CT 292 = TC 292), 洞真部 記傳類.
About the work
A short Daoist novel in classical guǎngwén 廣文 style, telling the legend of the visit of the goddess Xī wáng mǔ 西王母 to Emperor Wǔ of Hàn 漢武帝 (r. 140–87 BCE) in Yuánfēng 元封 first year, jiǎzǐ (110 BCE), at his Yánlíng tái 延靈臺 in the Chénghuá diàn 承華殿. The narrative opens with the apparition of an emerald-clad Yùnǚ 玉女 — Wáng Zǐdēng 王子登 of the Yōnggōng 墉宮 — sent by Xī wáng mǔ from Mount Kūnshān 崑崙山 to summon the emperor; she instructs him in a hundred days of qīngqí 清齋 in preparation for Xī wáng mǔ’s arrival on the seventh day of the seventh month. The book is famous in medieval Daoism and frequently cited in late-Six-Dynasties and Táng literature.
Prefaces
No preface in the source. The text opens directly with the narrative frame: “Emperor Wǔ Xiào, fond of the arts of long life, often performed sacrifices on famous mountains and great marshes to seek the immortals. In the first year of Yuánfēng 元封, the jiǎzǐ year, he sacrificed at Sōngshān 嵩山, raised a Spirit-Palace, fasted seven days; the rite finished, he returned. On the wùchén 戊辰 day of the fourth month, by night he sat at leisure in the Chénghuá Hall; Dōngfāng Shuò 東方朔 and Dǒng Zhòngshū 董仲舒 were in attendance. Suddenly he saw a young woman dressed in green, of extraordinary beauty…”
Abstract
Kristofer Schipper, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 1:115–116 (§1.A.6, Sacred History and Geography), notes that the earliest direct citation of the text is in the preface (2b) of the Yùtái xīnyǒng 玉臺新詠 by Xú Líng 徐陵 (507–583); the work must therefore be later than the revelations to Yáng Xī 楊羲 (364–375), since most of the text is an adaptation of the now-lost biography of Máo Yīng 茅盈 — one of the most important Shàngqīng saints (cf. Schipper, L’empereur Wou des Han, 11–19). The work is not a primary Daoist source but a literary production composed from a number of different sources, combining excerpts from the dynastic histories with legendary accounts and Daoist hagiography. It may have served an apologetic purpose, inasmuch as the story sets out to prove the superiority of the new texts of the Shàngqīngjīng 上清經 over those of ancient Daoism (here represented by the Wǔyuè zhēnxíng tú 五嶽真形圖, a talisman that already existed in the Hàn). Hence the miraculous appearance of the classical goddess Xī wáng mǔ is followed by that of the Shàngqīng female deity Shàngyuán fūrén 上元夫人, whose revelations supersede those of her predecessor; only after a resounding quarrel and endless entreaties does she give in and part with the scriptures, which the emperor later proves himself unworthy to hold. The frontmatter brackets composition broadly to the sixth century (500–600) — that is, after the Shàngqīng revelations and at latest by the time of Xú Líng’s citation.
Translations and research
Translation: Kristofer M. Schipper, L’empereur Wou des Han dans la légende taoïste (Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1965). Standard scholarly entry: Kristofer Schipper, “Han Wudi neizhuan,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §1.A.6, 115–116. Substantial studies: Thomas E. Smith, “Record of the Ten Continents,” Taoist Resources 2/2 (1990), 87–119 (on the closely related Shízhōu jì 十洲記); Suzanne E. Cahill, Transcendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China (Stanford 1993); Stephan Peter Bumbacher, The Fragments of the Daoxue zhuan (Frankfurt 2000).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0304
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 1 §1.A.6, 115–116.