Tàishàng jìdù zhāngshè 太上濟度章赦
Writs of Pardon and Memorials, from the Most-High’s Book of Salvation
Anonymous SòngYuán liturgical-document collection, in three juan, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng 正統道藏 (DZ 0316 / CT 316 = TC 316), 洞真部 表奏類. Companion volume to [[KR5e0466|DZ 466 Língbǎo lǐngjiào jìdù jīnshū 靈寶領教濟度金書]].
About the work
A three-juan collection of Daoist liturgical documents — the zhāng 章 (memorials addressed to the celestial bureaucracy) and the shè 赦 (writs of pardon, by which the souls of the deceased are released from their underworld tribulations) — explicitly framed as the missing-from-Daozang documentary supplement to the great Sòng jìdù 濟度 (salvation-of-the-deceased) ritual manual [[KR5e0466|Língbǎo lǐngjiào jìdù jīnshū 靈寶領教濟度金書 (DZ 466)]]. As the title indicates, it provides the zhāng and shè lacking from DZ 466. Almost all the documents contained in the present collection are referenced by their titles in the ritual programs of juan 2 of DZ 466; but the documents themselves are not given there. Almost certainly, then, the present collection was originally part of the [[KR5e0466|DZ 466 Jìdù jīnshū 濟度金書]] manual itself: the names of the rituals and the manner of indicating them in small characters beneath the titles are identical in both works, and the memorials and documents are presented in a similar — but reversed — order in the present text.
Prefaces
No preface in the source. The text opens directly with the first zhāng-document.
Abstract
Yuán Bīnglíng 袁冰凌, in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004) 2:1014 (§3.B.3, Língbǎo Liturgy), establishes that this work was conceivably formerly part of the [[KR5e0466|DZ 466 Língbǎo lǐngjiào jìdù jīnshū 靈寶領教濟度金書]] jìdù 濟度 ritual compendium. The names of the rituals and the manner of indicating them in small characters beneath the titles are identical in both works; the memorials and documents are presented in a similar — but reversed — order in the present text. Almost all the documents contained in the present collection are mentioned by their titles in the programs of the rituals as given in juan 2 of DZ 466, but the documents themselves are not given there. The frontmatter accordingly brackets composition broadly to the same SòngYuán period as DZ 466 (the late Northern Sòng to the Yuán, 1100–1300). DZ 466 is closely linked to the Língbǎo 靈寶 ritual movement of Liú Yuándào 留元道, Níng Quánzhēn 寧全真, and Lín Língzhēn 林靈真 (1239–1302); Lín’s school produced both DZ 466 and the present supplement.
Translations and research
No full translation. Standard scholarly entry: Yuán Bīnglíng, “Taishang jidu zhangshe,” in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.3, 1014. On the Jìdù jīnshū and the Língbǎo 靈寶 jìdù tradition more generally: Judith M. Boltz, A Survey of Taoist Literature, Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries (Berkeley 1987), 47–53; John Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History (New York 1987); Edward L. Davis, Society and the Supernatural in Song China (Honolulu 2001).
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5a0328
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), Vol. 2 §3.B.3, 1014.