Shàngqīng sānyuán yùjiǎn sānyuán bùjīng 上清三元玉檢三元布經
Jade Rule of the Three Primordials and Promulgated Scripture of the Three Primordials, of the Upper Clarity
About the work
A substantial forty-three-folio hybrid scripture combining two originally distinct Shàngqīng texts — Sānyuán yùjiǎn 三元玉檢 (“Jade Rule of the Three Primordials”) and Sānyuán bùjīng 三元布經 (“Promulgated Scripture of the Three Primordials”) — into a single transmission. The first triad refers to the cosmological Heaven-Earth-Humanity (with Earth here as the mountains and Humanity as the immortals); the second to the Three Ladies of Purity of the Shàngqīng pantheon. The Jade Rule is one of the earliest Shàngqīng rituals.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the cosmological explanation of the Sānyuán yùjiǎn and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated by Robinet (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 155–156, DZ 354) to the Eastern Jìn — somewhat later than the original Yáng Xī 楊羲 / Xǔ 許 revelations of 364–370 but closely linked to that revelation-stratum, perhaps half a century on. Quotations in the Wúshàng bìyào 無上祕要 and the Sāndòng zhūnáng 三洞珠囊 agree with the received text, establishing a firm pre-Sui transmission.
The Jade Rule occupies two widely-separated sections (3b–26a, 31b–35b) of the received text, with the Promulgated Scripture wedged between them (26a–31b). The first part of the Jade Rule (3b–26a) consists of fú 符 (talismans), a lù 籙 register, and liturgical formulae. Some fú are missing from the received text but can be recovered from DZ 416 Shàngqīng pèi jūwén huángquán jué 1b–3b; part of the text (4a–11b) is also preserved in DZ 168 Yuánshǐ gāoshàng yùjiǎn dàlù 元始高上玉檢大籙 1a–2a and 8a–11b. The second part of the Jade Rule (31b–35b) expounds an offering-ritual inviting the gods to descend.
The Promulgated Scripture of the Three Ladies (26a–31b) is a guide for recognising the various apparitions that may occur during meditation on the three Shàngqīng goddesses — an exercise closely related to that described in DZ 1393 Shàngqīng yuánshǐ biànhuà bǎozhēn shàngjīng jiǔlíng tàimiào guīshān xuánlù 上清元始變化寶真上經九靈太妙龜山玄籙, explicitly referenced in the present text at 31a.
From 35b onward, a meditation on the three goddesses is described; a similar exposition appears in DZ 1313 Dòngzhēn gāoshàng yùdì tàidòng cíyī yùjiǎn wǔlǎo bǎojīng 洞真高上玉帝太洞雌一玉檢五老寶經 28b–29a. The present text occupies position 14 of the Shàngqīng dàdòng zhēnjīng mù list.
Translations and research
- Robinet, Isabelle. La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme. 2 vols. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1984, vol. 2, no. 14 of the Dàdòng list.
- Robinet, Isabelle. Taoist Meditation: The Mao-shan Tradition of Great Purity. Translated by Julian F. Pas and Norman J. Girardot. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:155–156 (DZ 354).