Tàishàng dòngxuán língbǎo xuānjiè shǒuhuǐ zhòngzuì bǎohù jīng 太上洞玄靈寶宣戒首悔眾罪保護經
Scripture of the Most-High Cavern-Mystery Numinous Treasure on Proclaiming the Precepts, Confessing the Multitude of Sins, and Receiving Protection
About the work
A Lingbao confession-and-protection scripture in three juàn, of which the upper juàn is lost; the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng preserves only the middle and lower juàn (DZ 460, fasc. 203). The text is structured as a dialogue: Tàishàng Dàojūn 太上道君 enumerates at length the offenses (guò 過) of ordinary mortals — wrath, predation, deception, theft, drunkenness, lewdness, slander, grave-robbery — and then prescribes the corresponding shǒuhuǐ 首悔 (confession) procedure for each, together with the apotropaic-protection liturgies invoked on behalf of the confessor.
Abstract
Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 1: 261, entry by Yamada Toshiaki) classify this as a mid-to-late Lingbao text, probably composed in the Suí–early Táng period (6th–7th c.), considerably later than the foundational Lingbao precept scriptures but drawing on their typology of misdeed. The vocabulary and the elaborate confession procedure are characteristic of the Lingbao zhāi genre after the redaction of the Wúshàng bìyào (c. 583). The catalog gives the date as “Táng,” consistent with the consensus.
The juànzhōng opens with the abrupt clause 太上道君曰世俗之人從宿世以來所犯過惡逮至己身… (“Tàishàng Dàojūn said: ordinary people, from past lives down to the present body, the offenses they have committed…”), which presupposes a now-lost upper juàn that would have laid out the cosmological framing. The middle juàn is a structured taxonomy of offense; the lower juàn is the corresponding liturgy of confession and protection, with formulae to be recited at each of the sānyuán festivals and at moments of crisis (illness, capital trial, childbirth). The protective deities invoked are the standard Lingbao high gods plus a stratum of bureaucratic cáoguān 曹官 borrowed from KR5b0140 Sānyuán pǐnjiè jīng.
The work is one of the indispensable sources for the development of the medieval Daoist chànhuǐ 懺悔 (confession) liturgy that culminates in the Sòng huánglùzhāi 黃籙齋 and the Yuán-Ming qīngxuánzhāi 清玄齋 cycles.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 1: 261 (DZ 460, entry by Yamada Toshiaki).
- Lagerwey, John. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: Macmillan, 1987.