Tàishàng sānshēng jiěyuān miàojīng 太上三生解冤妙經
Marvelous Scripture of the Most High for Dissolving Hereditary Enmity through Three Generations
About the work
A six-folio Daoist popular scripture on the dissolution of hereditary karmic enmity (sānshēng jiěyuān 三生解冤), directed particularly to the practical-pastoral problem of infertility and difficult childbirth. Transmitted in the Dàozàng as the ninth of the composite fú 服-series (fú jiǔ 服九).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the narrative frame and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated by Schipper (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 3: 961, DZ 387) as a “modern popular scripture” — Sòng or later, reflecting mature Zhèngyī domestic-ritual practice. The narrative: the Jiùkǔ tiānzūn 救苦天尊 comes from the East to preach the Law in a small kingdom of the West. The queen is barren; the Tiānzūn explains that this is because in her former life — when she had lived in China — she lost an unborn child. The lost child, reborn as a yakṣa, is called up and appears to its former mother; the god thereupon gives the queen the present scripture, which he himself had earlier received from the Zhèngyī tiānzūn 正一天尊, and instructs her to recite it and to invite Zhèngyī masters to perform a service at the moment of childbirth. Three talismans for the protection of the mother and the speeding of delivery are appended.
The text is a valuable document of late-imperial Daoist pastoral liturgy, domestic ritual, and popular cosmology — showing the Jiùkǔ tiānzūn / Zhèngyī priesthood addressing the most urgent anxieties of the rural household through a conjoined narrative of karma, transmission, and ritual redress.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 3:961 (DZ 387).