Tàishàng zhào zhū lóngshén ānzhèn fénmù jīng 太上召諸龍神安鎮墳墓經
Scripture of the Most High on Summoning the Various Dragon Deities to Secure and Protect Tombs
(The catalog meta gives the title with 諸神龍; the source file’s first-line title (and the Taoist Canon form) reads 諸龍神. The scripture’s title may have circulated in both orders in the Ming canon.)
About the work
A three-folio Daoist ritual text on the invitation of dragon-deities to protect tombs, textually an elaboration on juàn 17 of the Shénzhòu jīng (DZ 335 = KR5b0019). Transmitted in the Dàozàng in a composite juàn with DZ 362, DZ 364, DZ 365, and DZ 366.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the cosmic scene of the Most High dàojūn and the other deities at Yánggǔ 暘谷 and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Lagerwey (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 3: 990, DZ 363) shows that the text elaborates DZ 335 Shénzhòu jīng 17 (Mollier, Une apocalypse taoïste, 64), and therefore circulates within the Shénzhòu textual family of the early fifth through the early tenth century. The narrative: the Most High Lord of the Dào goes “before dawn” (kāiguāng 開光) to find the Yuánshǐ tiānzūn in the wilds of Yánggǔ and tells him that people bury their dead in the hope of having abundant, prosperous descendants. If poverty is the rule nowadays, the Tiānzūn responds, it is because “the past generations did not believe in the methods of the Dào and did not plant good karma.” People must find a Superior Daoist (gāoshàng dàoshì 高上道士) to perform a ritual in which they confess their sins and invite the dragon-kings to guard their tombs. The Tiānzūn then himself summons the divine dragon-kings and instructs them to undertake this tutelary work on request. The scripture ends with a dào yán enjoining the people to invite a Zhèngyī 正一 Daoist priest to perform the ritual — locating the scripture squarely within the late-medieval Celestial-Master mortuary economy.
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, 3:990 (DZ 363).