Shénxiān fú’ěr dānshí xíngyào fǎ 神仙服餌丹石行藥法
Methods of the Divine Immortals for Ingesting Cinnabar and Minerals, and for Making Medicines Edible attributed to 京里先生
About the work
A twenty-six-folio Six-Dynasties alchemical compilation on the edible preparation of minerals — chiefly cinnabar and realgar — as elixirs for immortality, attributed to the legendary Jīnglǐ xiānshēng 京里先生.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with its first recipe, the Huángdì yīwù ěr dānfǎ 黃帝一物餌丹法, under the author-heading “京里先生撰.” No transmission colophon is preserved.
Abstract
Attributed to Jīnglǐ xiānshēng and dated to the Six Dynasties (220–589) by Pregadio (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 381–382, DZ 420). Two references to cinnabar as coming from Yuè 越 (modern Zhèjiāng; 7a) and Bā 巴 (modern Sìchuān; 9a) suggest that at least part of the text antedates the Táng (618–907); there is no definite evidence beyond this. The author is credited in Bìshū shěng xù biàndào sìkù quēshū mù 2.36b — which gives the title as Shénxiān fúshí ěrshí bìng xíngyào fǎ 神仙服食餌石並行藥法 (cf. VDL 130) — also with DZ 836 Shénxiān shíqì jīnguì miàolù.
The work divides into three parts:
- 1a–11a — twenty-one methods for making cinnabar edible.
- 11a–17b — similar recipes for realgar, and further recipes for related substances (25a–26a).
- 17b–25a — the section Shénxiān fúshí ěrshí 神仙服食餌石, discussing the value and use of common minerals and plants for obtaining immortality, and the general principles governing their treatment and ingestion.
Several recipes are associated with the names of legendary immortals of antiquity (Huángdì 黃帝, Pēngzǔ 彭祖, etc.), and the methods reflect a tradition close to that of the early hagiographical sources — Lièxiān zhuàn 列仙傳, Shénxiān zhuàn 神仙傳 — in which the ingestion of minerals and plants is routinely mentioned as part of immortality-seeking dietary regimes.
Translations and research
- Pregadio, Fabrizio. Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
- Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, parts 2–5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974–1983 (on Daoist operative alchemy).
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:381–382 (DZ 420).