Shàngqīng míngtáng yuánzhēn jīng jué 上清明堂元真經訣
Instructions for the Scripture of the Primordial Perfected in the Hall of Light, of the Upper Clarity
About the work
A ten-folio Six-Dynasties Shàngqīng meditation manual. The title refers strictly only to the first part (1a–6a), which describes the visualisation of the Jade Maiden Yuánzhēn 元真 (written 玄真 in the text as Xuánzhēn; the yuán/xuán alternation is tabooed graphic variance) in sun and moon and her subsequent entry into the Míngtáng 明堂 (“Hall of Light”), one of the three palaces of the head.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens with a quoted forty-character root-poem attributed to the Bái yù guī tái jiǔlíng tàizhēn yuánjūn Xīwángmǔ 白玉龜臺九靈太真元君西王母 (Queen Mother of the West), followed by an extended commentary.
Abstract
Dated to the Six Dynasties by Schmidt (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 201–202, DZ 424). The work falls into two parts:
- 1a–6a — visualisation of the Jade Maiden Yuán/Xuánzhēn in the sun and moon and her entry into the Míngtáng palace of the head. Except for an interpolated passage at 4b–5b (taken from DZ 1016 Zhēn’gào 9.18a–b), the method derives from the technical appendix to the hagiography of Máo Yíng 茅盈 and his brothers — a text of the original Shàngqīng corpus attributed to Lǐ Zūn 李遵 (cf. DZ 1016 Zhēn’gào 8.2a). Only the first part of this hagiography has been preserved, in Yúnjí qīqiān 104.10b–20a.
- 6a–10a — the absorption of the Cloud Shoots of the four directions (jù sìjí yúnyá shénxiān shàngfāng 俱四極雲牙神仙上方), drawn from the biography of Wáng Bāo 王褒 (hào Qīngxū zhēnrén 清虛真人), composed and revealed by Wèi Huácún 魏華存. The narrative part of this biography — also one of the oldest Shàngqīng documents (DZ 1016 Zhēn’gào 12.13b, 14.17b) — survives in Yúnjí qīqiān 106.1a–8a.
A continuous, sometimes detailed, commentary runs throughout the text; its style and approach closely resemble those of Táo Hóngjǐng 陶弘景, and the critical remark at 8a about an insertion in the original manuscript “in a hand other than Yáng Xī’s” is consistent with Táo’s known practice: Táo did possess the original manuscript of Wáng Bāo’s biography, which was otherwise entirely in Yáng Xī’s hand (cf. DZ 1016 Zhēn’gào on this point). The text may therefore preserve a fragment of Táo Hóngjǐng’s lost commentarial apparatus.
Translations and research
- Robinet, Isabelle. La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme, 2 vols.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:201–202 (DZ 424).