Tàishàng dòngyuān shuō qǐngyǔ lóngwáng jīng 太上洞淵說請雨龍王經
Scripture of the Dragon-Kings for Praying for Rain, Spoken by the Most High of the Abyssal Caverns
About the work
A four-folio rain-making scripture, textually drawn from juàn 13 of the twenty-juàn Shénzhòu jīng (DZ 335, KR5b0019). Transmitted in the Dàozàng in a composite juàn (wǔ jīng tóng juàn 五經同卷) with DZ 363, DZ 364, DZ 365, and DZ 366 (KR5b0047–KR5b0050).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the descent of the Lord of the Dào from above the Three Heavens and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Lagerwey (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 2: 510, DZ 362) shows that the text corresponds to DZ 335 Tàishàng dòngyuān shénzhòu jīng 13.1a–4a (Mollier, Une apocalypse taoïste, 64). Its provenance is therefore the original Eastern-Jìn / early-fifth-century stratum of the Shénzhòu jīng at the earliest, with its circulation as an independent text no later than Dù Guāngtíng’s early tenth-century recension.
The narrative: from above the Three Heavens the Lord of the Dào sees an epidemic spreading across the world. Seated on a cloud of five colours, he descends and, having drawn the dragon-kings of all the heavens to him by his radiance, preaches the Orthodox Dào to them; he concludes by enjoining them to save the people with a torrential rain. The Dào then describes a ritual for averting calamities: over three days and nights in a sacred area composed of “the thrones of the nine dragons and the images of the five saints,” the “marvelous scripture of the divine formula of the dragon-kings of all the heavens” is to be recited. Should a house be struck by lightning during the subsequent storm, the family must write the names of the dragon-kings of the Four Seas and suspend them in the four corners of the house, burn incense, and invoke the dragon-kings — who will then spew forth water and drive the spirit of the flames under the earth. The faithful are to worship the dragon-kings regularly on the days of the new and the full moon.
Translations and research
- Mollier, Christine. Une apocalypse taoïste du Ve siècle: Le Livre des incantations divines des grottes abyssales. Paris: Collège de France, Institut des hautes études chinoises, 1990, 64.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:510 (DZ 362).