Shàngqīng sānzhēn zhǐyào yùjué 上清三真旨要玉訣
Jade Formula of the Essential Principles of the Three Perfected, of the Upper Clarity
About the work
A twenty-folio Táng Shàngqīng anthology of fragments chiefly on bodily self-cultivation — massage, prayer, exorcism rites, and ritual interdictions — culled from various Shàngqīng writings.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the first exercise and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated to the Táng by Robinet (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 615–616, DZ 422). Its sources have been partially identified:
- 1a–12b taken from DZ 1319 Dòngzhēn Xīwángmǔ bǎoshén qǐjū jīng 洞真西王母寶神起居經 5a–16a.
- 17a–18a from DZ 1389 Shàngqīng gāoshèng tàishàng dàdào jūn dòngzhēn jīnyuán bājǐng yùlù 上清高聖太上大道君洞真金元八景玉籙 6b–7a.
- The final part matches DZ 1016 Zhēn’gào 真誥 15.1a–2b.
- The source of 12b–17a has not been located, except for a passage at 16b that appears in Dūnhuáng manuscript Stein 6219; that text presents itself as a summary (dàoyào 道要) based largely on a Zìrán jīng 自然經.
The whole functions as a memento for the Shàngqīng practitioner — a compendium of morning-and-evening bodily exercises (head-combing, self-massage, ritual ablution), prayer-formulae, and apotropaic prescriptions, assembled in the scholastic late-Táng manner.
Translations and research
- Robinet, Isabelle. La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:615–616 (DZ 422).