Dòngxuán língbǎo zìrán jiǔtiān shēngshén zhāngjīng jiěyì 洞玄靈寶自然九天生神章經解義
Exposition of the Meaning of the Scripture of the Stanzas of the Life-Spirits of the Nine Heavens by 董思靖
About the work
A four-juàn Southern-Sòng commentary on DZ 318 Jiǔtiān shēngshén zhāngjīng (KR5b0002), composed in 1252 by Dǒng Sījìng 董思靖 (hào Guīshān 龜山), a Daoist of the Tiānqìng guàn 天慶觀 in Qīngyuán 清源 (Quánzhōu 泉州, Fújiàn; Qīngyuán is the old name of Quánzhōu — Schipper mislocates as Shanxi).
Prefaces
The received text carries both an authorial preface (裳一) and a postface dated 1252. In the preface Dǒng divides the parent scripture according to its contents and explains the Five Kalpas and the Nine Heavens on the basis of numerical correspondences. A preface by the forty-third Celestial Master Zhāng Yǔchū 張宇初 (1361–1410) to Dǒng’s commentary survives in DZ 1311 Xiánquán jí 峴泉集 2.17a–19a.
Abstract
Dated by the author’s own postface to 1252 (Schmidt in Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 2: 726–727, DZ 396). In the postface Dǒng presents a discourse in which he convinces a sceptic of the truth of the parent scripture and of Daoist teaching generally. His commentary is unusually rich in cross-reference: it draws on a large number of Shàngqīng and Língbǎo scriptures and cites seven different editions of the Jiǔtiān shēngshén zhāngjīng (3.1a–29a), of which only the Sichuan commentary (Shǔ zhù 蜀註, i.e. DZ 397 Dòngxuán língbǎo zìrán jiǔtiān shēngshén yùzhāng jīng jiě by Wáng Xīcháo 王希巢) can now be identified.
Dǒng structures his reading of the scripture via a classical Buddhist-style three-fold analysis — preface-portion (xùfēn 序分), main-content portion (zhèngzōng fēn 正宗分), and circulation portion (liútōng fēn 流通分) — but acknowledges from the outset that, because the present scripture is itself a direct qì-condensation (and not a human-composed text), it lacks both an authorial preface and the standard tàishàng-prefix or dào yán opening. His “inner division” articulates the scripture into five chapters each on the Three Treasures and four chapters each on the stanza-narrative — a taxonomic scheme that becomes standard in subsequent commentarial writing.
This is the earliest of a group of Sòng–Yuán commentaries on the Shēngshén zhāngjīng preserved in the Dàozàng (the others are DZ 397 by Wáng Xīcháo, 1205, and DZ 398 by Huáyáng fù 華陽復, 1332). All three are included in the present cluster of KR5b entries (KR5b0080–KR5b0082).
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:726–727 (DZ 396).