Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo dàgāng chāo 太上洞玄靈寶大綱鈔
Outline of the Great Skein of the Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure, of the Most High by 閭丘方遠
(The source file reads 閭丘方達 Fāngdá — a typographical slip for 閭丘方遠 Fāngyuǎn, as attested in DZ 782 Dàdì dòngtiān jì and the author’s biography in DZ 296 Lìshì zhēnxiān tǐdào tōngjiàn. Preserved here in the prose so as not to silently correct the source.)
About the work
A three-folio outline of the Língbǎo tradition by the late-Táng Shàngqīng master Lǘqiū Fāngyuǎn 閭丘方遠 (hào Xuándòng xiānshēng 玄洞先生, d. 902). Transmitted in the Dàozàng in a composite juàn with DZ 392 and DZ 394 (KR5b0076, KR5b0078).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source proper. The opening line identifies the author as “Xuándòng xiānshēng Lǘqiū Fāng[yuǎn] dá/shù 玄洞先生閭丘方達述”— “set forth by Xuándòng xiānshēng Lǘqiū Fāng[da/yuǎn].” The graph 達 is an evident slip for 遠.
Abstract
Dated by Schmidt (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 2: 332, DZ 393) to the end of the Táng. Lǘqiū Fāngyuǎn — himself a master of the Shàngqīng tradition, in whose Tiānzhù guàn jì 天柱觀記 of 900 (cited in DZ 782 Dàdì dòngtiān jì 3.3b; biographical details in DZ 296 Xù xiān zhuàn 3.4a–6a) — first explains the Five Kalpas (wǔ jié 五劫) in relation to the Five Elements:
- Lónghàn 龍漢 = Wood kalpa
- Chìmíng 赤明 = Fire kalpa
- Yánkāng 延康 = Metal kalpa
- Kāihuáng 開皇 = Water kalpa
- Shànghuáng 上皇 = Earth kalpa
— each “revolving and renewing itself” and unfolding into sun, moon, stars, yīn and yáng. He then briefly describes the transmission of the Língbǎo scriptures from the time of the Yellow Emperor to Lù Xiūjìng 陸修靜. Lǘqiū also mentions Emperor Xuánzōng’s (r. 712–756) initiatives that changed the name of Táolín district to Língbǎo district and founded Língbǎo monasteries. Within the fifty-eight-juàn Língbǎo canon, Lǘqiū identifies the Dùrén jīng 度人經 (DZ 1) as the essential scripture.
The text is a valuable specimen of late-Táng Shàngqīng scholastic cataloguing — an intellectual stock-taking of the Língbǎo corpus by one of the last major Shàngqīng masters before the Wǔdài dispersal of the Daoist canon.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:332 (DZ 393).