Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo yèbào yīnyuán jīng 太上洞玄靈寶業報因緣經
Scripture on Karmic Retribution and Causality, of the Most High Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure
About the work
A ten-juàn doctrinal-cum-liturgical treatise in twenty-seven sections — the first substantial “long treatise” of the late-Liáng / Sui / early-Táng Língbǎo corpus, and arguably the earliest synthetic description of the moral and ritual system of monastic and state-sponsored medieval Daoism. The text is framed as the teaching of the Tàishàng dàojūn 太上道君 — here a disciple of the Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊 (4.6b) — given in response to the questions of the zhēnrén Pǔjì 普濟 (“Universal Salvation”).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The scripture opens directly with the revelation scene and the questions of Pǔjì zhēnrén and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
The original title was Tàishàng yèbào yīnyuán jīng (so 10.10a, and Dūnhuáng manuscript Pelliot 2387); the classificatory tag dòngxuán língbǎo was prefixed only later. Twenty-one fragments of the text survive among the Dūnhuáng manuscripts (Ōfuchi, Tonkō dōkyō: Mokurokuhen, 85–100), representing every juàn except 2 and 10; one fragment is dated 753, two others Ōfuchi situates near the beginning of the seventh century. The work is cited — as “the scripture” tout court — by DZ 1125 Dòngxuán língbǎo sāndòng fèngdào kējiè yíngshǐ 洞玄靈寶三洞奉道科戒營始, a text Yoshioka Yoshitoyo 吉岡義豐 (“Sāndòng fèngdào kējiè yīfàn,” 41–42, 53–85) dates 530–550. Contrary pressure comes from the Yèbào jīng’s recommendation of the “release of living animals” (fàngshēng 放生, 6.5b, 9.2b), a practice introduced by Zhìyǐ 智顗 (538–598); and from its citation in a text datable to the early Táng (Ōfuchi, Dōkyōshi no kenkyū, 227–229). The composition window is therefore bracketed roughly 530–650, with the most likely range the Suí or very early Táng.
The work’s structural division into twenty-seven sections mirrors the twenty-seven grades in the hierarchy of celestial disciples of the scriptures of the Three Caverns (10.4a; cf. Sāndòng zhūnáng 7.22b, quoting Sòng Wénmíng 宋文明). Section 1 (1.2a–10a) opens with the celestial assembly illumined by the light of the Compassionate-Countenance Heavenly Worthy (Cíyán tiānzūn 慈顏天尊), discussing the One Vehicle (yīchéng 一乘); successive visions show a good king practicing self-alienation and generous almsgiving for the Way, a bad king who murders the dharmakāya of monks, and the infernal and reincarnational punishments of the wicked. This first section establishes the work’s governing thesis: the moral and social hierarchies are one, and the pursuit of the One Vehicle — preached by dàoshì through public exegesis (jiǎngjīng 講經, declared the greatest of all sources of merit at 7.7b) — is a matter of state concern (5.11b; cf. 9.16a).
The remaining sections constitute the first full code of what would become Táng “official” Daoism: the calendar (4.7a–11a), the nine types of Retreat (zhāi 齋, 5.3b–4b; cf. DZ 1138 Wúshàng bìyào 49–57), the Five Meritorious Acts (6.12a–13a — image-making, sūtra-copying, the founding of religious institutions, the performance of rituals, and acts of charity), the week-by-week mortuary rituals for the forty-nine days following a parent’s death (8.5b–7a), and the Grand Offering of the Capital of Mystery (Xuándū dàxiàn 玄都大獻, 9.1b–11a). Each of these prescriptions becomes normative in Táng Daoism.
The scripture absorbs enormous amounts of Buddhist vocabulary and ritual matter — upāya-kauśalya (shànqiǎo fāngbiàn 善巧方便), dharmakāya (fǎshēn 法身), ekayāna — but integrates this material into a recognisably Daoist cosmological and institutional framework centred on the Three Caverns. It is a principal source for later ritual compilations including DZ 343 Sìfāng dàyuàn jīng, DZ 543 Jiǔyōu chàn, DZ 337 Shíhào gōngdé yīnyuán miàojīng, and many others, which silently quarry whole passages from it.
Translations and research
- Yoshioka Yoshitoyo 吉岡義豐. “Sāndòng fèngdào kējiè yīfàn 三洞奉道科戒儀範.” In Dōkyō to bukkyō 道教と佛教, vol. 3. Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1976, 41–42, 53–85.
- Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾. Dōkyōshi no kenkyū 道教史の研究. Okayama: Okayama daigaku kyōsaikai, 1964, 227–229.
- Ōfuchi Ninji. Tonkō dōkyō: Mokurokuhen 敦煌道經：目錄編, 85–100 (catalogue of the 21 Dūnhuáng fragments).
- Kohn, Livia. The Daoist Monastic Manual: A Translation of the Fengdao Kejie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 — for the cognate DZ 1125 and its debt to the Yèbào jīng.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:518–521 (DZ 336).
Other points of interest
The Yèbào yīnyuán jīng provides the first Daoist codification of the week-by-week seven-times-seven mortuary liturgy (qīqī zhāi 七七齋) — the “forty-nine-day” funerary sequence borrowed from Buddhism — which thereafter becomes the norm in both Daoist and popular Chinese practice.