Dòngxuán língbǎo zhūtiān shìjiè zàohuà jīng 洞玄靈寶諸天世界造化經
Scripture on the Creation and Transformation of the Worlds of All Heavens, of the Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure
About the work
A Táng-era one-juàn cosmological scripture arranged in seven pǐn 品. The opening chapter, “The Heavenly Worthy Expounds the Scripture and Opens the Narrative” (天尊說經開叙品第一), sets the frame at Língniǎo shān 靈鳥山 — the “Mountain of the Numinous Bird,” identical with the Rénniǎo shān 人鳥山 of DZ 434 — where the Tàishàng tiānzūn 太上天尊 expounds a twelve-part teaching on cosmogony, the Five Paths of transmigration (wǔdào 五道), and the succession of small and great kalpas. The text is a major Táng witness to Daoist engagement with Buddhist cosmological material.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The scripture begins directly with the first pǐn and carries no author preface or transmission colophon; the closing section (11b) substitutes a “Great Vow” (dàyuàn 大願) for universal salvation and a contractual-transmission injunction (tóngqì xiāngshòu 同契相受).
Abstract
Dated to the Táng by Lagerwey in Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 535, DZ 321). The scripture falls into seven chapters: a cosmological introduction (kāixù 開序) to the kalpas and to the ethics of karmic retribution along the Five Paths (sections 1–2, 1a–5a); an exhortation to the ten monthly fasts (section 2, 3a); an injunction to respect the five things — life, goodness, purity, discipline and trust (section 3, 5b); a description of the caves of the Many Heavens and their deathless zhēnrén 真人 inhabitants (section 4, 7a); a cosmic-cycles account in which natural calamities produce small kalpas and moral decay produces great ones, ending with the Heavenly Worthy’s renewal of the cosmos after its destruction by seven simultaneous suns (section 5, 8b–9b); a hierarchical survey of the worlds around Mount Kūnlún (section 6); and a final plea for the promotion of the Dao through the Great Vow and contractual transmission (section 7, 11b–12b).
Lagerwey argues that the work is a Daoist response to — and in places a close rewriting of — the early-fifth-century Buddhist apocryphon Sì tiānwáng jīng 四天王經 (composed ca. 427, on which see Soymié 1977), silently replacing Mount Sumeru with Kūnlún and Indra with Tàiwēi dìjūn 太微帝君. The notice of a country Dàtáng guó 大唐國 to the west of Kūnlún confirms Táng-period composition. The scriptural setting at the Mountain of the Numinous Bird (Língniǎo shān) reflects the wider late-medieval interest in the Man-Bird Mountain (Rénniǎo shān 人鳥山) documented in DZ 434 Xuánlǎn rénniǎo shān jīngtú 玄覽人鳥山經圖, and one of the text’s most distinctive passages is cited at 6a of DZ 434 as being unique to the present scripture.
Translations and research
- Soymié, Michel. “Les dix jours de jeûne du taoïsme.” In Dōkyō kenkyū ronshū 道教研究論集, edited by Yoshioka Yoshitoyo 吉岡義豊 hakushi kanreki kinen rombunshū kankōkai. Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1977, 1–21, esp. p. 2 on the Buddhist Sì tiānwáng jīng parallel.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:535 (DZ 321).