Shàngqīng tàijí yǐnzhù yùjīng bǎojué 上清太極隱注玉經寶訣
Precious Instructions on the Jade Scriptures, a Secret Commentary by the Zhēnrén of the Supreme Pole, of the Upper Clarity
About the work
A twenty-folio scripture of the original Língbǎo corpus — one of the eleven juàn of texts traditionally said to have been transmitted to Gě Xuán 葛玄. Despite its Shàngqīng title-prefix, the text is a Língbǎo text; the prefix is here used — as the scripture itself explains — as a shared honorific for all scriptures of the Three Caverns.
Prefaces
No prefaces in the source. The text opens directly with the Tàijí zhēnrén’s exposition and carries no author preface or transmission colophon.
Abstract
Dated to the original Gě Cháofǔ Língbǎo revelation-stratum of ca. 397–430 by Schmidt (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 239–240, DZ 425). Ōfuchi (“On Ku Ling-pao Ching,” 40, 53) numbers it among the eleven-juàn Gě Xuán group. Lù Xiūjìng refers to it in DZ 528 Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo shòudù yí 38a–b (cf. 3a of the present text). Thirteen citations occur in the Wúshàng bìyào; one of them (WSBY 37.1a) is no longer found in the received text, indicating truncation. It corresponds to number 21 of the canonical Língbǎo corpus.
The scripture deals with ritual prescriptions for the transmission, recitation, and copying of sacred scriptures. Its most distinctive feature — of singular importance for the historiography of the Daoist canon — is its classification of the canon into categories:
- Dòngzhēn 洞真 group (with the Shàngqīng dàdòng zhēnjīng, the Xiāomó zhìhuì jīng, and the Fēixíng yǔjīng).
- Dòngxuán 洞玄 group (the Língbǎo scriptures).
- Dòngshén 洞神 group (the Sānhuáng wén).
The prefix Shàngqīng 上清 is conferred on all scriptures of the Three Caverns as an umbrella honorific; they are placed in the “higher category” (shàngpǐn 上品) and given their place of honour in the north. The “middle category” (zhōngpǐn 中品, 11a–b) comprises all texts that do not belong to the main scriptures of the Three Caverns, with place of honour in the east. The “records of the personal attainments of the immortals” (xiānrén běnyè zhuàn 仙人本業傳) are collected under the title Scriptures on the Traces of the Dào (Dàojì jīng 道跡經) and form a final category with place of honour in the west (13b). The Dàodé jīng has a special status: although its transmission is unrestricted, it is ranked with the higher category and venerated together with the Sāndòng scriptures in the north.
The text thus offers the earliest detailed description of the Daoist scriptural canon which — notably — gives no priority to the Máoshān tradition and does not even treat it as a separate entity. The same sāndòng concept reappears in other early Língbǎo texts — DZ 532 Tàijí zhēnrén fū língbǎo zhāijiè wēiyí zhūjīng yàojué 12a–b, 19a–20a; DZ 1114 Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo běnxíng sùyuán jīng 10b–11a — and this triple-division ultimately becomes the organising principle of the Daoist canon itself.
Translations and research
- Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾. “On Ku Ling-pao Ching.” Acta Asiatica 27 (1974): 33–56, at 40, 53.
- Wang, Chengwen. “The Revelation and Classification of Daoist Scriptures.” In Early Chinese Religion, Part Two: The Period of Division (220–589 AD), edited by John Lagerwey and Pengzhi Lü, 775–888. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:239–240 (DZ 425).
Other points of interest
This scripture — not the much later Lù Xiūjìng cataloguing — contains the earliest systematic theorisation of the sāndòng 三洞 triple division of the canon that eventually became the organising principle of the Daoist scriptural universe. Its classification was elaborated and institutionalised by Lù Xiūjìng in the Sāndòng jīngshū mùlù of 471, but the conceptual framework is already mature here, around 400 CE.