Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo tóujiǎn fúwén yàojué 太上洞玄靈寶投簡符文要訣
Essential Instructions on the Written Talismans for the Casting of Tablets, of the Most High Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure
About the work
A thirty-folio Six-Dynasties ritual manual on the tóujiǎn 投簡 (“tablet-casting”) rite — a Daoist ritual in which inscribed tablets are cast into the realms of the Three Primordials of Heaven, Earth and Water — with the associated written talismans (fúwén 符文).
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the ritual instructions and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated to the Six Dynasties by Cedzich (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 253–254, DZ 395). The first bibliographic mention of the text — as a work in one juàn — is in Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 10.6a of 1041 (VDL 87). The work is based exclusively on the literature of the ancient Língbǎo canon and may have been compiled at a considerably earlier date than this first bibliographic notice.
Comparison with the early Língbǎo texts reveals occasional variant readings (e.g. Héng shān 衡山 at 25b for the Southern Peak, in place of the Huò shān 霍山 of the early texts) and a handful of transcription errors (11b.3, 21b.8). Folios 7b–8a provide a brief outline of the method for absorbing the Five Cloud Shoots (fú wǔ yúnyá 服五雲牙), derived from DZ 352 Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo chìshū yùjué miàojīng 2.4b–14a (KR5b0036). The text then notes that the method — with the associated written talismans (fúwén) — will be given in full elsewhere; both are in fact reproduced at 17a–24b.
The scripture’s contents overlap only partly with the tóujiǎn ritual proper as set out in DZ 352 Chìshū yùjué miàojīng 1.5a–16b and definitively formulated by Lù Xiūjìng in DZ 410 Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo zhòngjiǎn wén 太上洞玄靈寶眾簡文. The written symbols reproduced for the rite are based on the cloud-seal characters in DZ 22 Yuánshǐ wǔlǎo chìshū yùpiān zhēnwén tiānshū jīng, and the remaining themes — all drawn from DZ 97 Tàishàng língbǎo zhūtiān nèiyīn zìrán yùzì — fall outside the tóujiǎn framework but continue the focus on the reproduction of celestial symbols in ritual contexts.
Translations and research
- Chard, Robert L. “Daoist Rites of the Five Ranks: Tóujiǎn and the Problem of Rank in Medieval Daoism.”
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:253–254 (DZ 395).